The Curse of the Reckaviles

The Final for the Hospital Cup was being fought out between Guys and Barts, and the usual crowd of joyful medicos were making their way to the ground, dressed in every fantastic garb, ringing bells and waving hideous ear-splitting rattles. The crowd watched good humouredly, as here a coster’s cart passed with donkey and “Bill” and “Liza,” here the ex-Kaiser with carrots behind his ears, and Joan of Arc and Humpty-Dumpty, and clowns with balloons and Dilly and Dally, and the rest. The police had seen it all before, and shepherded them along with firmness and good temper. The ground was in a state of pandemonium till the whistle blew, when silence fell on the spectators, as the teams got down to serious work. Each was well balanced, but contained particular stars, the darlings of their supporters; here was Histon the international wing “three,” who had scored the only try for England in that great tussle with Ireland, and Blackett the Scottish forward whose name was terror. Not least among them was Sefton, now in his last year, who was in the running for his International Cap, on the left wing, a deadly straight runner, who might easily win the match if properly fed by his centre. And so they ran through the names, and weighed the chances, while thirty young Britons in the pride of perfect fitness strove for the mastery, as many of them had fought in the Great War, with a single purpose, to win or perish as became them. Half time came with no score, and the rattles clattered like machine guns, and the hooters hooted, and drums beat. Then the struggle became fierce and desperate. Time after time the grand Barts pack went through with a rush, only to be stopped by the intrepid Jacks, at full back, who hurled himself on the ball regardless of life and limb, or so it seemed to the more tender of the crowd. Time and again a passing movement on the old Welch lines, en echelon, with perfect timing nearly let the Guys’ “threes” in, but still the lines were uncrossed. Histon had tried his dangerous drops, and all but won between the posts, and Sefton with his marvellous pace had run right through, to be tackled magnificently by Barron the full back, and so the tide had veered amidst the wildest excitement on the part of the spectators.