THE
CANTUARIAN.
59
True in each instance the man was collared the moment he crossed the line, and the ball grounded so near the corner flag that the kick at goal never caused us the least anxiety. But for all that there seemed nothing for 1t but to die with honour and only minutes remained for play.
•s
But " There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, take n at the flood, leads on to fortune." For almost the first time in the match the ball had been worked back close to our adversaries' 25 ; and there our boys were going "bald-headed," as the Yankees say, into an unimaginably desperate scrimmage. Where the ball was, probably not one man in ten had the vaguest idea, but so it came to pass that when they surged headlong through the midst of their opponents they carried it with them in the stampede. The three-quarter back plunged at it and missed it, th e next instant it was over the line, a nd all men were hurling the mselves precipitately into a chaotic mountain of arms and legs which had suddenly formed over the spot where it was last visible. The excavation of the debris resulted eventually in the discovery of " the Divil" with the ball under him; and the determined argument which followed, was at last decided in our favour by the casting vote of the referee. H ad the kick: been an easy one, the kicker would probably not have been able to lift the ball a yard above the grass ; for we bad not a decent kick in the team. But this time somehow, to his own unbounded astonishment, he sent it soaring up the breeze like a sky rocket, till, its impetus failing before the force of the wind, it obligingly curled round, and dropped just over the bar. To attempt a description of the rest of the play would be absolutely futile. Never have I seen such a seething turmoil of men and mud, or heard such a n ear-splitting hullaballoo, as during the Killaloo bhoy's last effort to retrieve the fortu nes of the day. But though they worked like horses they could not get the upper hand ; and even the three minutes extra which elapsed b efore the referee was able to get paid the least attention with his frantic blasts on the whistle, left the ball still mid-way between the goals, and the one point still in our favour. The game \Vas over; a nd we adjourned to the town to prove our mutual good feeling by the imbibing of whiskey. I t might have been expected from the character of the play it took a good deal of whiskey to do this. For my own part I hate whiskey, but I might as well have tried to get out of drinking Her Majesty's health at the Lord Mayor's Banquet; a nd at all events the final result was satisfactory, for though twenty minutes before they had been ready to fly at each others throats, yet by the time we had all got