XIIIThe following day, after their third stretch of valve construction, Finn and the other boys clattered into the Octagon to play scrum. In theory it was a ball game, with two clear sides and a definite set of rules. The ball was a sack of leather, sewn into a rough sphere and filled with some sort of stuffing. A doorway on each side of the Octagon was used as a goal, the aim of the game being to wrestle the ball into the opponent's doorway. In practice the game generally descended into a mass brawl, with a cluster of pushing, shoving, kicking boys lurching around the Octagon, the ball somewhere within.
Finn stood on the edge of the pack, watching as one of the older boys, Tanner, wrestled the ball away and began to pound towards the opponent's goal. Tanner was a magnificent player of th
