Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/179

Rh Their half-back! Their halves were Tom Wilson and Granger. How could I have mistaken either of them for Joyce?

A little later Giffard was puzzled.

"One of their fellows plays a thundering good game, but, do you know, I can't make out which one of them it is."

"Do you mean the fellow who keeps collaring."

"That's the man!"

The curious part of it was that I never saw the man except when he was collaring.

"The next time," said Giffard, when, for about the sixth time, he had been on the point of scoring, "if I don't get in, I'll know the reason why. I'll kill that man."

It was all very well to talk about our killing him. It looked very much more like his killing us. Mason passed the word that if there was anything like a chance we were to drop. The chance came immediately afterwards. They muffed somehow in trying to pass. Blaine got the leather. He started to run.

"Drop," yelled Mason.

In that fog, and from where Blaine was, dropping a goal was out of the question. He tried the next best thing—he tried to drop into touch. But the attempt was a failure. The kick was a bad one—the ball was as heavy as lead, so that there was not much kick in it—and as it was coming down one of their men, appearing right on the spot, caught it, dropped a drop which was a drop, sent the ball right over our heads, and as near as a toucher over the bar.