He received his first ball. At first he thought it was going to be a full-pitch, but then he saw it was a yorker. He saw it in time and he heard, sweet as honey to the mouth, the chunk with which it hit the centre of his bat close to the end.
There was no doubt whatever about the second ball: it was a half volley well outside his leg-stump. David made one futile attempt to be prudent and resist the temptation, but he was quite incapable of it, danced out a yard, and smote for all he was worth. He heard the solid impact of the bat, telling him he had hit it correctly, and—there was the ball, already beyond and high above mid-on. It was not worth while starting to run, since this was a boundary-hit, if ever there was one. And—almost more important—this was the end of the over. Opposite he saw Maddox shaking his fist at him, as the roar of applause went up, mingled with shouts from his particular friends of “Well hit, Blazes! Smack ’em about, David,” and he swaggered out of his ground, to slap a perfectly true place on the wicket with his bat. He looked up with a deprecatory smile at Frank.
A silence more intense than ever settled down over the ground, as the last shouts consequent on David’s immortal feat died away, for Tomlin proceeded to send down perhaps the best over he had ever bowled in his life. Once he completely beat Maddox, and must have shaved the varnish off his bails, and from the rest the batsman made no attempt to score, being quite satisfied with stopping them. At the end Anstruther looked round the field.
“Wace, take an over at Crawley’s end, will you?” he said.
Then that period, deadly for a newly arrived batsman, had to be gone through, when the fresh bowler has a few practice-balls, and rearranges the field, and it made David fret. Long-on had to be moved two yards nearer, and one yard to the right: cover-point had to go much deeper, point had to come in a little, and the slips went through a mystic dance. This being concluded, Wace proceeded.
David opened with an appalling stroke, that would have been easily caught by cover, if only Wace had not moved him, and thereupon Wace brought him in again. So David, with an even worse stroke, spooned the ball over his head, so that if he had not been moved the second time, he must have caught it. For this he scored one amid derisive and exultant yells, and Maddox hit at him with his bat as they crossed each other. And there were four more runs to get.