This latter point is important. An antagonist s gun may be out of action, and you may have a score of men coming up to it and within six inches of it, but it is not yet captured; and you may have brought up a dozen men all round the hostile gun, but if there is still one enemy just out of their reach and within six inches of the end of the trail of the gun, that gun is not captured: it is still in dispute and out of action, and you may not fire it or move it at the next move. But once a gun is fully captured, it follows all the rules of your own guns. VARIETIES OF THE BATTLE-GAME You may play various types of game. (1) One is the Fight to the Finish. You move in from any points you like on the back line and try to kill, capture, or drive over his back line the whole of the enemy s force. You play the game for points; you score 100 for the victory, and 10 for every gun you hold or are in a position to take, 1-1/2 for every cavalry-man, 1 for every infantry-man still alive and uncaptured, 1/2 for every man of yours prisoner in the hands of the enemy, and 1/2 for every prisoner you have taken. If the battle is still undecided when both forces are reduced below fifteen men, the battle is drawn and the 100 points for victory are divided. Note--This game can be fought with any sized force, but if it is fought with less than 50 a side, the minimum must be 10 a side. (2) The Blow at the Rear game is decided when at least three men of one force reach any point in the back line of their antagonist.
_=Revokes.=_ If a player, when able to do so, fails to follow suit, or to head the trick, or to lead trumps, or to lead the ace of trumps, (or King when ace is turned,) or to trump a suit of which he is void, the hands are abandoned on discovery of the error, and the pool is divided as equally as possible among those who declared to play, with the exception of the offender. Any odd white counters must be left for the next pool. The player in fault is then held guilty of a revoke, and must pay a forfeit of six red counters to the next pool. The reason for the division of the pool is that there is no satisfactory way to determine how the play would have resulted had the revoke not occurred. It is impossible to take back the cards and replay them, because no one would have a right to judge how much a person’s play was altered by his knowledge of the cards in the other hands. If a player, having already won a trick, renders himself liable to any penalty, as for exposing a card, leading or following suit out of turn, or abandoning his hand, he is looed for three red counters, payable to the next pool, and the payment for the tricks he has won must be left in the pool in white counters. IRISH LOO. In this variation, no widow is dealt, and there is no distinction between simple and double pools. A trump is always turned up, and the dealer asks each in turn, beginning on his left, whether or not he will play, taking up the cards of those who decline to stand.
Alligoshi, alligoshee, Turn the bridle over my knee. --Middleton (Burne s _Shropshire Folk-lore_, p. 523). II. Barbara, Barbara, dressed in black, Silver buttons all up your back. Allee-go-shee, allee-go-shee, Turn the bridle over me. --Shepscombe, Gloucestershire (Miss Mendham). III. All-i-go-shee, alligoshee, Turn the bridle over my knee. My little man is gone to sea, When he comes back he ll marry me.
But this in a well-matched game is no easy achievement, and often requires much time, many doublings, detours, and exertions. I should have noticed, that if the holder of the ball be caught with the ball in his possession, he loses a _snotch_; if, therefore, he be hard pressed, he _throws_ it to a convenient friend, more free and in breath than himself. At the loss (or gain) of a _snotch_, a recommence takes place, arranging which gives the parties time to take breath. Seven or nine notches are the game--and these it will sometimes take two or three hours to win. Sometimes a large football was used--and the game was then called Kicking Camp --and if played with the shoes on, Savage Camp. --Moor s _Suffolk Words_. (_b_) The sport and name are very old. The Camping pightel occurs in a deed of the 30 Henry VI.--about 1486; Cullum s _Hawstead_, p. 113, where Tusser is quoted in proof, that not only was the exercise manly and salutary, but good also for the _pightel_ or meadow: In meadow or pasture (to grow the more fine) Let campers be camping in any of thine; Which if ye do suffer when low is the spring, You gain to yourself a commodious thing.
This further removes the game from the chess category, and approximates it to the likeness of active service. Most of a general s decisions, once a fight has begun, must be made in such brief intervals of time. (But we leave unlimited time at the outset for the planning.) As to our time-keeping, we catch a visitor with a stop-watch if we can, and if we cannot, we use a fair-sized clock with a second-hand: the player not moving says Go, and warns at the last two minutes, last minute, and last thirty seconds. But I think it would not be difficult to procure a cheap clock--because, of course, no one wants a very accurate agreement with Greenwich as to the length of a second--that would have minutes instead of hours and seconds instead of minutes, and that would ping at the end of every minute and discharge an alarm note at the end of the move. That would abolish the rather boring strain of time-keeping. One could just watch the fighting. Moreover, in our desire to bring the game to a climax, we decided that instead of a fight to a finish we would fight to some determined point, and we found very good sport in supposing that the arrival of three men of one force upon the back line of the opponent s side of the country was of such strategic importance as to determine the battle. But this form of battle we have since largely abandoned in favour of the old fight to a finish again. We found it led to one type of battle only, a massed rush at the antagonist s line, and that our arrangements of time-limits and capture and so forth had eliminated most of the concluding drag upon the game.
_=Position of the Players.=_ The players are distinguished, as at whist, by the two first and last letters of the alphabet, and their positions at the table are indicated in the same manner. There is no mark to distinguish the dummy hand; a defect which is remedied in the French system. _=Dealing.=_ At the beginning of a rubber, dummy’s partner presents the pack to his _=left-hand=_ adversary to be cut, and deals from right to left, beginning with the player on his right, and turning up the last card for dummy’s trump. When two packs are used, there is no rule as to which player shall collect and shuffle the still pack. On this point the French rules are very explicit. The general rules with regard to irregularities in the deal are the same as at whist. The cards having been dealt, it is usual for dummy’s partner to take up and sort the dummy first. There are several ways of laying out dummy’s hand; the most common being to run the suits down in rows, with the turn-up across and to the right of the other trumps, if any.
A second game is played with a board having nine holes, through one of which the ball must pass. Nares quotes several authors to show the antiquity of the game. He shows that the Nine Men s Morris of our ancestors was but another name for Nine Holes. Nine, a favourite and mysterious number everywhere, prevails in games. Strutt (_Sports_, p. 384) also describes the game as played in two ways--a game with bowling marbles at a wooden bridge; and another game, also with marbles, in which four, five, or six holes, and sometimes more, are made in the ground at a distance from each other, and the business of every one of the players is to bowl a marble, by a regular succession, into all the holes, and he who completes in the fewest bowls obtains the victory. In Northamptonshire a game called Nine Holes, or Trunks, is played with a long piece of wood or bridge with nine arches cut in it, each arch being marked with a figure over it, from one to nine, in the following rotation--VII., V., III., I.
=_ If in the act of playing the player disturbs any ball other than his own, he cannot make a counting stroke, but he may play for safety. Should he disturb a ball after having played successfully, he loses his count on that shot; his hand is out, and the ball so disturbed is placed back as nearly as possible in the position which it formerly occupied on the table, the other balls remaining where they stop. _=7.=_ Should a player touch his own ball with the cue or otherwise previous to playing, it is foul, the player loses one, and cannot play for safety. It sometimes happens that the player after having touched his ball gives a second stroke, then the balls remain where they stop, or are replaced as nearly as possible in their former position at the option of his opponent. _=8.=_ When the cue-ball is very near another, the player shall not play without warning his adversary that they do not touch, and giving him sufficient time to satisfy himself on that point. _=9.=_ When the cue-ball is in contact with another, the balls are spotted and the player plays with his ball in hand. _=10.
He then says, How many blows? and gets the reply, As many s goes. A guess is then made. If the guess is correct the guesser gets the objects. If the guess is incorrect the guesser has to make up the difference between the number guessed and the real number. The players play alternately. This game was played for the most part at Christmas.--Keith (Rev. W. Gregor). (_b_) Hairry = rob, Bossie = a wooden bowl, commonly used for making the leaven in baking oat-cakes, and for making brose.
_=GOING IN.=_ There is a great difference of opinion as to the minimum value of a hand which should justify a player in drawing cards if he can do so for the usual ante. In close games many players make it a rule not to go in on less than tens, while in more liberal circles the players will draw to any pair. In determining which course to follow, the individual must be guided by his observation and judgment. Suppose five play, and A observes that B and C constantly draw to small pairs, while D and E never come in on less than tens. If A has the age, B, D, and E having anted, A may be sure that there are at least two good hands against him, and will guide himself accordingly. But if B and C are the only players in, A may safely draw to a small pair. It can be mathematically demonstrated that what is called an _=average go-in hand=_ should be at least a pair of tens; but a player who waits for tens in a liberal game, in which others are drawing to ace high, will ante himself away if there are many jack pots, and will get no calls when he gets a hand. _=BETTING.=_ Good players are guided by the general character of the game in which they take part.
It didn t. Instead the door to my office opened, letting in a little more of the unmistakable smell of the hospital, as well as old Maragon, Grand Master of the Lodge. He was complaining and shaking a finger at me as he came toward my desk. He didn t jump more than a foot when he got a look at my arm. His shaggy gray eyebrows climbed way, way up his forehead in a mutely shouted question. I wouldn t give the old goat the time of day. When I dead-panned him, he shrugged and lowered himself into the chair beside my desk. Thought you hated snakes, Lefty, he said. A guy could get used to almost anything, Grand Master, I said. I found a cobra under my pillow when I rolled out of the sack this morning.
The last, which is the trump card, must be turned and placed face up on the tray, if one is used; otherwise, at the right of the dealer. SEC. 2. There must be a new deal-- (a) If any card except the last is faced or exposed in any way in dealing; (b) If the pack is proved incorrect or imperfect; (c) If either more or less than thirteen cards are dealt to any player; (d) If, after the first trick has been turned and quitted on the original play of a deal, one or more cards are found to have been left in the tray. LAW IV.--THE TRUMP CARD. SEC. 1. The trump card and the number of the deal must be recorded, before the play begins, on a slip provided for that purpose, and must not be elsewhere recorded. Such slip must be shown to an adversary, then turned face down and placed in the tray, if one is used.