“Good God!” said the mate again and hailed the poop. “Here’s this fellow come aboard after all, sir. He’s quite alone.”
Ortho was led aft. Boarding nettings were triced up and men lay between the upper deck guns girded with side arms. Shot were in the garlands and match-tubs filled, all ready. A well-manned, well-appointed craft. He asked the man who accompanied him her name.
Ortho drew a deep breath. It was a long road home.
The little Botallack man and Eli Penhale shook hands, tucked the slack of their wrestling jackets under their left armpits and, crouching, approached each other, right hands extended.
The three judges, ancient wrestlers, leaned on their ash-plants and looked extremely knowing; they went by the title of “sticklers.”
The wrestling ring was in a grass field almost under the shadow of St. Gwithian church tower. To the north the ridge of tors rolled along the skyline, autumnal brown. Southward was the azure of the English Channel; west, over the end of land, the glint of the Atlantic with the Scilly Isles showing on the horizon, very faint, like small irregularities on a ruled blue line.
All Gwithian was present, men and women, girls and boys, with a good sprinkling of visitors from the parishes round about. They formed a big ring of black and pink, dark clothes and healthy countenances. A good-natured crowd, bandying inter-parochial chaff from side to side, rippling with laughter when some accepted wit brought off a sally, yelling encouragement to their district champions.
“Beware of en’s feet, Jan, boy. The old toad is brear foxy.”
“Scat en, Ephraim, my pretty old beauty! Grip to an’ scandalize en!”
“Move round, sticklers! Think us can see through ’e? Think you’m made of glass?”
At the feet of the crowd lay the disengaged wrestlers, chewing blades of grass and watching the play. They were naked except for short drawers, and on their white skins grip marks flared red, bruises and long scratches where fingers had slipped or the rough jacket edges cut in. Amiable young stalwarts, smiling at each other, grunting approvingly at smart pieces of work. One had a snapped collar-bone, another a fractured forearm wrapped up in a handkerchief, but they kept their pains to themselves; it was all in the game.