Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/208

 of the players in the ship's team was the young man who appears when you press a button in the smoking-room; in short, he is one of two bartenders employed on the "Anchises." This young man was a particularly good pitcher. The best batter on the ship's team was the second officer. There is a democracy in sport which levels all rank. The game lasted nearly two hours, and I picked up a smattering of the rules. There are eleven players on a side, and each player must take his turn at batting; but the best pitchers of the team may do all the pitching. Before a batter is out, the pitcher must knock down the wicket with the ball; sometimes a batter knocks the ball about a long time before he is out. Mr. Connell, who sits at our table, made nineteen scores before they got him out, and batted three-quarters of an hour A good many of the passengers are mining men from South Africa. Among these is a man who was born in America, but who has lived among Englishmen so long that he cannot be distinguished from them. He married an English woman, and has three children who have a very rich brogue. The man told me today that he very naturally fell into the ways of the English within a year after going to South Africa, and that now our pronunciations amuse him as much as they amuse the English. He plays cricket, likes it better than baseball, and pitches with the peculiar twist which distinguishes the English game This evening I saw a man sitting on deck apparently curling his moustache. Later it developed that he was getting a string around an aching tooth; this accomplished, he pulled the tooth with a single jerk. He said to me: "In a year or two I shall