upon him a wooden club indicated that the time had come for him to
prove his merit by venturing alone into the midst of the eleven brown
adversaries who stood at a distance in poised and expectant attitudes.

Assuredly, benignant one, this sport of contending locusts began, as
one approached nearer to it, to wear no more pacific a face than if it
had been a carnage of the hurl-headlong or the curved-hook varieties.
In such a competition, it occurred to him, how little deference would
be paid to this one's title of "Established Genius," or how
inadequately would he be protected by his undoubted capacity of
leaping upwards, and even in a sideway direction, for no matter how
vigorously he might propel himself, or how successfully he might
endeavour to remain self-sustained in the air, the ill-destined moment
could not be long deferred when he must come down again into the midst
of the eleven--all doubtless concealing weapons as massive and
fatally-destructive as his own. This prospect, to a person of
quiescent taste, whose chief delight lay in contemplating the
philosophical subtleties of the higher Classics, was in itself devoid
of glamour, but with what funereal pigments shall he describe his
sinking emotions when one of his own band, approaching him as he went,
whispered in his ear, "Look out at this end; they kick up like the
very devil. And their man behind the wicket is really smart; if you
give him half a chance he'll have your stumps down before you can say
'knife.'" Shorn of its uncouth familiarity, this was a charitable
warning that they into whose stronghold I was turning my
footsteps--perhaps first deceiving my alertness with a proffered
friendship--would kick with the ferocity of untamed demons, and that
one in particular, whose description, to my added despair, I was
unable to retain, was known to possess a formidable knife, with which
it was his intention to cut off this person's legs at the first