They and I | Page 5

say to him; "don't be so full of tricks."
The Captain led off with a miss in baulk. Malooney gripped his cue,
drew in a deep breath, and let fly. The result was ten: a cannon and all
three balls in the same pocket. As a matter of fact he made the cannon
twice; but the second time, as we explained to him, of course did not

count.
"Good beginning!" said the Captain.
Malooney seemed pleased with himself, and took off his coat.
Malooney's ball missed the red on its first journey up the table by about
a foot, but found it later on and sent it into a pocket.
"Ninety-nine plays nothing," said Dick, who was marking. "Better
make it a hundred and fifty, hadn't we, Captain?"
"Well, I'd like to get in a shot," said the Captain, "before the game is
over. Perhaps we had better make it a hundred and fifty, if Mr.
Malooney has no objection."
"Whatever you think right, sir," said Rory Malooney.
Malooney finished his break for twenty-two, leaving himself hanging
over the middle pocket and the red tucked up in baulk.
"Nothing plays a hundred and eight," said Dick.
"When I want the score," said the Captain, "I'll ask for it."
"Beg pardon, sir," said Dick.
"I hate a noisy game," said the Captain.
The Captain, making up his mind without much waste of time, sent his
ball under the cushion, six inches outside baulk.
"What will I do here?" asked Malooney.
"I don't know what you will do," said the Captain; "I'm waiting to see."
Owing to the position of the ball, Malooney was unable to employ his
whole strength. All he did that turn was to pocket the Captain's ball and
leave himself under the bottom cushion, four inches from the red. The

Captain said a nautical word, and gave another miss. Malooney squared
up to the balls for the third time. They flew before him, panic-stricken.
They banged against one another, came back and hit one another again
for no reason whatever. The red, in particular, Malooney had succeeded
apparently in frightening out of its wits. It is a stupid ball, generally
speaking, our red--its one idea to get under a cushion and watch the
game. With Malooney it soon found it was safe nowhere on the table.
Its only hope was pockets. I may have been mistaken, my eye may have
been deceived by the rapidity of the play, but it seemed to me that the
red never waited to be hit. When it saw Malooney's ball coming for it at
the rate of forty miles an hour, it just made for the nearest pocket. It
rushed round the table looking for pockets. If in its excitement, it
passed an empty pocket, it turned back and crawled in. There were
times when in its terror it jumped the table and took shelter under the
sofa or behind the sideboard. One began to feel sorry for the red.
The Captain had scored a legitimate thirty-eight, and Malooney had
given him twenty-four, when it really seemed as if the Captain's chance
had come. I could have scored myself as the balls were then.
"Sixty-two plays one hundred and twenty-eight. Now then, Captain,
game in your hands," said Dick.
We gathered round. The children left their play. It was a pretty picture:
the bright young faces, eager with expectation, the old worn veteran
squinting down his cue, as if afraid that watching Malooney's play
might have given it the squirms.
"Now follow this," I whispered to Malooney. "Don't notice merely
what he does, but try and understand why he does it. Any fool--after a
little practice, that is--can hit a ball. But why do you hit it? What
happens after you've hit it? What--"
"Hush," said Dick.
The Captain drew his cue back and gently pushed it forward.
"Pretty stroke," I whispered to Malooney; "now, that's the sort--"

I offer, by way of explanation, that the Captain by this time was
probably too full of bottled-up language to be master of his nerves. The
ball travelled slowly past the red. Dick said afterwards that you couldn't
have put so much as a sheet of paper between them. It comforts a man,
sometimes, when you tell him this; and at other times it only makes
him madder. It travelled on and passed the white--you could have put
quite a lot of paper between it and the white--and dropped with a
contented thud into the top left-hand pocket.
"Why does he do that?" Malooney whispered. Malooney has a
singularly hearty whisper.
Dick and I got the women and children out of the room as quickly as
we could, but of course Veronica managed to tumble over something
on the way--Veronica would find something to tumble over in