The leg had evidently been Jos's leg. The nearer of these two white
dolls must be Jos, darling of fifteen thousand frenzied people.

Stirling punched a neighbour in the side to attract his attention.

"What's the score?" he demanded of the neighbour, who scowled and then
grinned.

"Two--one--agen uz!" The other growled.

"It'll take our b----s all their time to draw. They're playing a man
short."

"Accident?"

"No! Referee ordered him off for rough play."

Several spectators began to explain, passionately, furiously, that the
referee's action was utterly bereft of common sense and justice; and I
gathered that a less gentlemanly crowd would undoubtedly have lynched
the referee. The explanations died down, and everybody except me resumed
his fierce watch on the field.

I was recalled from the exercise of a vague curiosity upon the set,
anxious faces around me by a crashing, whooping cheer which in volume
and sincerity of joy surpassed all noises in my experience. This massive
cheer reverberated round the field like the echoes of a battleship's
broadside in a fiord. But it was human, and therefore more terrible than
guns. I instinctively thought: "If such are the symptoms of pleasure,
what must be the symptoms of pain or disappointment?" Simultaneously