ves be obviously wanting,) because the chief
ones of her family are in the habit of contributing unstintingly to the
equipment of the triumphal band. There is also another kind of strife,
differing in its essentials only so far that all who engage therein are
provided with a curved staff, with which they may dexterously draw their
antagonists beyond the limits, or, should they fail to defend themselves
adequately, break the smaller bones of their ankles. But this form of
encounter, despite the use of these weapons, is really less fatal
than the other, for it is not a permissible act to club an antagonist
resentfully about the head with the staff, nor yet even to thrust
it rigidly against his middle body. From this moderation the public
countenance extended to the curved-pole game is contemptibly meagre when
viewed by the side of the overwhelming multitudes which pour along every
channel in order to witness a more than usually desperate trial of the
hurl-headlong variety (the sight, indeed, being as attractive to these
pale, blood-thirsty foreigners as an unusually large execution is
with us), and as a consequence the former is little reputed save among
maidens, the feeble, and those of timorous instincts.

Thus positioned, regarding a knowledge of their outside amusements, it
has always been one of the most prominent ambitions of this person's
strategy to avoid being drawn into any encounter. At the same time,
the thought that the maidens of the household here (of whom there are
several, all so attractively proportioned that to compare them in a
spirit of definite preference would be distastefully presumptuous to
this person,) should regard me as one lacking in a sufficient display
of violence was not fragrant to my sense of refinement; so that when
Sir Philip, a little time after our arrival, related to me that on the
following day he and a chosen band were to be engaged in the match of a
cricket game against adversaries from the village, and asked whether I
cared to bear a part in the strife, I grasped the muscles of the upper
part of my left arm with my right hand--as I had frequently seen the
hardy and virile do when the subject of their powers had been raised
questioningly--and replied that I had long concealed an insatiable wish
to take such a part at a point where the conflict would be the most
revengefully contested.

Being thus inflexibly committed it became very necessary to arrange a
well-timed intervention