COXSWAIN
OF THE EIGHT

BY

RALPH HENRY BARBOUR

AUTHOR OF “KICK FORMATION,”
“THREE-BASE BENSON,” “THE SPIRIT
OF THE SCHOOL,” “UNDER THE
YANKEE ENSIGN,” ETC.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK :: 1922 :: LONDON

“Alan.”

The boy at the table made no response. His eyes were fixed intently on a book. A cheek rested in the palm of his left hand, the fingers of which rumpled the thick, slightly wavy, brown hair above. In the afternoon light that was slanting through the open windows of Number 6 McCrea, Alan Linscott, absorbed and motionless, rather suggested a study in brown. He had removed his coat, for September in Maryland can be exceedingly warm, and the soft shirt that was left exposed held narrow brown stripes on a white ground. A darker brown tie fell from the opening of a very crumpled collar. The face was brown, too, as was the long sinewy hand beside it. The hair was brown, and the eyes, could they have been brought into the picture, would have proved of the same color. Alan, however, had no thought of posing. He had, just then, no thought of anything beyond the difficult Latin text beneath his eyes.

The boy on the window-seat, his broad back supported [2]by several soft cushions, his knees hunched up to serve as a rest for his book, observed his roommate somewhat quizzically, parted his lips as if to speak again, thought better of it and, instead, turned his head so that his mild gray eyes looked out across the gravel road beneath the casement, across the stretch of greensward, past the corner of Founders’ Hall and away down the glittering blue Severn. Afar off, beyond the bridges, the white buildings and the golden dome of the Naval Academy shone resplendently in the late sunlight. From the athletic field came faintly, subdued by the intervening dormitories, the cries of the football players, sometimes the shrill piping of a whistle. The day had been hot, and even yet the sunlight fell with too fervent an ardor on his face. He reached up and pulled the shade down level with his shoulders. The passing of the sunlight from the table caused Alan to stir slightly.

“All right?” asked Joe Whittier. “Can you see?”

Alan dropped his hand from his cheek and looked across. “Eh?” he asked blankly. “Oh! Yes, thanks.” He leaned back and thrust his strong-looking tanned hands into his trousers’ pockets. His gaze went back to the open book, passed to the little sheet of notes beside it and then swept across to the window. “Hot, isn’t it?” he asked, his thoughts still lingering on his work.

Joe nodded. “The air’s a bit better, though. Want to walk over to the field?”

Alan looked dubious. “I don’t know. I’ve got a [3]lot of this stuff yet. Sometimes I think it would be better if we didn’t have summer vacations. You forget so much, Joe. Or, at least, you sort of get out of practice.”

Joe grinned. “You have punk ideas, Alan. I’ll take the vacation, even if I do get a bit rusty. I suppose, though, that if they kept us at it right through the year, with, say, a week or two of recess at Christmas and the Fourth of July, we’d get out of here in two years instead of four. There’s something in that, eh?”

“A lot, I’d say,” responded Alan thoughtfully. “It would cost less, for one thing. I wonder how it would work.”

“Oh, I suppose every one would get dull and stupid along about August. I guess we need a let-up. Besides, we’d get only two years of rowing instead of four. By the way, when’s Mike due?”

“Monday.”

“Monday? Don’t we get the shells out until then?”

“I don’t believe so. You can’t get the men into them until they’ve sort of settled down, anyway. We’ll put some pair-oars over to-morrow, though. I saw one of the Navy crews paddling around yesterday down below the bridge.”

“Yes, the Plebes, I reckon, from the way they splashed. Well, I’ll be glad to get my feet into the laces again. Say, do you think Mike has his eye on Ned for stroke this year?”

“I don’t believe so, Joe. Ned Anstruth hasn’t got [4]the beef for the full course, to my thinking. He pulls a good oar, though, and he can stroke a mile race well. You don’t need to worry, I guess. I fancy Mike means to try Ned out pretty thoroughly this fall, but Ned’s a next year man in my opinion. I wonder if there’s any rowing material in the new lot. Quite a few fellows have come into the second class, I hear.”

“That reminds me!” Joe tossed his book aside and swung his feet to the floor. He was a rather thickset youth, with very broad shoulders, a deep chest and arms that, as they moved, seemed to threaten the sleeves of the pale blue shirt. He had a somewhat square head set on a massive neck, very dark hair, gray eyes and a long, straight nose. He looked a bit lazy, thoroughly good-natured and decidedly humorous. A rather large mouth, set well above the broad square chin, accounted for the latter. Joe wasn’t good-looking in the way that his roommate was, but he possessed quite as much attraction. You felt at once that you were going to like Joe. You felt about Alan that you wanted to like him but weren’t certain that you were going to. Having thrust his legs out before him and knocked the toes of his brown shoes together once or twice, Joe went on.

“There was a fellow in here before you got back. I forget his name. Didn’t want to wait, so he left a note for you. It’s there on the table somewhere. Under that blue book on my side, I guess. Looked like a new fellow; probably a freshie. Not a bad-looking—That’s it.”

[5]

Alan, having found the twice-folded sheet of paper torn from Joe’s scratch pad, viewed it with scant interest as he opened it. Joe watched, mildly curious, and hummed softly. Alan grunted and looked across when he had finished reading.

“Young Dodd,” he said. “Fellow from my town. Hardly know him. His folks and mine are acquainted, though, and it seems that Dad told him to look me up. Dad said something about him, I think, but I’d forgotten.”

“Not a bad-looking kid,” said Joe. “Fourth class?”

Alan referred to the note again and shook his head. “Third. He’s in Baldwin, he says. Well, I suppose I’ll have to look him up and do what I can.”

“Sure,” agreed Joe heartily. “Third’s a rotten class to enter this way. Fellows are feeling their importance, you know, and are frightfully cliquy, too. I know, for I went through it. If I’d been the soft sort I’d have had a mean time of it for a couple of months.”

Alan laughed. “Instead, you licked Don Martin the second day you were here and then impressed your impersonality further by wandering into chemistry class in your shirt sleeves!”

“Well, I still think I was right,” contended Joe, chuckling. “If Jonesie hadn’t been an oaf he’d have acknowledged it. It was hot!”

“Jonesie never acknowledges anything,” said Alan. “Meet him in a rainstorm and say ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Jones. Quite a shower, isn’t it?’ and he will peer out from under his umbrella and shake his head [6]doubtfully and tell you that, while the indications portend rain, the barometer is steadily rising and he wouldn’t be surprised if the wind shifted.” Alan’s imitation of the instructor’s precise delivery set Joe to chuckling deeply. Alan took up young Dodd’s note once more and skimmed its half-dozen formally polite lines. “Know a fellow named Lodge?” he inquired.

“Lodge? Yes, Bert Lodge, a tall pill who plays football. Why?”

“Dodd says he’s rooming with a boy named Lodge. Sharing his lodgings, as you might say.” Alan smiled slightly at his weak joke and arose to his feet, stretching. He was much taller than Joe, more evenly developed. Lithe and sinewy, there was at no place any indication of bulkiness, and even after the summer recess he still looked as hard as nails and ready for a time trial over the full course at a moment’s notice. On the score of looking like the ideal rowing man, Alan Linscott was as satisfactory a crew captain as North Bank School had had for many years. Laying a pencil thoughtfully between the pages of the open book, he crossed to the window and, with hands in pockets, stood beside Joe and looked off down the river.

“What did he look like?” he asked, presently.

Joe, aroused from his own thoughts, which had wandered far afield from North Bank and Maryland, looked momentarily perplexed. Then: “Oh, Lodge?” he replied. “Why, you’ve seen him often enough. Sort of weedy chap.”

[7]

“I mean young Dodd,” corrected Alan.

“Oh! Why, rather a nice-looking youngster, Alan. About fourteen, I guess. Small, kiddish, a bit shy. Seemed sort of relieved, I thought, when he found you weren’t here. Looked a decent fellow.”

“I don’t remember him,” mused Alan. “Guess I haven’t seen him, to know him, for two or three years. I must look him up pretty soon.”

“Hard lines, his getting stuck in with Bert Lodge,” said Joe. “Lodge is the kind of fellow that’ll take a lot of pleasure in making the kid unhappy, I guess. Better have him over here some evening. Some kids can get beastly homesick at first.”

Alan nodded. “What about getting out?” he asked. “It’s too late for the river, I suppose. Might go over and watch football a while.”

“Come on,” said Joe.

Bertram Lodge entered Number 12 Baldwin, banged the door shut behind him, threw a book to the table, from whence it fell unnoticed to the floor, and regarded the other occupant of the room disapprovingly.

“Say, kid, you’ll grow fast to that chair if you don’t look out,” he said. “Don’t you ever do anything but read?”

“I’m not reading,” answered the one addressed. “That is, I’m studying.” He held up the book in his hand. “We have to read this in English.”

“House of Seven Gables,” read Bert. “Say, that’s my book, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I found it on the shelf over there. I couldn’t get it in the library.”

“Well, you be mighty careful of it,” ordered the other, scowling. “I’m not keen on lending my books, kid. Are your hands clean?”

They were; far cleaner than his own; but Bert didn’t recognize the fact. “What you want to do,” he continued, “is get out of doors more, young Dodd. Don’t you like anything but sitting in the room and reading moldy books? Gee, you’re a swell guy for a roommate!”

[9]

Richard Spellman Dodd flushed. “I’m going out pretty soon,” he replied mildly. “I thought I’d go and watch them play football.”

“Watch!” sneered the older boy. “You’d better get out and play something yourself. Put some flesh on your body. Get some pep. You’re about as full of ginger as—as nothing at all!”

He laid violent hands on his tie and then his collar and fairly dashed them to the top of his chiffonier. Bertram Lodge always did things in that fashion, as though he was thoroughly out of patience with everything, including inanimate objects. Just now his endeavor was to disrobe himself as completely as possible without taking off sufficient to expose himself to censure should he encounter a member of the faculty on his dash across to the gymnasium. Once some evil-disposed person had made off with Bert’s undershirt in the locker-room and since that tragic day he had chosen to undress in his room. Richard Dodd watched him over the top of his book. Already, after but four days of his society, he had grown to dislike Bert very thoroughly. The older boy—Richard was fifteen and Bert seventeen—had badgered and hectored and nagged him continuously. Nothing that Richard did or said was right. If he stayed in the room Bert called him a mollycoddle. If he went out Bert demanded to be told where he had been and what he had done, and then made fun of him. Bert gave him absurd advice and was cross when he didn’t follow it. Several times he had maliciously sent Richard on [10]foolish errands, as when, the second day of school, he had directed the newcomer to hurry forthwith to the office and inform Mr. Ledyard, the secretary, that he had been vaccinated. Bert drew a fearsome picture of the fate awaiting those who failed to report on the matter of vaccination! The secretary received Richard’s information politely enough, and had thanked him, but the boy had caught the hastily concealed smile on Mr. Ledyard’s features and had guessed that he had been made a fool of. Back in the room, he had managed somehow to keep his temper, even to smile in a sickly way, during Bert’s croaking laughter.

Bert was rather tall, rather thin, rather unwholesome looking. He had a flat chest and narrow shoulders and a long neck. His face was long, too; and muddy as to complexion, with unhealthy pimples that, in Richard’s belief, would have yielded readily to a more earnest and frequent application of warm water and soap. He had very dark hair and very thick eyebrows that almost met above a short, straight nose and possibly added to a sort of saturninity of expression that was seldom absent. Bert was a football player and not a bad one. He had played a good game at end on the second team last year and this fall was trying for the first. He looked very little like what Richard had previously believed a football player should look like, but Richard was discovering that several of his preconceived notions were wrong. For one thing, life at boarding school [11]as he had pictured it and life at boarding school as it really was were vastly different. He had got his ideas largely from stories, and stories are likely to dwell overmuch on the pleasanter features and to disregard the unattractive. In four days Richard had grown to suspect that the writers of those stories didn’t always know what they were writing about!

Bert slipped his bare feet into a pair of very old sneakers—too old to tempt any prankish companion—buttoned his coat about him and made for the door. Richard, pretending interest in the book, hoped that he would leave without further converse, but that was not to be. At the open door Bert looked back.

“Put that book back on the shelf when you’re through reading it,” he said, “and don’t leave it kicking around, kid. Say, why don’t you come out and see me show those fat-heads how to play end?” Bert grinned almost pleasantly. “Better than sticking in here and getting the pip. Come on!”

“I’ll be along later,” responded Richard amiably but firmly. “I want to finish this chapter first.”

“You give me a pain in the neck,” snarled the other. “Go to thunder!”

He slammed the door behind him and Richard drew a breath of relief. He always did when freed of the other boy’s presence. He wondered how he could ever put up with Bert for the rest of the school year. Eight months! It didn’t seem possible. He sighed and tore his thoughts from the dismal contemplation, resolutely returning to his reading. Half an hour [12]later he put the book back in its place, jammed a cap to the back of his brown head and left the room. He did not, however, seek the gridiron. Nor did he make his way to ball field or tennis courts. Instead, he followed the path that led to Founders’ Hall, passed around the latter and took another path that led him toward the bluff above the river. By easy turns the way led him downward to the boathouse and float, and there he had his choice of two directions. He chose to go downstream. Presently a narrow beach of white sand kept him company and a row of bathhouses appeared. A platform ran the length of the houses, and on this, in the warm afternoon sunlight, he sat down.

The bathhouses were relics of olden days, days when the fine new gymnasium had not been built. Now they were seldom used, for it was far easier to put on bathing suits in the locker room and take the path that led through the grove, along the eastern boundary, and down, by abrupt descents, to the white beach. Just now the beach was deserted. Even the broad river, flowing very slowly toward the Chesapeake, was empty, save that afar up, just vanishing about the bend, a small motor boat was leaving an undulating wake. On the opposite shore, houses, mostly modest as to size though often attractive in looks, nestled amidst trees at the top of the bluff. Here and there the river bank displayed great patches of red-clay soil between the blue water and the greenery above. It was a silent, dreamy afternoon, with only the lightest [13]of zephyrs moving the warm air. Dragon flies darted and poised along the surface and birds sang in the wooded slope behind the bathhouses. Under most circumstances Richard could have been very contented, very happy there, for he possessed the fortunate ability to entertain himself. He liked to think, and could always find plenty of things to think about. But to-day he wasn’t at all happy, and his thoughts were anything but cheerful.

He was a perfectly normal boy and not easily discouraged, but to-day, his fourth day at North Bank School, he would have given a good deal to have been back home once more in Darrowdale. Things were proving not at all as he had pictured them. At high school, although all the fellows had pretended to scorn boarding schools and to consider fellows who attended them stuck-up and pretentious, there had been a secret envy for those lucky ones whose parents had chosen to send them away from home for their education. Richard recalled the sneers with which the news of Alan Linscott’s withdrawal from school to attend North Bank had been received amongst his associates, and how he had envied Alan and had hoped to follow him. Richard had been only twelve then, but he had promptly set his heart on North Bank and had looked forward almost impatiently to the time when he might enter. When Alan had returned for his first Christmas vacation Richard had shyly called at his house, and Alan, rather important and glad of an audience, had regaled the younger boy with many [14]and varied tales of the school and of his experiences. Perhaps Alan had laid it on a bit thick sometimes, and certainly he had altogether failed to dwell on the harder aspects, but he had been only sixteen himself then and still somewhat excited by the new existence. When he had returned to Darrowdale the next time he had become extremely haughty, or so it seemed to Richard, and had scant time for the company of any one so youthful and uninteresting as Richard. Since then the two had seldom seen each other, and when they had they had exchanged no more than nods.

But Alan’s aloofness hadn’t cooled Richard’s ardor. Rather, it had inflamed it. It had made Alan seem vastly more important and encompassed him, in the younger lad’s eyes, in an atmosphere of delicious mystery. Wanting to go to North Bank and going, however, were two quite different things. Richard’s father hadn’t seen any merit in the idea and his mother, while anxious that Richard should have what he had set his heart on, had been dismayed at the thought of separation and so had been at no time a very gallant ally. Richard might have entered North Bank at fourteen, a whole year ago, but his father had not yet been won over. The Dodds weren’t wealthy, nor were they poor, but the question of finances had its importance. Mr. Dodd had wanted to know what boarding school could supply to Richard that high school couldn’t before he would consent to the larger expenditure, and Richard had had a good deal of [15]difficulty in telling him. Yet he had finally succeeded, it seemed, for last spring, rather to the boy’s surprise, Mr. Dodd had announced his willingness to have Richard send in his application.

That had been a wonderful day in Richard’s life. He had hardly slept that night for fear that something might happen before he could get the letter written and posted. Summer had dragged horribly, although it had been made happy by the preparations for fall and by the wonderful dreams he had dreamed. Long before his application had been accepted Richard had become warmly, even militantly patriotic. He had battled with Jack Egan through an ecstatic ten minutes because Jack had asserted that only sissies went to boarding schools and that the school of Richard’s choice was the worst in the country. Richard had sustained a badly flattened nose and other contusions, but Jack had fared worse and had eaten his words before his opponent—some ten pounds lighter, by the way—had consented to peace. Richard had reached North Bank filled with noble emotions of patriotism and sacrifice. The sight of a light blue banner behind a window in Follen House had made his heart swell and almost brought tears to his eyes. Once more he had solemnly dedicated himself to his School.

Now, though, it appeared that his School didn’t care anything about him. His appearance had gone unremarked, unnoted, save at the office where a busy and rather tired-looking gentleman had entered his name on a card and waved him politely away. No [16]welcoming hand had extended itself in greeting. The fellows of the third class had already made their affiliations and there seemed to be no place for a newcomer. He went from classroom to dining hall, from dining hall to house with none to notice. Only Bertram Lodge recognized his existence, and that recognition Richard could have done well enough without. Yesterday, watching football, he had gathered courage and spoken to a boy who, like himself, was a solitary atom at the edge of the field. The stranger had looked down on him from the vantage of two inches and asked oddly: “What did you say, kid?” Richard had not repeated his remark, but had moved uncomfortably away. His patriotism remained, but it was languishing. Unreturned affection glows dully.

He had kept his promise to Mr. Linscott and sought Alan. Alan had not been in his room, and, so he had written a brief and very formal note under the eyes of a big, nice-looking youth and departed not without relief. That had been two days ago and Alan had not been to see him nor sent word to him. He had glimpsed Alan many times since; once Alan had stared straight into his face without recognition. Richard found excuses for the other, though. He was a very important factor, was Alan, and probably there were many things requiring his attention so soon after the beginning of the term. Being crew captain alone doubtless meant much care. Perhaps to-morrow or the next day Alan would come and see him. Or perhaps this afternoon when he returned [17]to his room he would find a note from Alan. He did hope so. He wanted very much to know some one besides Bert Lodge.

Sounds at the boathouse aroused him and he glanced upstream to where the end of a blue canoe was appearing through the wide door, catching the sunlight royally on its varnished surface. As he looked the rest of the craft came into sight, its bow cradled in the arms of a slim boy in white flannel trousers and a pink shirt. The canoe was pushed forward on its brass keel to the edge of the float. Then the boy disappeared again into the shadowed depths of the house. Richard wished that he might be going to embark in that canoe. He had never been in one, although he had often paddled about Skinner’s Pond, at home, in a leaky skiff or poled an old punt around after pond lilies. The pink shirt was in sight again and presently the canoe was in the water and its single occupant was comfortably settled in the middle on a cane seat. To Richard’s surprise, the boy merely shoved off from the float with a canvas-shod foot and then, with hardly more than his uncovered brown head in sight, draped both feet over the nearer thwart and appeared to give himself over to silent and motionless reverie. The current turned the canoe around and took it slowly along the shore. Richard heard it scrape softly through the little patch of rushes at the end of the beach. Then it came toward him, just beyond where the tiny ripples were lapping the sand. To the occupant it seemed to make no difference [18]whether the craft went aground or didn’t. His eyes, barely above the edge of the canoe, were fixed intently now on the solitary figure before the bathhouses. Richard, sensible of the stare, looked away. Then curiosity got the better of him and he looked back again. The canoe was almost abreast and the boy in it was still regarding Richard fixedly, calmly. Richard stared back defiantly at the two eyes which, with the top of a nose, a sunburnt forehead and some brown hair, were all that were to be seen. The boy, without removing his gaze more than momentarily, lifted a short paddle from beside him, dipped its blade in the shallow water and sent the bow toward the beach. The canoe grounded, its stern swung gently downstream. The two boys continued to stare.

It was Richard who gave in first. He had the sunlight in front of him and his eyes watered and he had to blink them shut and look away. When he looked back the boy in the canoe was grinning. Richard frowned for an instant. Then he, too, grinned. The other removed his feet from the thwart, hunched himself back in the rocking craft and sat up. He was a bright-eyed, merry youth with a deeply tanned round face that smiled gayly at Richard.

“Want to come along?” he asked in a pleasant voice.

Richard did want to, very much, but such friendliness so took him aback that for a brief moment he couldn’t answer.

“Afraid I mean to kidnap you?” asked the other.

Richard shook his head and jumped up. “I’d like to very much, thank you,” he answered.

“All right. Wait a sec.” The boy moved his canoe seat toward the stern, tossed a faded cushion into the bow and seated himself again. “All right now. Step aboard. Give her a shove with your foot. Get wet? Hang it over the side and it’ll soon dry. Stick that cushion under you. Comfy?”

“Fine, thanks.” Richard, seated on the cushion in [20]the bottom, his back against the edge of the seat, smiled gratefully. The other nodded, dipped his paddle and pushed further from shore.

“Any place you’d like to go?” he inquired.

“No, I don’t think so. Is this your canoe?”

“Some of it. The paddle’s mine and the seat and the cush—No, I don’t know who belongs to the cushion. I believe the canoe itself belongs to Thayer. Know Bob Thayer?”

Richard shook his head. “No,” he answered. Then, in a burst of confidence, “I don’t know any one yet,” he added, “except the fellow I’m rooming with and—and Alan Linscott.”

“Thought you were a new one,” said the other. “Linscott’s a good sort, I guess. I don’t know him very well. Who are you in with?”

“Bert Lodge. Do you know him?”

The other made a face and nodded. “Hard luck,” he commented. Then: “I say, though! Maybe he’s a friend of yours?”

“No, he isn’t.” Richard’s tone was extremely dry, and the other boy’s mouth curved in another grin.

“He’s a poor fish,” was the pronouncement. “What’s your name, by the way? Mine’s Ravenel.”

“Dodd,” said Richard.

“Short and sweet! You’re in the third, aren’t you? I think I saw you in Latin 5 yesterday. You must be blooming smart.”

“Smart?” echoed Richard.

“Yes, to be in third class. Why, I’m sixteen.”

[21]

“How old do you think I am?”

“Fourteen; nearly fifteen maybe.”

“I’m nearly sixteen.”

Ravenel whistled. “You don’t look it.”

“It’s because I’m so small,” said Richard sadly.

Ravenel viewed him judicially. “Yes, you are small,” he said, “but you look pretty well-built and awfully fit.” He had been gently propelling the canoe toward midstream and now he shipped his paddle and relaxed, gathering his knees between slim brown arms. “I’m no giant myself,” he went on, smiling. “Glad of it, too. It lets me out of all kinds of trouble. When they come scouting around for football or crew or baseball material they just look at me and go on. It’s not so bad, being a pigmy.”

“I wouldn’t call you that,” laughed Richard. “You’re a lot bigger than I am. But—but don’t you like to play football? Or row?”

“No, I don’t. I’m too busy, for one thing.”

“Oh!” Richard wondered what the occupation might be that precluded his new acquaintance from those sports, but he didn’t quite like to ask. Perhaps Ravenel guessed the other’s curiosity, for he went on gravely.

“You see, Dodd, I’m here at North Bank for two things principally. One is to study very, very hard and the other is to enjoy myself.” He paused as though expecting comment, and so Richard said:

“I see.” He didn’t though; not exactly. The statement sounded queer. Ravenel went on, hugging his [22]white-flanneled knees tightly and regarding his vis-à-vis with really sobering gravity.

“Of course study takes up a lot of my time, Dodd. If a fellow is really conscientious about it he’s bound to spoil a couple of hours a day studying.”

“A couple!” exclaimed Richard in amazement. “Why I’ve been putting in three and four!”

“Really?” Ravenel frowned. “Well, some fellows are like that, I suppose. I learn very quickly. Anyway, two hours out of what you have left from recitations and meals doesn’t leave much time for enjoyment. You see that, eh? Now suppose I go in for baseball or football—Well, not football, for I’m too light, but some other sport: lacrosse, say, or basket ball; why, I wouldn’t have any time left!”

“No, I guess you wouldn’t,” acknowledged Richard, “but—but what do you want the time for? I mean—”

“For enjoyment, of course.”

“Yes, but what sort of enjoyment?”

“Why, this, for instance. All sorts of jolly things. Sometimes I go down to the bridge and fish. Sometimes I take some lunch and go up the river and have a picnic. There are so many things to do, you see; really important things. I like to swim, too. I like to photograph. I like to—to—oh, just mess around in the woods. Those things are fun. Getting all heated up and covered with dirt playing baseball, or having my head slammed at lacrosse—well, I can’t just see that, Dodd!”

“Of course, what it amounts to,” said Richard [23]after a moment’s consideration, “is that you don’t like sports.”

“I don’t like some kinds of sport,” corrected Ravenel gently. “Canoeing is sport, swimming is sport, walking is sport.”

“I ought to have said competitive sports,” amended Richard.

“Maybe, but when it comes to that I’m ready to take on any one at the things I like. I’ve got nothing against competition. I won the mile and two-mile races on the ice last winter and I’m no slouch at swimming if the distance isn’t too far.”

“But don’t you think it’s a fellow’s duty to—to do anything he can? I mean, for instance, if he can play baseball oughtn’t he to do it? Or football? Or—or anything else?”

“Duty to whom?” asked Ravenel.

“Why, to the School!”

“Oh, that! Old stuff, Dodd, old stuff!”

Richard looked plainly puzzled, even a little shocked. “But you have a duty, Ravenel,” he insisted. “In a way a fellow’s school is like—like his country.” Richard flushed a trifle. “I mean, you know, he believes in it and wants it to be the best and does all he can to help it be the best. At least, that’s the way I feel about it,” he ended a trifle embarrassedly.

“Your sentiments do you credit, Dodd,” said Ravenel gravely. “It’s certainly a fine thing to hear the youth of the country talk like that. I can remember when I used to say just that sort of thing. [24]Patriotism! School Spirit! Gee, I was chock-full of them! But they’ve gone out of style now. It’s every fellow for himself these days.”

Richard peered closely at his companion’s countenance before replying. Was there, perhaps, a hint of raillery behind the soberness of his eyes? Richard couldn’t be sure. “I don’t believe that,” he answered firmly. “I guess you don’t, either. I guess there are lots and lots of fellows here who think just as I do. I don’t believe that things like patriotism ever go out of style, Ravenel.”

“Omnia bona bonis,” murmured Ravenel. “Retain your innocence, sweet child. I would do naught to disillusion you.”

Richard hesitated, doubtful. Then he smiled. “I guess that means that you know I’m right, doesn’t it?” he asked.

The other shook his head, but he smiled gayly. “It means, Dodd, that your faith is too beautiful to destroy. By the way, what particular line of patriotic endeavor do you go in for?”

“How do you mean?” asked Richard.

“What sport. Football, baseball, tennis, soccer—”

“Oh! Not any, I’m afraid. You see, I’m too small. At high school they wouldn’t let me on any of the teams, not even basket ball. They say I’m not strong enough.”

“You? Fiddlesticks! I’ll bet you have more strength than I have. Still, you should worry. You’ll escape a lot of bother.”

[25]

Richard smiled ruefully. “The trouble is,” he said, “I’d like awfully well to play things. Of course, I couldn’t play football, I suppose, not even on a scrub team, but it seems to me I might try for baseball next spring. I’ll be sixteen then, and maybe I’ll grow some, too. I eat everything I can that makes a fellow grow.”

“Oh, you’ll grow all right,” comforted the other, “but I guess you’ll never be very large. Are your parents small?”

“My mother’s quite tall, but father’s smallish. He doesn’t look small, but he is. I guess I’m like him.”

“Well, for my part, I don’t see why you want to make teams, but every fellow to his taste. You go and talk with Mr. Tanner. He’s physical instructor, you know. Seen him yet? Well, you’ll have to in a day or two. He will go all over you with a stethoscope and dig you in the ribs and make you take long breaths and say ‘A-a-ah’ and lift yourself on your toes twenty times—or maybe it’s twelve—and feel very silly. You see him some time when he isn’t busy and tell him what you want to do. He’s a good old goat. I dare say he will pass you for something, if it’s only lacrosse.”

Richard’s face brightened. “Gee, I’d like lacrosse!” he exclaimed. “Do you think he would?”

Ravenel smiled pityingly. “Search me, Dodd,” he said. “He will let you do something, though, something to help the dear old school! By the way, do you swim?”

[26]

“Yes, pretty well. I like swimming, but folks say I oughtn’t to do much of it. It’s too taxing on the heart or something.”

“Folks talk a heap of nonsense,” grunted Ravenel. “Ever go in with your clothes on?”

“Why, no! What for?”

“It’s good practice,” replied Ravenel inscrutably. “You never can tell when you may have to, you know. No fellow really knows how to swim until he can do a half mile or so with everything on.”

“I should think it would be pretty hard,” said Richard.

“Not very. Of course, you can always kick off your shoes, if you don’t mind losing them. It’s hard to carry them along. You ought to try it some time.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” was the answer. There wasn’t much enthusiasm in the tone, however.

“Of course,” pursued Ravenel, who seemed quite in love with the subject, “when a fellow has a pretty good watch he rather hates to get it wet. Most watches leak after three or four minutes.”

“I guess water wouldn’t hurt mine much,” laughed Richard. “It only cost three dollars, and it’s always twenty minutes slow every night!”

“Oh, well, in that case—”

The canoe had floated to the south shore of the river where a rounded promontory thrust its well-wooded slope outward, creating a back-water in which reeds and rushes found a shallow much to their liking and where dragon flies hung lazily about in the sunlight. [27]Suddenly—so suddenly that Richard could only stare amazedly through one fleeting instant—Ravenel threw his body sidewise. Over went the blue canoe! Over went both occupants! Richard, falling into depths of greenish water, choking and thrashing, still grappled with his sense of utter amazement.

“Fetch the paddle, will you?”

Richard, coughing and sputtering, his head at length above water, looked about him. A few yards away floated the upturned canoe. Nearer, Ravenel was treading water, the canoe seat under one armpit and the cushion in one hand. Dazedly, Richard searched for the paddle and found it bobbing gently behind him. With a final sputter and choke he seized it and struggled toward the canoe. Swimming with rubber-soled shoes on his feet, with his arms fettered by the clinging sleeves of his coat, was no easy task. But a half dozen desperate strokes gave him a hold on the canoe, and from there he faced the calm, smiling Ravenel indignantly.

“You did that on purpose!” he gasped. “I saw you!”

“Of course I did,” was the untroubled reply. “Stick your paddle on the bottom and we’ll push her in.” He laid his own burdens on the hull and began to propel the unwieldy craft toward the rushes. “You said you wouldn’t mind it, you know,” he went on, “and there’s no time like the present. We’ll dry out in the sun in a little while. Put your feet down. You can walk in now.”

[29]

Richard obeyed and between them the canoe was pushed into shallow water. There, removing the seat, paddle and cushion to the stones, Ravenel directed and Richard helped and the canoe was lifted, drained and set down again right side up. When that was done Richard looked up to find his companion smiling quizzically at him. After a moment Richard grinned. Then Ravenel laughed. Then Richard laughed, although less mirthfully, and after that the entente cordiale was quite restored and they took off their outer clothing and laid the garments in the sun and stretched themselves on the little beach of small, waterworn stones.

“I don’t just see why you did it, though,” said Richard presently. Ravenel stopped flicking pebbles into the water and looked around.

“I did it for fun,” he answered tranquilly. “It was fun, wasn’t it now?”

Richard observed him doubtfully. “For you, maybe.”

“Rot! For both of us. Look here, Dodd, you’d never been dumped out of a canoe before, had you? No! Well, then, it was an experience, wasn’t it? Sure! And experiences are what every fellow’s after. Of course you were surprised, and maybe you were scared just for a second, but that didn’t last. After that you liked it. You liked getting your head out and thrashing around and spitting out the water and finding you were better than the river! You were proud of being able to keep afloat even if you did [30]have your clothes on! And now it’s all over, and you’ve done something new, and you can remember it, and talk about it, too, if you like. And you’re feeling great, just as I am, and you’re glad I did it. Am I right?”

“Well,” began Richard hesitantly.

“’Fess up! Tell the truth, Doddie!”

Richard grinned and then laughed. “I guess so,” he answered. And then: “Say it is hard to swim that way, isn’t it?” he went on. “It seems like your clothes weigh about a million pounds!”

Ravenel chuckled. “You bet! If you’ve got a long swim ahead the best thing to do is get everything off that you can—shoes, coat, trousers. It isn’t hard if you keep your head.”

“Yes,” agreed Richard, “I suppose it wouldn’t do to take your head off, too!”

Ravenel chuckled, “Why, the kid has a sense of humor!” he exclaimed delightedly. “Dodd, I’m glad I found you. By the way, you have another name, haven’t you?”

“Richard,” acknowledged that youth.

“Fellows call you ‘Dick’? I suppose.”

“Yes, sometimes.” Richard hesitated, and then went on with candor. “Generally they call me ‘Dicky,’ though,” he said.

“They would, of course.” Ravenel grinned. “I shall call you ‘Dick,’ though, according you proper respect.”

Richard nodded. “What’s your name?” he asked.

[31]

“James Hamilton Ravenel,” replied the other with great dignity.

“Oh!” Richard deliberated. “Well, James is a—a nice name.”

“It’s rotten,” returned James emphatically.

“I suppose they call you ‘Jim’?”

Ravenel shook his head.

“Ham, then?” laughed Richard.

Ravenel shook his head again. Richard looked puzzled. Ravenel sighed. “I guess I might as well tell you,” he grumbled. “You’d find out soon enough. They call me Jimsy.”

Richard laughed enjoyably, more, though, at Ravenel’s tone of disgust than at the oddity of the nickname. “Why, that’s jolly,” he declared. “Jimsy! Mind if I—” Richard stopped embarrassedly.

“No,” answered Ravenel. “Go ahead. I’m used to it. Even my folks call me ‘Jimsy.’ They ought to know better, too.” He appeared to become immersed in tragic reflection. Richard respected his silence and fell to tossing pebbles at the canoe paddle. Suddenly Ravenel spoke again, this time with no hint of tragedy. “Got over your homesickness?” he asked slyly.

Richard flushed slightly. “I wasn’t exactly homesick,” he denied.

“Weren’t you? Well, you looked mighty down-in-the-mouth,” responded the other dryly. “That’s why I asked you along. I’ve been homesick often enough, and it’s a punk feeling.”

“Maybe I was homesick,” acknowledged Richard. [32]“I was wishing I was back home, anyway. You see, I don’t know any one here, except like I told you, and—and everything’s quite different from what I expected.”

“Everything always is, if you ask me,” said Ravenel pessimistically. “Still, that’s half the fun, I guess. It would be rather tiresome if things always happened the way you expected them to. What is it that’s wrong here, Dick?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Richard vaguely. “I suppose I had funny, high-faluting notions about preparatory schools.”

“I know.” Ravenel chuckled. “You’d been reading books. Especially those English books. I did, too. I thought life was going to be one jolly round of—of heroic adventures. I was all set to rescue my deadly enemy from drowning and die in the infirmary with the principal and the faculty weeping by my bedside and planning a bronze tablet in my memory. But it hasn’t worked out that way at all. I can’t even scare up an enemy, dog-gone it! I haven’t even fought the school bully yet. There isn’t any! Think of a school without a bully, Dick! Gee, the fellows who write the school stories wouldn’t believe it! It’s positively fierce!”

Richard laughed, and then, becoming quickly serious, asked: “Do they—are you allowed to scrap here, Rav—Jimsy?”

“Scrap? Hm, well, if they don’t actually catch you doing it; flagrante bello, so to speak; if you can get [33]away with it. What’s doing?” Ravenel looked extremely interested.

“Nothing. I just wondered.” Richard’s gaze wandered to the river. After a moment he added: “It’s that fellow Lodge, the fellow I’m rooming with. He’s bigger than I am, and older and all that, but by gum, Jimsy, if he doesn’t quit nagging me I’m going to go for him some day!”

“That’s the spirit! Dick, I knew I was going to love you the first moment I saw you! But, say, hold on! Bert’s inches taller than you, and heavier, and you won’t have a chance. Take my advice and get him some other way. It won’t be any real satisfaction to have him beat you up, Dick!”

“I don’t know any other way.”

“Well, we’ll think of one. Bert’s a pig, and anything short of poison will answer. We’ll cook up some scheme, all right. By Jove, life is brighter already, Dick! Something tells me that you and I are going to have some whaling good times around here!” Ravenel kicked his shoeless feet in the air and whooped with glee. After that he said “Ouch!” with great expression and rubbed a shoulder blade where a stone had bored into it.

The clothing took longer to dry than they had counted on, and in the end they had to get back into very damp garments. But before that came about they had discussed many subjects; swimming, “snap” courses, photography, camping out, Doctor Heidler, the principal, and, according to Ravenel, “a beany old [34]scout”, the faculty in general, fishing, third class English, the comparative merits of five prominent universities, scouting, literature, postage stamps and pearls. The last subject was brought up by Richard, who had picked up a broken shell, and enlarged on by Ravenel, who knew a place up the river where there were millions of pearl mussels. He had never, he acknowledged, discovered a pearl in one of them yet, but they were the right sort and he was certain that if they undertook a systematic search they would find plenty. It was unanimously voted to go pearl fishing on Saturday afternoon.

Just before supper time they lifted the blue canoe back on its rack and climbed the hill on their way to Baldwin House, for—which was something of a coincidence in the estimation of each—they both resided in the “Apple Box,” Richard on the second floor and Ravenel on the third. It might be explained in passing that each of the four dormitory buildings had a nickname. McCrea, occupied solely by the seniors, was known as “Mickey,” Follen, which housed the fourth class, was called “The Nursery,” and Ellicot was “The Cot.” Richard eagerly accepted his new friend’s invitation to visit Number 33 that evening, and, much happier than he had been since he had arrived at school, went on to Number 12 and the unwelcome society of Bert Lodge.

He found Bert bathing his nose with almost passionate solicitude and muttering, “O-oh! Ugh!” whenever his wash-cloth came in contact with that abbreviated [35]feature. Some one, it developed in the course of a subsequent conversation that was rather more of a monologue, had rudely planted the sole of a shoe against Bert’s face with unpleasantly painful results. Richard, viewing the injury, reproved himself for the pleasure he felt, and offered some witch hazel. Bert refused the offer, scoffed at the remedy and went on bathing and groaning. A few minutes before supper time Richard left him to his agony, being by that time weary of Bert’s lamentations. From remarks that followed him into the corridor it was evident to Richard that his roommate considered him unfeeling, uncharitable and otherwise lacking in Christian attributes. Which fact didn’t prevent Richard from making a very excellent meal.

He discovered that Alan Linscott sat at a table at the far end of the big hall, one of twelve first class youths of unmistakably athletic build. Probably, thought Richard, they were all crew fellows. He was wrong there, however, for, since the football table was not to start until the next Monday, a good half of the dozen were gridiron toilers. Richard was, though, far less interested in Alan Linscott this evening than he had been previously, and his attention soon wandered away from the crew captain. The feeling of loneliness and friendlessness was gone and he was looking forward almost excitedly to the coming visit to Jimsy Ravenel and his roommate, one George Ferry, who, Jimsy had assured him, was a “top-holer.” Richard wasn’t quite certain what a “top-holer” was, [36]but it sounded reassuring. He ate a good deal of everything that was placed before him or that he could get his hands on, caring less than before that his table companions were too busy with each other to address him save to request the milk or the bread or some other viand that was momentarily out of their reach. Jimsy himself sat two tables distant, his back to Richard, but he had spied the latter on entering and had waved a greeting. There was a great deal of merriment at Jimsy’s table, for much of which Jimsy himself appeared to be accountable. Richard more than half wished that he sat there, too.

George Ferry proved to be rather different from Richard’s preconceived idea of him. It had seemed that the roommate of a fellow of Jimsy’s characteristics must be sprightly, fun-loving, debonair. George wasn’t anything of the sort. He was a rather tall, lanky boy of seventeen with good features and coppery-brown hair. He said very little on the occasion of that first visit of Richard’s, sitting propped up by cushions on the window seat, regarding the others gravely when he was not dipping into the book held open against his long legs. Richard didn’t feel quite comfortable, for he had the sensation of being examined minutely and, he thought, disapprovingly. Yet George Ferry could smile, and did it two or three times during the evening, and he had a manner of expressing himself that made Richard feel that his own remarks were horribly entangled. Richard gathered before his visit was ended that George was a good deal of a student—or, in school parlance, a “hound”—and that his only passion aside from books was lacrosse. He and Jimsy Ravenel came from neighboring towns in Delaware, which fact doubtless had first brought them together. After that it may have been a total dissimilarity that had fostered friendship. [38]George was in the second class and already nibbling at extra work which would, two years hence, make his entrance examinations for college easier. Jimsy poked a good deal of fun at him, which George received with a tolerant twitch of his lips which, usually, did for a smile. Richard departed uncertain whether he liked or disliked the fellow, and even more uncertain whether George Ferry liked or disliked him!

His surprise was all the greater, therefore, when Jimsy, hailing him from the steps of Hall the next forenoon, incidentally let fall in the course of conversation that George had congratulated him on his new acquaintance. “Said he was glad to see me pick up with a fellow of intelligence,” chuckled Jimsy. “I told him prolonged association with him had driven me to it! Old George seems to approve of you mightily. Got quite chatty after you went last night. Said you had ideas and ambition. Hinted that I hadn’t. Silly old idiot! Say, don’t forget Saturday.”

“Saturday? Oh, the pearls, you mean.”

“Yes. We’d better go in the morning. There’s a game in the afternoon.”

“I thought you didn’t care for football.”

“Me? Oh, I like to see them play it. I only meant that I didn’t care for it for little Jimsy. We’ll go right after chemistry; that’ll give us nearly three hours before the game begins.”

“What about dinner?” objected Richard.

“Take some lunch with us. It’s lots more fun. You leave that to me. I’ve got a drag at the kitchen. [39]They’ll give me a hand-out. I’ll see you before that, though. What you doing this afternoon?”

“I ought to study a bit,” said Richard.

“Good idea! So ought I. We’ll take our books and go up on the hill. I know a corking place. I’ll stop in at your room at three-thirty.”

The place was “corking” without any doubt. From it they could look for miles up and down the river valley and across to Annapolis and, beyond, far down the bay. But there was very little studying done. Jimsy used the two books he had brought along to pillow his head on, and whenever Richard started to read his companion’s voice broke in on him. Before long he gave up all attempt. After an hour or so Jimsy got restless and so they deposited their books in the cleft of a tree and explored the hill that ascended behind them. They made no momentous discoveries, but they had a good deal of fun, and afterwards they spent a good twenty minutes locating the books, finding them at last a long way from where they had thought them, and swung down the hill, across an old tobacco field, in the yellow glare of a setting sun and so reached the red clay road a quarter of a mile from school.

That was the beginning of a companionship from which Richard derived a great deal of happiness. He was making other friends but slowly, and without Jimsy he would have been very lonely at North Bank during that first fortnight. At first he thought that Jimsy had been like himself, at a loss for companionship, [40]arguing very modestly that otherwise Jimsy would not have struck up the friendship. But he soon discovered that this was far from the fact. The whole school knew Jimsy Ravenel and liked him. And Jimsy knew the whole school and liked them. But Jimsy had few close friends, preferring his own society to that of most of his acquaintances. As he explained to Richard one day, he could have a heap more fun by himself than he could with other fellows who didn’t like the things he liked. Just because he didn’t seek the society of others, most fellows, even some of those much older, felt flattered when Jimsy bothered himself with them. That Jimsy was so astoundingly friendly with Richard soon had the effect of placing the latter in a position of some importance, and toward the middle of his second week at school he found that he was accumulating quite a list of speaking acquaintances. Some of these would have become closer friends had Richard encouraged it. That he didn’t was because, after those first days of solitude, it didn’t occur to him that any one really wanted to know him, and because, too, his friendship with Jimsy supplied all his needs.

Knowing Jimsy was not, he soon discovered, conducive to overwork as regarded studies. Jimsy, in spite of his fine phrase about studying very, very hard, shirked lamentably. Quick wits and an excellent memory, however, stood him in good stead and he was seldom in trouble. But Richard hadn’t yet learned the gentle art of faking his way through a [41]recitation. In fact he never did learn it, which was just as well. Consequently a certain amount of attention to his books was compulsory, and to give that attention when Jimsy was forever dragging him away on some exploit was most difficult. Not that Richard’s six courses were proving hard, for there were times when he suspected that by tutoring the least bit during the summer just past he might have entered the second class instead of the third. With the exception of mathematics, which had always been a bugaboo to him, and English, which was far more advanced than he had expected, none of his studies troubled him. He liked his instructors and so far had maintained friendly relations with them all; and he very much wanted those relations to continue. That they would continue he very much doubted, however, unless he gave less time to the pursuit of pleasure with Jimsy!

The search for pearls was fruitless, but not for lack of effort. They accumulated nearly a half bushel of the bivalves and opened them without discovering treasure. Jimsy called the things mussels, but to Richard they looked more like clams. Whichever they were, they certainly failed of thrills, although just at first both boys were hopefully excited. After they had finished they sought a secluded spot and went in bathing. This was a necessary as well as a pleasurable act. Even after they were out again and had dried themselves and donned their clothes Jimsy declared that he still smelled “mussely.” However, that didn’t take the edge off his appetite, and they dined enjoyably, [42]albeit scantily, on the fare he had brought along.

“Grandfather used to say,” remarked Jimsy reminiscently and a trifle sadly as he picked a crumb from his knee and consigned it carefully to his mouth, “that you ought always to get up from the table still feeling hungry. I reckon grandfather would be mightily pleased if he were here now!”

Richard pointed out that, as they had nearly three miles to walk before they were back at school, the fact that they had not over-eaten had its advantage. Jimsy agreed rather dubiously and replied that he always walked better on a full stomach. They found some late raspberries presently and ate a few, but they didn’t help much. After that, with one accord they set their faces homeward. Jimsy regretting that they had not traveled by canoe since, with the tide in their favor, they could have reached home speedily and at the cost of no exertion. On the way back Jimsy covered half again as much ground as his companion did, for he continually made side excursions to get the view from a hill, to examine a strangely twisted tree trunk, to pick curiously at a ledge with the point of his knife, to pick up an oddly shaped stone or, as on one occasion, to disappear for quite ten minutes in the forest while Richard swung his legs from the top rail of a fence and awaited his return. On that occasion he explained a bit breathlessly that he had pursued a woodchuck which, contrary to his hope and expectation, had not revealed his burrow but had headed straight for the next county. When Richard [43]asked what he would have done with the burrow had he found it, Jimsy didn’t know. He had, however, brought back an oak gall of surprising size, and that appeared to comfort him. Jimsy always got back to school after his wanderings with his pockets filled with a variety of such trophies, but Richard couldn’t discover that he ever kept any of them.

They eked out their meager lunch with biscuits in Jimsy’s room after their return and then hied them to the football field, arriving there just in time to see Norwell, the North Bank left guard, kick off to Mt. Saint Anne’s. It was the second game of the schedule, for the Light Blue had triumphed over Bayside the week before to the one-sided score of 19 to 0. To-day, however, Mt. Saint Anne’s was a different sort of opponent and the two boys saw and enjoyed a close and thrilling contest that was only won in the last quarter—and close to the end of that—when the North Bank left half, Benson, got away at the enemy’s forty-three yards and tore through a broken field for a touchdown. Captain Trumbull missed the goal and the final score was 6 to 0. Richard, his patriotism rampant, cheered and shouted all through the contest, to the amusement of Jimsy who only contributed to the acclaim when the cheer leaders insisted that “every fellow get into this!” Of course Jimsy did get to his feet and yell a little when Jerry Benson tore off that sprint for the winning touchdown, but he seemed rather ashamed of it afterwards and even had difficulty in recalling it when Richard laughingly reminded him [44]of it. Richard was beginning to suspect that Jimsy’s attitudes on some subjects were only poses!

In fact, George Ferry as much as said so one evening some few days later. The talk in Number 33 Baldwin had worked around to the characteristics of different schools, a subject that Richard knew little about, and which Jimsy discussed quite knowingly. Richard asked what North Bank’s chief characteristic was and Jimsy promptly replied: “Seriousness.” George smiled.

“As exemplified by one Jimsy Ravenel,” he murmured.

“Me?” exclaimed Jimsy. “I’m pretty nearly the only chap here who doesn’t look and act like he had the world on his shoulders! Honest, George, I sometimes wonder what the place is coming to! Why, I get up in the morning feeling fairly chipper. The old world looks right good to me. Then I go to prayers and the change begins. After breakfast I’m thinking about my great-great-uncle who was hung for sheep stealing in Ireland. By noon I’m wondering whether to jump into the river or stick it out another day. By night I’m so filled with gloom that even suicide looks too cheerful for me!”

The idea of Jimsy being filled with gloom seemed to amuse his roommate, for he positively chuckled. Richard laughed aloud. Jimsy viewed them both disapprovingly. “Why,” he continued, “just as a sample, you fellows. Yesterday I had to go to the library to look up something—I’ve forgotten what it was—I [45]didn’t find it, anyway, so it doesn’t matter. Well, there was a kid, a freshie he was, sitting over by a window with a big book spread on his knees. He looked almost cheerful and so I wondered what the book was. I sneaked up behind him and looked over his shoulder, and what do you reckon? Why, he was looking at the pictures in Dante’s Inferno! You know, those awful things by Doré! Can you beat that? He was having an awfully good time and I went out on tiptoe so as not to disturb him.”

“In my opinion,” said George after a proper appreciation of his friend’s tale, “North Bank’s too small to have any character or atmosphere. We’ve only got about two hundred fellows here. It takes more than that to create a distinct quality, to give a school what you might call individuality. Of course Jimsy’s merely fooling when he says we’re serious, but I do think that we’re earnest. I think we take our duties earnestly, realize that we’re here, first of all, to learn. Some of the schools we’ve spoken of are not much more than—than playgrounds. Fellows go to them with the idea of having a good time for four years. Study is just incidental. Sports are fostered, even nursed, and as long as the school turns out a winning football team or baseball team or track team each year nothing else much matters. You know of schools like that, Jimsy.”

“I’ve heard of them,” sighed Jimsy, “but they sound too good to be true! We’re not like that here, are we, Georgie?”

[46]

“No,” agreed George, smiling, “we aren’t. Although, goodness knows, we go in pretty heavily for sports considering the size of the place. Football, baseball, rowing, lacrosse, soccer, basket ball, tennis—even track games of a sort! Doesn’t sound as if we were so very serious, Jimsy!”

“Oh, doesn’t it? Mean to tell me that the fellows get any fun out of those things? Not a bit of it! It’s decided that we ought to have a football team to beat Cumbridge, so they round up a lot of fellows who look like they could stand the wear and go to it. They feed them raw meat and drill them two hours a day. Do you think they enjoy it? Why, say, if some one should laugh at training table he’d be drawn-and-quartered!”

“Oh, piffle, Jimsy! Don’t you think I have a good time playing lacrosse?”

“You? Oh, you’d make believe you liked it if you were playing cricket. You’re a stoic! No, you’re an Indian fakir, like one of those guys who put their feet in their laps and sit and grin for thirty years just to prove they’re happy!”

“I don’t believe,” ventured Richard, “that many fellows play football who don’t want to.”

“Nor I,” said George. “Fact is, only about a third who want to play get a chance. Same way with other sports; baseball, rowing, lacrosse.”

Jimsy sniffed disdainfully and Richard looked thoughtful. “You don’t think then, Ferry, that patriotism is out of fashion here?” asked the latter.

[47]

“Patriotism? Oh, you mean school patriotism! Of course it isn’t! That’s some more of Jimsy’s guff, I suppose. You mustn’t take our young friend too seriously, Dodd. He doesn’t always mean what he says nor jump the way he looks. Jimsy likes to talk right well.”

“There’s not a nickel’s worth of patriotism in North Bank,” declared Jimsy stoutly. “It’s the most indifferent school I ever heard of. All any one here ever thinks of is getting his bean full of useless Latin and algebra and such rot. We have a lot of poor chaps who are—are—what’s the silly word?—intimidated into playing football and rowing in the boat and all that, but if they weren’t scared to death they’d be back in their rooms cramming their heads full of this stuff they call knowledge and not giving a hang whether the dear old school was licked at soccer or baseball or anything else. Patriotism! Patrio-piffle!”

George laughed softly. “You talk a lot of foolishness, Jimsy, don’t you?” he asked kindly. “Do you know, if you’d take half the trouble studying your lessons that you take evolving these crazy theories of yours, and arguing them, you’d be an Honor Man?” George turned to Richard. “I’m not at all sure,” he went on, “that our little Jimsy is good company for you, Dodd. He won’t be if you listen to all his nonsense. He says his great-uncle, or some one, was hung in Ireland and I believe it. That is, I believe he’s got a lot of Irish in him, for he’s always ‘agin the government.’”

[48]

“Not me,” denied Jimsy, grinning. “I’m agin the governed. Anyway, I hope I have got some Irish in me, for the Irish are the only folks who’d rather have a good laugh than a cry. What this school wants to do is get more Irish here. It wants to wake up, be-dad! And the Irish are the folks to do it. The Irish,” ended Jimsy, laughing, “can wake anything up.”

“Your idea then,” said George, “is that the school is dead and needs an Irish wake. Jimsy, I’d miss you horribly if the faculty should decide to get along without you. For my sake, do a little Latin to-night.”

On an afternoon of a lazy, languorous day about a week after the last recorded events Dick and Jimsy reclined on the bank above the river near the western confines of the school. (No one called the former boy Richard, and I don’t see why we should. Jimsy called him Dick, George Ferry and a number of random acquaintances called him Dodd and Bertram Lodge called him whatever came into his mind.) It was about four o’clock and very warm in the sun. The Severn was calm and dazzling to the eyes if one gazed too long on its burnished surface. Behind the two, casting shadows athwart their faces, the trees edging the grove stood, sun-flecked and hushed, peering down the steep descent as if longing to lave their thirsty roots in the cool water. Late October may be very warm in Maryland, and nearly a month without rain had parched the sod and caused the leaves to hang limp and listless. Some of that same listlessness had, it seemed, pervaded the bodies of the two boys. Jimsy, who held a number of long black horsehairs, collected painstakingly from the stable premises, had long since ceased tying and looping them and, with his hat brim pulled over his eyes, was staring silently at a bank of fleecy white clouds in the south. Dick, supported on one elbow, gazed [50]down toward the boathouse, some two hundred yards distant. A mocking bird was practicing a few notes in the grove behind them and a troop of sparrows were bustling about the grassy slope below, noisy and busy in the pursuit of grasshoppers. Suddenly Dick propped himself higher on one hand and gazed more intently.

Down there on the float the long slim nose of the second crew shell came into sight through the boathouse door. Dick called Jimsy’s attention and the latter turned slightly and watched, too. Eight stalwart, white-clad forms moved under it, slowly, carefully, and from the distance the thing took on the appearance of some strange insect. In the stillness the coxswain’s voice came to them clearly. “Hold her! Easy, now! In she goes!” The hearers paused at the edge of the float, the long shell turned over and came slowly down to rest on the still water. The crew returned indoors for the sweeps. The cox, slim, quick-moving, fitted the rudder into place and looped the lines carefully across the seat. Then, strapping the small blue megaphone against his mouth, he took his place. One by one the oarsmen followed, bending to lace their feet in the shoes on the stretchers. A short, wide-shouldered little man in a faded green sweater appeared, followed by four substitutes bearing a scull. The larger boat moved away from the float and waited, its sharp nose turned upstream, a blue-tipped oar dipping occasionally, now to port, now to starboard, to hold her there. The green-sweatered man seated himself [51]in his single scull and paddled away, too. Then appeared the other shell, the first crew bearing it down the incline. They, too, were boated and moved into the stream. In the scull, Coach Carmichael—“Mike” behind his back and out of hearing—fastened a small megaphone across his mouth and called through it.

“All right, First! Take her up! Keep that stroke long!”

The first crew coxswain barked orders. “Touch her, Seven! Steady! Ready all! Forward! Row!—Row!—Row!—Row!—” His voice dwindled. First was moving easily, rhythmically upstream, past where the two boys sat. Dick, looking down, could see Alan Linscott at Number Two. The second crew followed, half a dozen short lengths behind, with the coach hanging on their port, his bare, muscular arms making no work of their task. North Bank owned no launch for coaching purposes, although in spring one was hired over in Annapolis. During fall practice the coach followed in a scull. The second, a little more ragged than the first, passed upstream, Mr. Carmichael’s voice occasionally floating up to the watchers.

“Get together, Second! Finish out, finish out!”

After the crews had disappeared around the first bend Dick’s thoughts still remained on Alan Linscott. Alan had taken no notice of his overture. He had neither called on Dick nor answered his note. Dick didn’t mind so much now, but it did seem strange that Alan should be so discourteous. Jimsy declared that the crew captain was a fine fellow; none better, said Jimsy. [52]Jimsy, of course, had not been told of the unanswered note. Dick was too proud to tell him about that. Dick wondered whether that note had failed to reach Alan. It didn’t seem, though, that it could have. That fellow he had left it with, Whittier, wouldn’t have failed to deliver it. Whittier had remembered Dick and always spoke to him when they met, and Dick held a high opinion of him. No, the more plausible explanation was that Alan, being a pretty busy fellow, had just forgotten all about it. Dick preferred that theory to one less flattering either to himself or Alan. Alan had been a hero to Dick for several years past, and one dislikes to discover faults in one’s heroes. Occasionally he entertained the idea of calling again at Number 6 McCrea, but he knew very well that he couldn’t do it. His mother had asked him long since in one of her letters if Alan was looking after him, and Dick had so far avoided an answer. His mother had counted so much on Alan’s friendship and protection for Dick that he hated to tell her the truth.

Well, he could do without Alan well enough, he reflected. There was Jimsy, a most satisfying chum, and there might be others if he cared to cultivate them. He had plenty of interests now, had jostled down into his place in the school and was having a good time. Perhaps he wasn’t getting along in classes quite as well as he should, but he meant to do more studying from now on. He had, he reflected, made that promise to himself several times already, and so far he had failed to keep it. Well, the weather was so hot just now [53]that a fellow didn’t have much ambition. Just as soon as it got a bit cooler—

“Let’s get on with these,” said Jimsy, sitting up with sudden and unexpected animation. “Hold this, Dick, while I get a loop on here.”

They were entering a career of crime, having decided to become poachers and snare rabbits. The fact that the land thereabouts was not posted and that no one cared a bit whether rabbits were snared on it might have detracted somewhat from their pleasure had they considered it. But they didn’t. They simply disregarded it by mutual understanding. They were poachers, and every one knew that poaching was beautifully illegal and punishable by long terms of imprisonment. They had embarked on their criminal career, you see, with eyes wide open to its risks and possible penalties, and they were desperately determined to pursue lawlessness to its triumphant or bitter end, or, as Jimsy simply phrased it: “We’ll get a rabbit or something, I’ll bet—if it’s only a skunk!”

Jimsy, searching the library shelves for information regarding a person named Gladstone, who, it appeared, had been of some prominence in British politics at one time, had come across a volume entitled Every Boy’s Handbook of Outdoor Sports. With regret I am obliged to state that Jimsy forgot Mr. Gladstone immediately and took refuge in a corner with the Handbook on his knees. It really wasn’t altogether his fault, for Outdoor Sports had no business in the section of the library marked “Biography: A—J.” Jimsy read [54]interestedly of fishing, of falconry, of coursing, of otter hunting, of ferreting, of snaring and trapping and of many other things. But when it came to putting this newly acquired knowledge to practical use he was at once faced with difficulties. Falconry required the services of a hawk, and he doubted his ability to capture one, to say nothing of training it afterwards. Of course, he could fish, but not for the strange fishes referred to in the book—excepting trout, and Jimsy had his own ideas on trout fishing. Coursing necessitated dogs, and so did otter hunting—to say nothing of otters. In the end rabbit snaring promised the only field for his skill, and he set about a thorough and exhaustive study of the poacher’s art. Several materials were well spoken of for use in making nooses, but horsehair seemed to Jimsy the more sporting, and so he had laboriously collected a large number of long black strands that had at some recent date adorned the tails of the two horses which conveyed the carriage between school and station. Collecting had been done under difficulties, for Cicero, the black coachman and general factotum, viewed with suspicion all trespassers on his domain. But Jimsy had succeeded, as Jimsy had a way of doing, and now it only remained to tie clever knots and running nooses, and subsequently, with amazing cunning, to arrange these athwart the rabbit “runs.”

In a measure Dick had been pessimistic. He had, first of all, expressed doubt as to the presence in the vicinity of rabbits. He had then questioned Jimsy’s [55]ability to recognize a “run” if he found it, and had flatly declared that, while English rabbits might confine themselves to certain paths, American rabbits, in his belief, were far too independent to do anything of the sort. But Jimsy was not the sort to be easily discouraged. When Jimsy once believed in anything, that thing simply was until—well, until Jimsy chose to abandon it. Just now he believed implicitly in rabbits, rabbit “runs,” horsehair snares and poaching. Just as he had a fortnight ago believed in pearl-bearing mussels, and, more recently, in his ability to manufacture writing ink from green walnuts.

“Hold tighter,” directed Jimsy. “Pull it toward you. That’s better.” He frowned in concentration as his fingers busied themselves with intricate knottings.

“What I don’t see,” said Dick, “is how we’re to hang these loops at just the right height. What’s to keep Mr. Rabbit from walking under them or putting his foot in them instead of his head?”

“The book tells you,” responded Jimsy. “That part’s all right. What’s bothering me is how we’ll get the rabbits cooked after we’ve caught them. We can’t take them to the kitchen because some one would ask questions. I suppose we could cook them in the woods—”

“Do we have to eat them?” asked Dick alarmedly.

“Sure! Why not?”

“I don’t think I like rabbit. At least, I’ve never eaten any.”

“Time you did then,” said Jimsy firmly. “They’re [56]bully. Just like chicken. And, say, we can sell the skins. I’ve got a paper in my room that has dozens of advertisements from folks who buy all sorts of furs.”

“Are rabbit skins fur?” asked Dick ignorantly.

“Of course! Why, they make all sorts of things out of rabbit skins: felt hats, coats—er—muffs, all sorts of things. I guess they fetch good prices, too.”

“Well, if we can get money for the skins maybe we don’t have to eat them,” said Dick hopefully. “I mean eat the rabbits,” he added explanatorily.

Jimsy shook his head. “No use wasting them,” he replied reprovingly. “We’ll get a skillet and—and some things and have some bully feeds, Dick. We’ll have to cure the skins, though—pelts, I mean. You use salt and pepper, don’t you? Or is it alum? I’ll send off and get a book that tells about it. There, that’s the last. Put your hand in that and pull it toward you. Not too hard! How’s that? Guess if you were a rabbit you’d be in a fix, eh? Say, I want you to know those things are strong. Look here. Well, that was a weak one.” Jimsy viewed the broken noose philosophically. “Besides, I pulled a heap stronger than any rabbit could. Shall we set these now?”

Dick shook his head. “It’s too hot, Jimsy. Let’s wait until to-morrow.”

“It’s getting cooler, though,” responded the other. But he didn’t insist on immediate action, and Dick was relieved. It was getting cooler, but the thought [57]of the breathless heat of the woods held no appeal for him. He preferred to lie there and watch the river. Several canoes had followed the shells into the water and four crew candidates for whom there was no room in the boats were pulling lustily upstream in pair-oars.

“I wish,” murmured Dick, “that I had a canoe.”

Jimsy nodded, bundling his snares up and slipping them into a pocket. “So do I. Too hot to-day, though, for the river. Look at those fellows over there. Just dawdling. There’s a lot more air up here.”

Dick’s thoughts traveled up the river in the wake of the crews. “Jimsy, do you have to be pretty big and strong to row?” he asked.

“Row? No, not if you have a light boat. I’d rather paddle a canoe any day, though. You get somewhere in a canoe.”

“I meant row on the crew,” said Dick.

“Oh! Why, yes, of course. They used to have a junior crew here, I’ve heard. Four-oared, you know. But it died out. Only the big chaps like your friend Linscott can make the eights. You might get a job as ballast, though,” Jimsy chuckled.

After a long silence Dick spoke again, a bit wistfully. “I wish I could do something,” he said.

Jimsy emerged from a deep reverie. “Eh?” he asked. “Let’s set the snares, then.”

“I meant something like row or play football or baseball,” said Dick. “I’d like to make a team, Jimsy. [58]Of course, I never could, I’m so small, but I’d like to awfully.”

“Well,” responded Jimsy reflectively. “There’s tennis. And second team basket ball. And you might try lacrosse. Can you run?”

“Pretty well. But I guess I wouldn’t stand much show. I guess most of the fellows are pretty big, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know. Old George isn’t a mammoth. Still, he’s one of the smaller ones. Ever play basket ball?”

Dick shook his head. “Not really. I’ve fooled around a little in the school gym at home, but they wouldn’t let me try for a team; not even the Midgets. I don’t think I’d care so much for basket ball, though. I’d rather do something out of doors. Maybe I’ll grow some this winter and have a chance at baseball.”

Jimsy shook his head wonderingly. “You’re a funny little tike, Dick,” he said. “I don’t see why you want to look for trouble. It comes easy enough. You get on one of the teams and you’ll wish you hadn’t, son. They work you to death, and you have no time for anything; not even for studying. That,” added Jimsy, plainly as an afterthought, “is why I don’t go in for anything.”

Dick smiled. “Well, maybe next year I can do something. I wonder why I was made such a little runt, Jimsy.”

“Oh, you’re all right,” Jimsy consoled. “I’d rather be small and have right good sense, like you, than be [59]a big bull of a fellow like Joe Whittier and no use except to pull an oar.”

“I like Whittier,” replied Dick. “And I don’t think he’s so very big, Jimsy.”

“Oh, yes, he’s all right. I like him, too. Every one does. But he’s just a mass of muscle. Good-hearted, but—but no refinement, Dick.”

Dick sighed. “I wish I were like that, Jimsy.”

October became November. Rains came copiously and east winds blew low-lying clouds across the bay and brought autumn at last. The woods were thinning fast. Maples were flaming and walnuts were dropping their fruit. In warm corners the roses still bloomed sparsely, however, and along the curving path that fronted the dormitories white and orange and pale purple chrysanthemums nodded bravely. Fall baseball came to an end, the crews boated in sweaters and only the football players and a few lacrosse enthusiasts scorned the chill. Ten days of unvaried cloudiness hinted strongly of winter. Yet when the Saturday of the St. John’s game arrived the sun arrived, too, and summer seemed for the while to be back once more. The game was played in Annapolis and all North Bank attended, floating down the river in boat or canoe, journeying by railway or, in fewer cases, putting the distance behind on foot.

North Bank had had varied fortunes so far. A good start had been followed by an early slump during which she had been defeated by West Shore and tied by Fernwood. A week ago she had recovered sufficiently to win a ragged game from Severn, 10 to 10. To-day she hoped for victory but expected defeat, for St. John’s College had been playing excellent football all season [61]and was heavier both in the line and behind it than the Light Blue. Of course Dick and Jimsy went, and George Ferry went with them, marching along the rutted clay road to the little box of a station in the company of nearly a hundred others and subsequently hanging to as much brass railing as they could get their hands on and dangling precariously all the way across the river and into Annapolis. It was a noisy ride, for North Bank always became intensely vocal when it went forth to do battle, and from the station to the field the marching horde of invaders, blue banners aloft, informed the residents of College Avenue that they would

Because the Navy team was playing away from home that afternoon, Annapolis turned out in numbers for the North Bank game and the gridiron was surrounded five and six deep. St. John’s doesn’t supply seats, save for the contestants and a few honored guests, and Dick soon realized that his chance of seeing much of the game was very slim. But Jimsy had reached a similar conclusion. “It’s all right for a tall gawk like you, George,” said Jimsy as they strove to see between the heads and shoulders of the earlier arrivals, “but Dick and I aren’t giraffes. We’re going to try for front row position. Want to come?” George was satisfied to remain where he was. “All right,” said Jimsy. “Wait for us up by that goal, afterwards, will you? [62]And, say, got an old letter in your pocket? Or an envelope? I’ll give it back to you.” George found the desired article and Jimsy beckoned to Dick. “Come on,” he whispered. “We can do better than this.”

Jimsy led the way back toward the corner of the field where the throng was less dense, Dick following him doubtfully. There Jimsy held his letter in plain sight and began to press authoritatively forward “Beg pardon,” he said, “but I’ve got to get through.” The spectators shuffled and made way and Jimsy and Dick squirmed toward the front. A group of midshipmen aided good-naturedly. “Gangway!” they bawled. “A reprieve! Stop the execution! Gangway there!” Jimsy emerged inside the enclosure, and Dick, clinging like a limpet, emerged likewise. Still brandishing the letter, Jimsy turned and made for the North Bank bench. Once out of sight of those who had let him through, however, he thrust the letter into a pocket. Dick felt very uncomfortable as he followed along the edge of the throng. Some North Bank boy saw Jimsy and set up a gleeful howl of “Jimsy! Come out of there! Oh, you faker!” The howl became general, for hereabouts North Bank held the field solidly. Jimsy thrust up an imperious hand and looked stern and haughty, but that only had the effect of calling forth more laughter and cheers. “Hep! Hep! Hep!” chanted the audience in time to Jimsy’s dignified pace. Dick felt his face getting red and wished he hadn’t come. Then, however, they had reached the bench. The first and second squads were on the field, at practice, [63]and only a few substitutes, the managers, the trainer and Coach Thorne were there. Jimsy seated himself beside Johnny Pell, the team manager, and fell into whispered converse. Dick, not knowing what else to do, edged behind the bench and hoped that his ears weren’t as red as they felt. Then, after a moment of evidently important conference, Jimsy nodded to Dick and winked. Dick approached along the back of the bench to meet the grinning countenance of Pell.

“Sit down on the ground at the end of the bench,” said the manager, sotto voce, “and keep out of sight. You, too, Jimsy. You’ve got more cheek than a cage of monkeys. If Thorne sees you, though, he will probably throw you out.”

But the coach was intent on the players and Jimsy and Dick settled themselves on the worn grass, occupying as little space as possible and trying to make themselves invisible, while from behind them came good-naturedly sarcastic comments from the less fortunate spectators. “Slick work, Jimsy! I’ll say so!” “Oh, you fakers!” “Get up out of there, Jimsy! You’ll catch cold!” “Got room for me, Johnny? Be a good fellow, will you?” “Say, Jimsy! Let me sit in your lap?”

But Jimsy was deaf to all this. “Awfully low, common lot,” he confided to Dick. “Bourgeoisie, you know, very.”

“How did you do it?” whispered Dick.

Jimsy flecked an imaginary speck from his sleeve [64]and smiled in a careless and very superior manner. “Influence,” he replied, “merely influence.”

Then the players trooped back, blankets were donned and Captain Trumbull followed the referee out to the middle of the field and shook hands with the rival leader. A coin spun in the air, Trumbull walked back, Coach Thorne said: “All right, fellows. Play hard. Let’s go!” and blankets were off again. Then, presently, a whistle piped and the game was on.

North Bank found hard sledding from the first. St. John’s took the ball on the kick-off and ran it back almost to the center of the field. Plunges at the center of the Light Blue line produced amazing gains, and, almost before the contest was well under way, North Bank’s supporters were desperately chanting: “Hold ’em! Hold ’em! Hold ’em!” The Light Blue did hold them that time and St. John’s was forced to try a field goal. North Bank strove desperately to block the kick, but the strong enemy line held like a wall. Fortune, though, had not yet utterly deserted the visitors, and the ball missed the goal, albeit by inches only.

North Bank tried to rush from her twenty yards, but, after two failures to advance, punted well into her opponent’s territory. St. John’s again began her journey, and, although she moved more slowly now, she moved no less certainly, and just before the first quarter was up she piled her back field through the right side of the light blue line for the first score. A goal followed. The second twelve-minute period was a repetition of [65]the first inasmuch as St. John’s again started from the kick-off and took the ball to within striking distance of the opponent’s goal, was again halted, lost possession on a forward pass, and, later, pulling down Trumbull’s long punt, marched up the field to a second touchdown.

North Bank was no match for the enemy in any department of the game save, possibly, kicking. Trumbull and Gray both punted farther and with more science than did St. John’s experts, and could the North Bank ends have seconded their efforts there might have been a slightly different tale to tell. But neither Dimond nor Clary nor the substitutes who succeeded them late in the contest—Bert Lodge was one of these—were fast and clever enough to get the catcher, and the long punts were almost invariably run back for good distances. The first half ended with the score 14 to 0, and Dick, among many others, was disappointed and sad. Dick was an ardent football “fan,” had sat through every game of the schedule, rain or fair, secretly considered every member of the team a hero and would have given almost anything he possessed or hoped to possess to have had a speaking acquaintance with Captain Trumbull or Jerry Benson or Gurney James. Even sitting so close to them had thrilled him wonderfully after the first moments of frightened embarrassment, and he wondered if it would be near enough to the truth to write home that he had sat on the bench with the players! To have his heroes meet with adversity always filled Dick with dismay and sorrow, and to-day his heart was leaden when the blue-stockinged [66]warriors came, panting, dirty, streaked with perspiration, in many cases even disfigured, back to the bench for their blankets ere they walked over to the gymnasium. Rather to his surprise, no countenance showed any such grief as he was experiencing. Some faces were still lighted with the ecstasy of battle, some were smiling, a few were tense and grave; but there was neither discouragement nor downheartedness visible. Dick took hope. There was another twenty-four minutes, he whispered to himself, and although what had gone seemed to promise little encouragement it might be that Coach Thorne had something up his sleeve, that the team hadn’t found itself yet, that—that—well, sometimes things happened in football that were scarcely short of miracles. Dick hoped hard for a miracle.

Behind him the ranks of North Bank supporters were singing lustily. He turned and studied the neighboring faces. They didn’t look much as if they were saddened by impending defeat. Smiles, laughter, pranks were mingled with the singing. Two fellows he knew, seated cross-legged in the front line, were playing stick-knife, just as if, thought Dick a bit resentfully, defeat for North Bank was a thing of no account. He turned to Jimsy, not for sympathy, for Jimsy was not one to be downcast by athletic misfortunes, but in hope of a diversion from his gloomy contemplations. Jimsy was smiling and untroubled. “There’s going to be fun in the next half,” he confided.

[67]

“You mean you think we’ll do better?” asked Dick eagerly.

“We? Oh, the team! No, I guess we’ll do a lot worse. We aren’t in the same class with these fellows this year. They play football. No, what I meant was the dust. See how those bare spots out there are drying out in the sun? Well, you wait until the players begin kicking that dirt up again. Dust! Oh, boy! I’ve seen it before. Watch the girls over on the other side scatter when that nice red dust begins to blow their way.” Jimsy laughed joyously. “Lucky we’re on this side, eh?”

Dick said it was, but he secretly thought that Jimsy’s mind occupied itself with extremely trivial affairs. Cheering broke forth all about the field and the two teams jogged in simultaneously. Once more Dick thrilled as he realized his proximity to those twenty-odd heroes in blue. He stared at Trumbull and Benson and James and wondered what they were thinking behind their cheerfully inscrutable faces. Wondered, too, if Jerry Benson knew that the deep gash along one cheek was bleeding from under the plaster. To Dick it seemed a wonderful and much-to-be-desired thing, that gash. He guessed that Benson, in spite of his nonchalance and sober smile, was secretly pretty proud of it. Dick knew that he would have been. The players who were to start the third quarter bent above the bench for Coach Thorne’s last reminder and then, Trumbull leading, spread over the end of the field. The cheering, which had momentarily lapsed into individual [68]efforts, began again, the leaders casting aside their big megaphones and gesturing impellently. “Ray, ray, ray! Ray, ray, ray!” thundered the chorus. “North Bank! North Bank! Ray, hooray! Ho-o-o-rah! Ho-o-o-rah! North Bank! North Bank! North Ba-a-ank!”

Dick gripped his hands tightly between his knees and watched. His throat felt a little choky, just as it always did when that long cheer crashed out, and his heart was pounding and, as it felt, missing an occasional beat. Somewhere at the back of his mind he was saying an unconscious prayer for victory. Jimsy was watching the bare expanses of red loam that showed here and there over the trampled field, watching expectantly, gloatingly. Perhaps Jimsy, too, was praying. If he was, it was a prayer that the breeze might increase.

North Bank took the kick-off, and Nagle, the quarter back, evaded the enemy ends and reeled off nearly twenty yards before he was downed. North Bank shouted joyously. Then followed three tries at the St. John’s tackles and ends that netted but six yards, and Trumbull punted. For once the kick was short and carried only to the enemy’s thirty-eight yards, where it bounded out. St. John’s pierced the light blue line twice for good gains and made her distance outside Hickson. A plunge at center lost her a foot or more, and then she heaved a long forward pass that was gathered in by a waiting end far down the field. But an off-side penalty brought the ball back and a second [69]heave grounded. A punt to North Bank’s fifteen yards was caught by Benson and that sturdy runner raced back to the twenty-three before he was laid low. Then began North Bank’s one glorious effort, and Dick, a small, strained-faced, wide-eyed youth, felt his heart sing and for many breathless minutes believed that the longed-for miracle had come to pass.

It was a fake kick on third down that started the Light Blue’s journey. Trumbull ran wide around his right wing, eluded a tackle behind the line and, guided by Fortune, raced for thirty-two yards before he was thrown out of bounds. Behind Dick pandemonium reigned. Concerted cheering failed to express the joy of the North Bank contingent and every lusty young throat yelled as the spirit urged. The result was deafening and wonderfully satisfying, and it only ended when Benson was stopped short and thrown for a loss on the next play. But Benson was seldom stopped twice in succession, and when Nagle tossed him the ball again he ploughed past the St. John’s left tackle and reconquered the lost ground and added two yards to it for good measure. The ball was on the home team’s thirty-nine now, on third down. Trumbull walked back to kicking position, caught the pass from center and, as the enemy poured through, passed across the line to Clary. The latter was downed where he stood, but again the Light Blue had made her distance and the pigskin was close to the thirty-yard line; and again North Bank supporters shouted themselves breathless.

[70]

There is always a weakest spot in every line if the opponent can find it, and it seemed now that North Bank had found that spot. Using Benson again and again, Nagle pointed the attack this way and that way yet continually hammered the St. John’s right tackle. Twice Benson got through for five yards; once for four. Gray gained two at the same place. St. John’s backs were plugging the hole desperately now, and the gains were less certain. From the enemy’s seventeen, Nagle risked a forward pass over the line on third down. It grounded between a knot of struggling players. There was three and a half yards to go on fourth down. North Bank yelled for a touchdown, but the crossbar loomed close and inviting, promising a certain if lesser triumph. Trumbull stepped back and the St. John’s cohorts began their chant of “Block that kick! Block that kick! Block that kick!” Dick’s heart seemed to be trying to turn completely over at one moment and at the next to be crawling inconveniently into his throat. Hearts do strange things at such crises. He heard Trumbull call hoarsely: “Hold that line, fellows!” He heard Nagle shrilly give his signal. He watched Trumbull’s outstretched hands, waited interminable minutes for the ball to reach them, felt his heart sinking sickeningly. Then he saw that the lines had broken, were confusedly mingled, that the backs were speeding toward the farther side of the gridiron. And still the ball was not in sight to him. And then he did see it. Benson had it, and Benson had already made the distance and was still ploughing [71]forward, halted but not yet stopped, tearing himself loose from clutching hands, pivoting, side-stepping, staggering, but always going forward. Then the enemy fairly bore him down by numbers and the whistle piped, and all along one side of the field lunatic youths were hurling megaphones and caps in air and shrieking mere sounds that, while wordless, were certainly not meaningless.

The ball lay three scant yards from the goal line when the dust of battle subsided and it was North Bank’s first down. None doubted that the Light Blue would score, probably not even the enemy. Yet before the next play the ball must be taken to the far end of the field, for the third quarter was up, and in that minute’s pause the St. John’s coach hustled in two fresh linemen. But even new blood couldn’t avail. Nagle thrust Trumbull straight at center for something less than a yard, sent Benson slanting off tackle for a second short gain and then, while Dick added his pæans to the unceasing shouts of friend and foe, and while Jimsy so far forgot his indifference as to pummel his companion enthusiastically on his back, shot the left half again at the desperate, defiant wall and saw him go through and down and over.

While North Bank still celebrated, Captain Trumbull cocked the ball to his liking and sent it, slowly revolving, well above and safely between the bars. And the score changed from 14 to 0 to 14 to 7; which anybody with North Bank sympathies can see is a far more attractive array of digits.

[72]

I wish that I might leave the game as it stood then, while North Bank was still puffed with success and glowing with delight, but there still remained some ten minutes of contest, and in those ten minutes St. John’s set herself grimly to the task of wreaking vengeance. What she sought she found. Before the last whistle sounded she had scored a third touchdown, from which no goal followed, and had kicked a field-goal from the thirty-two yards. So the final figures were 23 to 7, and North Bank trailed back across the river conclusively defeated. Yet, somehow, that desperate and successful rally by the Light Blue in the third period seemed to atone for a great deal, and I think most of the school felt about as Dick did. How Dick felt may be judged from a remark he made to Jimsy and George as they went back along College Avenue to the station.

“Of course,” said Dick thoughtfully, “we got beaten, but I guess getting beaten isn’t so bad if—if you fight—” he paused, seeking a word, and then ended half defiantly, half apologetically—“nobly.”

Dick sucked the end of his pen and gazed abstractedly at the window. “Hear the cheers,” he murmured. “Hear the cheers—crying, lying, trying, shying, buying, fry—oh, gosh!” He sighed, pushed his hands into his pockets, tilted back in his chair and eyed the paper discouragedly. It was Sunday, the day following the St. John’s game, and just such a day as yesterday had been. The time was a half hour before dinner and Dick had Number 12 to himself. He didn’t especially want to sit up there in the room and compose poetry, for the sunlight was warm, the river was blue and dazzling and out-of-doors called loudly. But for more than a week Dick in his spare moments—of which there weren’t very many—had been trying to write a football song. To-day was the last day, for the efforts must be turned in to-morrow morning before nine. The call for new songs had been made a fortnight ago. Kirkham, of the second, had written the tune, which was not more than ordinarily reminiscent and which really had a fine martial swing and which had seemed to Dick most inspiring. He had come away from the [74]cheer meeting quite certain that he could write words for the tune which would satisfy the committee, and even on his way to the room he had composed several lines. Unfortunately, the lines were not consecutive, however, and the next day, when he had tried to fill in between them he had had no luck. Occasionally, sometimes in class, he had tried again, but he couldn’t seem to find the right rhymes. He had given up the idea of entering the competition, and, with it, all hope of hearing a song of his sung at the Cumbridge game, until last evening. Then the enthusiasm generated by that hard fought battle with St. John’s had supplied him with the first two lines of a stanza and with a perfectly corking chorus, and this morning before church, and after, he had been struggling heroically. He had abandoned the first start and tried numerous others, and now, in despair, he was back at the first. If there was only a word, a right word, to rhyme with—

Eureka! He had it!

Defying!

“Hear the cheers tum-tum defying!”

That was it! Only, he had to have another word in there. Confident? Hopeful? No, those wouldn’t do. “Hear the cheers—hear the cheers—” He looked startledly at the little clock. It was three minutes to one. He hid the scribbled sheets in a drawer and dashed for the lavatory. But all during dinner his mind kept busy. Taking a mean advantage of his absorption, young Endicott, his right-hand neighbor, [75]stole his butter. Dick never discovered it. With the frozen pudding came victory! As soon as might be, disregarding the frantic signals of Jimsy, he hurried out and back to the room.

Written down, it was a bit disappointing, but it would do for the present. He went on to struggle with the next line. He was still struggling when Bert Lodge came in. Dick resisted the inclination to slip the papers into the drawer. Instead, he shuffled them together in the hope that Bert would think he was writing his Sunday letter, which was just what Bert would have thought had it not been for the strange, rapt, almost ecstatic look on Dick’s flushed face. Bert stared curiously.

“What are you up to, Midget?” he asked. Midget was one of the least disagreeable nicknames he had invented.

“Just writing,” answered Dick, lowering his head and forming meaningless words on the uppermost sheet of paper. Bert laughed incredulously, but seemed to accept the explanation. He busied himself at his chiffonier and then walked back to the table, yawning loudly. The next instant he had reached across and swept the sheets from under Dick’s hand. Dick snatched after them but missed and jumped to his feet.

“Bert! You give those back!” he cried. “You’ve no business—”

[76]

But Bert was already reading, his face one broad grin of malicious amusement. “‘Oh, North Bank, to you our allegiance we pledge,’” read Bert grandiloquently. “‘’Neath your banner of Heaven’s cerulean hue——’”

Dick tried to reach the papers, but Bert held him off, laughing. “Keep off, kid,” he warned. “You’ll get hurt! Say, you’re some poet, aren’t you? Where’s the rest of it?” He tried another sheet. “‘See our banners bravely flying.’ Bully, kid! Hot stuff!”

Short of actual combat, there was nothing for Dick to do but accept the situation with what dignity he might. He seated himself on the window seat and sullenly waited for Bert to finish his banter.

“Ah, here we have it!” Bert had come to the last sheet.

“Wow! What do you know about the Midget being a real, gosh-dinged poet? Some genius, I’ll tell the world. What comes next, kid?”

“That’s all I’ve written,” muttered Dick defiantly.

“What’s it for? Don’t tell me you’re trying to write one of those football songs. By jiminy, that’s it, isn’t it? Well, let me tell you, young Dodd, that this is the mushiest stuff I ever read. Can it, kid, can it! You make me sick, rotting in here on a corking day like this. Grab your cap and beat it.” Bert tore [77]the sheets into bits and tossed them in the general direction of the wastebasket.

Dick bit his lips and then shrugged. “You’re a rotten bully, Bert,” he said almost dispassionately. “I wish I was a bit bigger.”

“You do, eh?” Bert laughed contemptuously. “What would you do if you were, youngster?”

“I’d lick you good and hard,” replied Dick evenly.

“Would you now? Takes more than size to do that, you little runt!” Bert stepped across and made a grab for Dick’s nose, but Dick struck the hand aside and jumped to his feet.

“You touch me, Bert,” he said in a low voice, “and you’ll be mighty sorry.”

Bert laughed again, hesitated and turned on his heel. “I’d take you over my knee,” he growled, “if I wasn’t afraid of breaking you. You and your silly rhymes. ‘See the banners bravely flying.’ Better get out and get some air in your lungs, you dear little girl. Why don’t you get some sewing? Ever try tatting?”

“If I did I’d do it better than you play football,” answered Dick hotly.

He was sorry the instant he had said it, for the expression on Bert’s face said plainly that the shot had told and hurt. Bert had made rather a mess of his playing yesterday, and he knew it, and the subject was a very sore one. After all, Dick didn’t like to hurt others’ feelings, even if they had hurt his.

“Sorry, Bert,” he said contritely. “Forget that.”

The apology, however, seemed to Bert as great an [78]insult as the original cause for it, implying as it did that Dick had touched on an open wound. Bert’s face flushed darkly and he glared across the room as though minded to take the table at a flying leap and wreak vengeance. He was not, though, destined to get his revenge just then, for there was a knock on the door behind him and, after a last malevolent look, he turned and opened it, revealing the smiling Jimsy.

“Hello,” growled Bert. Then, as Jimsy, with a curious glance at him, entered, he slipped past him and was gone along the corridor. Jimsy looked after him amusedly, closed the door slowly and softly and then leaned against it, regarding Dick with upraised eyebrows.

“I seem to have interrupted something,” he said.

Dick smiled ruefully. “Glad you did. Bert and I were having some words.”

“Words? Gee, I thought it looked more like actions. What was the row?”

He seated himself in Bert’s chair by the table and listened to Dick’s recital. When it was ended he chuckled. “You certainly handed him a stiff one, Dick,” he said. “From what I’ve heard, he and two or three others got raked over the coals in great shape yesterday. They say Thorne was pretty sore.”

“I didn’t mean to be nasty,” said Dick regretfully, “but he got me pretty sore.”

Jimsy shrugged. “He’s a pill. I wouldn’t worry. But, say, what’s this about the song? You didn’t tell me you were trying it. Where is it?”

[79]

“He tore it up,” answered Dick evasively.

“Well, you remember what you wrote, don’t you? How does it go?”

“Oh, I didn’t have much luck with it. I guess I’ll forget it.”

“Piffle! Look here, Dick, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Get some paper and we’ll go and find a quiet, peaceful spot and finish it. I’ll help. I’m a regular Henry Wadsworth Tennyson when it comes to poetry.”

But Dick shook his head. “There isn’t time. It’s got to be in the first thing in the morning.”

“What of that?” Jimsy laughed derisively. “Why, we’ve got all the afternoon and evening.”

“You may have,” replied Dick virtuously. “I’ve got to study.”

“Well, sakes alive and everything!” Jimsy spoke exasperatedly. “You don’t have to study all the rest of the day, do you? Come on. Besides, there’s nothing else to do.”

“We might snare rabbits,” said Dick slyly.

Jimsy grinned. “Shut up,” he said pleasantly. “You’re not teasing me any, son. I’d have had those rabbits if there’d been any. You can’t snare rabbits where they ain’t. Besides, we had lots of fun, didn’t we?”

Dick acknowledged that they had. Jimsy helped himself to the major portion of one of Bert’s scratch pads and thrust the paper into a pocket. “Come on,” he insisted. “You can’t stay in here a day like this, anyway. If you don’t want to write poetry we’ll just [80]take a walk. For my part, though, I feel just like composing sonnets and things. I feel the divine whatyoucallit working inside me.”

“You probably ate too much pudding,” said Dick. But he got his cap and followed.

In a sunny place overlooking the river they sat themselves down and Dick at length consented to put on paper as much of the football song as he had arrived at and submit it to Jimsy. Jimsy was loud in praise of it. “Why, that’s fine!” he declared. “How does the tune go?” Dick hummed it and Jimsy sang the words as far as they went, ending with a series of tumty-ti-tums and then breaking forth majestically on the chorus:

“Say, that’s corking! You’re a genius, Dick! You mustn’t quit now. Finish it up. You only need three or four more lines, don’t you? How many verses do they want?”

“One, with a chorus, will do, they said. But it’s the other four lines that I can’t get.”

“Why not? Let’s see.” Jimsy studied the verse a long moment, handed it back, seized some paper, unlimbered his fountain pen and frowned down at the sun-shot river. Several times he wrote and as many times his frown deepened and he erased. Finally, tired [81]of waiting for results, Dick set about the matter again himself. Many minutes passed. From the river below came voices and laughter as canoes and boats drifted past. The shrill whistle of an electric train sounded from the cut that led to the bridge, and Dick, his mind busy with the verse, watched the cars crawl into sight, slow at the draw and then go speeding on again toward the farther shore. He shot a glance at his companion. Jimsy had relinquished paper and pen and was frankly idle, a grass stem between his teeth and his gaze fixed on the river. Dick smiled to himself. The divine afflatus of which Jimsy had spoken had not lasted long, he thought! But there he did his chum an injustice, for a moment later the latter came out of his daydream, picked up paper and pen and began to scribble rapidly. This fact, though, Dick missed, for he was bending intently over his own task and had forgotten, for the time, Jimsy and all else.

Twenty minutes later Dick stopped writing, read the completed verse through and turned in smiling triumph. “Got it,” he announced. “At least, it doesn’t sound so bad.”

Jimsy waved his pen, but made no answer. Plainly he, too, was in the throes of poetic composition. The sheet of paper on his knee was covered with writing. Dick tried to read it, but couldn’t. Jimsy added a last word and waved the sheet proudly. “Listen to this, Dick,” he cried. “Talk about your football songs! Wait till you get this one, son! All ready?” Jimsy cleared his throat impressively and began to read.

[82]

“How’s that for pep?” demanded Jimsy triumphantly. “And feeling? And—and poetry, what? Might as well tear yours up, Dick. You can’t compete with Byron W. Keats! Gosh, that’s a rhyme, too! It’s getting to be a habit! Like cabbage with a rabbit! Stop me, some one!”

“What I like best,” laughed Dick, “is that line about the raging flood. ‘Dent them like a raging flood,’ isn’t it?”

“‘Every rush will badly dent her, like a raging flood,’” quoted Jimsy complacently. “Of course, floods don’t usually dent things, but I had to have a rhyme for ‘mud.’ Pretty slick, isn’t it?”

“It’s wonderful,” chuckled Dick. “The—the sentiment is so sweet!”

“Sweet? You don’t want sweet sentiment in a football song, you idiot! You want pep and punch. [83]I call that song inspiring. Get the fellows to singing that and the team will do murder! Trouble with most football songs is that they’re too tame, Dick. I claim that I’ve managed to get away from the old style. I—I’ve sounded a new note, as you might say. If,” he concluded modestly, “I hadn’t written that myself I’d say it was mighty good!”

“It isn’t like you to let that interfere,” responded Dick blandly.

“Envy,” retorted Jimsy. “That’s your trouble. Now read your song. Of course it isn’t up to mine, but read it just the same. Might as well, now you’ve gone to so much trouble with it.”

“The committee,” announced Benson, senior class president, from the edge of the platform, “was disappointed at the number of songs submitted in response to its request. It has received only twenty-two, and as there are over two hundred fellows here this year, that’s not doing well. I reckon a whole lot of you didn’t take the trouble to try.”

“How about you, Jerry?” demanded a voice in the audience. A laugh greeted this, and Jerry Benson joined it.

“Members of the committee weren’t allowed to compete,” he replied. “Well, the result is that we’ve chosen two songs from those submitted, and we’re going to ask you all to try them over and see which you like best. We think they’re both pretty good, but we don’t want more than one, I reckon. The first is by—” Benson referred to a piece of paper he held—“by Thomas Hale Nichols, second class, and the other by R. S. Dodd, third class. You’ll find the words of both on the sheets that have been distributed. In case you’ve gone and forgotten the tune, the—the orchestra will play it through first.”

Benson retired amidst applause and laughter, the latter occasioned by his reference to Cas Kirkham, who presided at the piano, as the orchestra. The occasion [85]was the regular Wednesday night football mass meeting, and the hall was pretty well crowded. Dick, seated between Jimsy and a second class fellow known as “Ducker” Coy—why Dick never learned—was warm with embarrassment, and, as the piano began the martial strains of Kirkham’s music, he took up the little sheet of paper he held and gazed again at the two sets of verses and refrains. Nichols had written lines rather less heroic than his, and Dick thought them better. Or perhaps it would be more exact to say that he thought the other fellows would think them better! Still, it was something to have emerged even second best out of a competition of twenty-two!

The piano stopped and Warden raised his baton. “All ready, fellows!” he called. “We’ll take the first one. Get into it!”

They got into it and the hall rang with boyish voices. Dick sang loudly, resolved to do his duty by the rival anthem. Jimsy sang, too, but he sang his own words, or as many as he could remember, and his rendition of the chorus, with the bloodthirsty “Smear ’em, smash ’em, bust ’em, too!” occasioned much surprised interest in the immediate neighborhood. The song ended in a long-sustained note and was followed by enthusiastic applause; clapping, stamping, cries of “A-a-ay!” Dick clapped louder than any, while Jimsy cried “Rotten! Rotten!” and hissed, again becoming the center of local interest.

“Cut it out,” begged Dick. “Fellows will think it’s me!”

[86]

“What’s the difference? Every fellow has the right to express his convictions. It’s a punk song. Wish I’d sent mine in! Say, Ducker, I wrote some words that were corking, but I didn’t want to squeeze Dick out of it. I’ll sing ’em to you after the show.”

Ducker, who was a big, loose-jointed chap, crewman and left fielder on the nine, grinned and chuckled. Ducker did one or the other, or both, in lieu of speaking whenever possible.

“Now we’ll try the next one,” announced Warden. “Same tune, you know. We’ll take the chorus a bit slower, Kirkham, and see how it goes. All right!”

Dick knew these words without reading from the slip of paper, but for some reason his voice was scarcely audible. Probably it was because he wanted to hear how his song sounded when sung by others. Once more nearly two hundred hearty voices joined and once more the piano crashed out the accompaniment.

[87]

To Dick it seemed that the applause that followed was louder than before, more spontaneous. Certainly there was less polite handclapping and more vociferous shouting and thumping of feet. Perhaps, though, Jimsy was making such a racket that Dick couldn’t estimate the rest of the applause very nicely. Jimsy was clapping, stamping and shouting at one and the same time. Ducker, who probably had no choice between the two compositions, was shouting “A-a-a-ay!” very loudly and out of sheer friendliness. When quiet was restored Jerry Benson joined Tom Warden at the front of the platform.

“I reckon we’ll have to take a vote,” he announced. “Those who like the first song best will please stand up.”

Many stood, but many more remained seated and loudly called on the standers to “Sit down, you chumps!” and earnestly begged to know how they got that way! Pandemonium threatened while Benson and Warden craned their necks to estimate the vote. Kirkham seemed uninterested in the matter, and picked out soft notes on the piano with one finger.

“All right,” said Benson finally. “Sit down, you all! Now those in favor of the last song will please stand.”

To Dick it looked as if the entire audience was on its feet, including even those who had voted before! Jimsy tried to drag him upright, too, but Dick resisted. He had remained seated before and had no notion of [88]getting up now. From behind the backs of those in front of him he heard Benson speaking again.

“I reckon there’s no doubt about it,” said Benson laughingly. “We’ll adopt the second version, written by Todd. Eh? Oh! Not Todd, Dodd! All down, fellows!” The speaker’s face again came into Dick’s vision. He was still talking. “Now I think we’ve got a rousing good song there and we ought to learn it thoroughly, and so we’ll sing it again. But before we do that I want to thank all those fellows who sent in verses. I’m thanking them in behalf of the committee.” Applause greeted this. “And I want more especially to thank the two fellows whose songs were selected for trial to-night, Messers—er—Nichols and Todd—I should say Dodd.” Laughter here. “If Nichols is here I’d like to have him stand up, please.”

After some hesitation Nichols did so. He was a round-faced, good-natured looking boy, and he smiled sheepishly at the cheers that met his appearance.

“Thank you,” said Benson. “And now, Dodd—or—no, that’s right! Dodd. Will Dodd please stand also?”

Seemingly Dodd wouldn’t, for after a moment, during which there was an unseemly disturbance from the left of the hall, near the rear, Benson resumed. “Apparently he isn’t with us this evening, so—”

“He’s here, all right,” announced the voice of Jimsy Ravenel, “but I can’t get the silly beggar up!”

After that there was but one thing to do, and Dick did it. He stood up, a small, slight, greatly embarrassed youngster, while laughter and good-natured joshing [89]greeted his appearance and Jimsy intoned “Dodd! Dodd! Dick S. Dodd! Dodd! Dodd! Dick S. Dodd!” over and over. Very red of face, Dick endured the publicity for one wretched moment and then sank hurriedly from sight.

“Thank you,” said Benson, above the dying tumult. “And now, fellows, let’s have it again. There’ll be another cheer meeting Friday night, and I want every one of you to know the words by heart. All right, Tom. Make them sing it!”

After they had gone through it again they went back to the older favorites; to We’ll cheer for Old North Bank and Rush them, crush them and, finally to the School Song, By the Side of the Severn. Last of all they cheered mightily, for the Team, for the players separately, for the coach, for North Bank, and so went their ways, rather hoarse, somewhat exalted of spirit.

Perhaps Dick was the happiest of all those who poured out of the hall. Even when he was in bed, with the light out and Bert’s unmusical respirations alone breaking the silence, the happiness remained. He had heard his song sung by the whole school, had thrilled to the wonder of it, and the thrill still lingered. On the morrow he found that he had become a person of prominence in a small way. Fellows congratulated him, sometimes laughingly, but always sincerely, and the third class members drew public attention to the fact that Dodd was one of them. Of course it was only for a day or so, but it was pleasant while it lasted.

[90]

Dick might have been very fully satisfied with life those days had it not been for one thing. The one thing was Bert Lodge, or, more exactly, Bert’s behavior. He had neither forgiven nor forgotten that episode of the Sunday afternoon, and he made the fact evident on all occasions. Dick’s aspersion on his football playing had struck in a vulnerable spot, for Bert was failing to please the coach and was seeing his chance of getting into the big game grow dimmer and dimmer each day. In some vague way he blamed Dick not only for the criticism but the truth beneath it. Perhaps, since he couldn’t vent his wrath on Mr. Thorne, Dick was the natural recipient of it. At all events, life in Number 12 was anything but smooth and sunny those days between the St. John’s game and the Cumbridge contest, and Dick grew to dread the hours he was forced to spend in Bert’s society. The latter never let pass an opportunity to sneer or nag, and he perfected a system of insults that cunningly stopped just short of an excuse for physical retaliation. Dick often wished very heartily that Bert would provide that excuse, even though, as he was certain, he would be badly worsted in a fight.

In a measure he sympathized with Bert’s frame of mind, for he knew how hard the latter had set his heart on making the first team that fall, or had hoped, failing that, at least to win the position of second-string end. Perhaps few of his team-mates had expected him to succeed in either endeavor, but Bert had entertained early in the season no doubt in the matter. He held a [91]very excellent opinion of Bert Lodge and of that young gentleman’s abilities, and his failure to make good surprised him almost as much as it pained him. He explained the matter to those who would listen long enough by dark hints of personal animosity toward him on the part of the coach. This may have salved his sensibilities, but it didn’t fool the hearers. Even Dick, who knew little of inside football affairs, couldn’t credit the theory. Dick believed that Coach Thorne ranked in greatness just under the President of the United States and was above all criticism. Of late, of course, Bert had ceased confiding in Dick, but the latter never missed a practice, unless the session was a secret one, and it wasn’t difficult to see how things were going. Barring a marvelous reversal of form, Bert would do no better than third or even fourth choice the day of the Cumbridge game, and his chance of getting his letters was extremely slim.

Taking all this into consideration, Dick found it in his heart to be rather sorry for his roommate on occasions, although the occasions were becoming few and of short duration. Jimsy, who held Bert in deep and abiding contempt, and never troubled to disguise the fact from him, was all for reprisals. He advanced many plans having as their object the disciplining of Bert. Mostly they were more spectacular than practical. Of course, he pointed out, Dick couldn’t fight the obnoxious one and derive any satisfaction thereby. Dick wasn’t so sure about that, but didn’t argue it. Therefore, Jimsy expounded, it was necessary [92]to adopt strategic measures. For instance, they might decoy Bert to the river and push him in. Or they might tie him to the bed some night and paint him over with gear grease. Or they might smear his nose-guard with capsicum vaseline. Jimsy had heard of a case where that treatment had been most successful. He evolved a new scheme almost daily, but somehow none seemed quite appropriate, and Bert pursued his way if not serenely at least unchallenged.

Two mornings after the memorable evening when he had heard his football song sung for the first time, Dick met Jerry Benson face to face in front of Founders’ Hall. Dick didn’t doubt that Benson would remember him, and his heart took several violent somersaults as they drew closer. Dick wondered whether the football hero would speak to him or just nod. The football hero did neither. Perhaps he wondered a bit why the small youngster gazed at him with such wistful appeal, but there was no recognition. Dick was terribly disappointed, but he didn’t blame Benson. A fellow like Benson had so much on his mind!

Dick heard his song—well, of course it wasn’t all his, for Cas Kirkham had contributed the music; though, as any one knows, it’s easier to write the music of a song than the words; all you have to do is take some one else’s tune and change it a bit! Well, anyway, he heard the song sung out of doors on Saturday, and wished that he was on the other side of the field so that he might get the full effect of it. Sitting right in the middle of it, so to speak, he only heard the voices close by him. But he thought it sounded mighty well, even under such circumstances, and wondered if Cumbridge would bring a song with her next Saturday that would be as good.

The North Bank students spent the entire fifteen minutes between the halves in practicing songs for the big game, and the hundred or so Brackett’s School representatives who had followed their team to North Bank were appreciative and generous with applause. Perhaps the fact that the songs were aimed at Cumbridge, a team which had, two weeks ago, beaten Brackett’s, 19 to 3, had something to do with their appreciation.

When half time came North Bank was well in the lead, having scored two touchdowns to Brackett’s one [94]field goal, and there was no reason to doubt that she would do equally well in the next half unless Coach Thorne used his third-string men in the final period, which was predicted. Brackett’s, in spite of having been heralded as a strong team with a mighty offense, had proved rather easy. Indeed, North Bank might have had a third touchdown save for an unfortunate fumble by Nagle on Brackett’s twelve yards that had been recovered by the enemy. North Bank’s back field had been irresistible. Trumbull and Benson had done almost as they pleased with the opposing line, and Gray, whose forte was speedy running of the ends rather than line plunging, had managed several good dashes. At the ends, though, Brackett’s was stronger than from tackle to tackle, and all during the first two quarters North Bank had used old style football, the back starting from close up and concealing the ball as long as possible. She had worn out the Brackett’s left guard by the end of the first period and had then transferred her favor to the left tackle, with the result that that player had also shown every indication of fatigue when the whistle had blown.

North Bank started the third period with three substitutes in her line-up; new ends and a new right tackle; Clary, however, was out because of a weak knee and not for faulty work. Thorne needed Jim next Saturday and was taking no chances with him to-day. It was the Light Blue’s kick-off, and Brackett’s pulled the ball down on her eight yards and hustled it back to her fifteen. Two tries netted four yards off the new [95]tackle and then she punted well and far. For several minutes the ball exchanged hands frequently, and then a stumble by Benson, catching a punt on his thirty-two, resulted in his being downed in his tracks. Brackett’s crowd applauded that break in the luck loudly. They hadn’t had much to applaud so far and they made the most of this.

The Light Blue sent Trumbull back to kicking position and Nagle hurled, on first down, to Temple, left end, and Temple caught the ball for eight yards’ gain. Benson made more than the distance at right guard. Then, although Benson again gained, some one was off-side and a penalty resulted. Gray tried a run around left but was thrown for a two-yard loss, and Trumbull punted.

The kick was low and outdistanced the Light Blue’s ends, and the Brackett’s quarter came back nearly twenty yards before he was stopped on his thirty-two. Then began Brackett’s one supreme effort of the day. She concentrated on the middle of the North Bank line and made her distance by inches, and reached the forty-two yards. Another plunge straight at Norris gained two, a second went for three. The North Bank backs stopped the third attack at the same place, and Brackett’s deployed for a kick. But the small, chunky right half, who, in spite of his build, had lots of speed, tore straight through the North Bank center and reeled off seven yards, placing the ball well over the fifty-yard line. Brackett’s became quite delirious with joy. As Norris was showing the pace, Canton was sent in [96]to replace him. Brackett’s tried an off tackle play to her left and made it go for three. A second attempt, inside the tackle, was stopped. Then, faking a line-plunge, she threw down and across the field and caught the opposing right end napping. The runner was on North Bank’s thirty-seven yards when he was hurled out by Benson.

Brackett’s failed at a crisscross that shot the runner against Hickson, and then netted three on a quarter-back run around left. Coach Thorne sent Bert Lodge in at right end and substituted Jansen for Gray. On third down Brackett’s again attempted a forward pass, but Jansen spilled the play. The pigskin was on the thirty-four yards when it was brought back, and the distance to the North Bank goal doubtless looked discouragingly great to the Brackett’s left half when he retreated to kicking position. From across the field came imploring cries from the visiting audience.

“Kick that goal!” chanted the enemy. “Kick that goal!”

North Bank believed the attempt a hopeless one, and the answering slogan of “Block that kick!” was but half hearted. Then comparative silence fell and the ball shot back, the teams plunged into action and, back at the forty-two yards, a tall, brown-stockinged youth swung a long leg in the direction of the distant crossbar. The ball started true, but it was low, and Gurney James, leaping high toward its path, struck it down with one big hand. Perhaps it would have been better [97]if he hadn’t, for the pigskin had been aimed too low to top the crossbar. The ball shot sidewise, disappeared into a confusion of striving, jostling bodies, trickled out into sight, bobbed along for several yards and was then scooped up by the Brackett’s quarter.

At the moment there was none between him and the goal line, some thirty-five yards away, and he had a good start before North Bank saw the danger. He shot away like a sprinter from a mark, straight and swift, and the Brackett’s supporters raised a wild pæan of passionate delight. But he was not to reach the goal line, for Hickson saved the moment for the Light Blue. His tackle, made in an instant of frenzied alarm, was poor, but it served to throw the runner out of his stride and in the next moment Benson had dragged him down on the eight yards.

From the eight to the goal in four downs was very far from impossible, and the visiting cohorts shrieked and howled, crowding along the side line about the corner of the field. Time was called for North Bank, though it appeared that Hickson’s injury was slight, and Coach Thorne took advantage of the interruption to send in two substitute forwards, Norwell and Lansing retiring. North Bank supporters grumbled at that, for to them the moment seemed inauspicious for the introduction of second and third-string players.

One plunge at the left of center netted less than a yard to the attackers and before the next play could start the whistle ended the quarter and Brackett’s supporters had to pace the length of the field to reach [98]their vantage point again. Changes were made in the brown eleven, a new end and a new right half back entering the arena. Then the last period started with a mass attack on North Bank’s center that bore it back to the five-yard line. But that play settled the matter, and North Bank cheered approvingly. No team of Brackett’s strength could conquer five yards in two rushes, and, barring a successful forward pass, the enemy could do no more than add a second field goal to her score.

But Brackett’s had the courage of her convictions and scorned to accept a paltry three points when six beckoned. She shot her interference to the left and sent the quarter to the right in search of a hole. He found it, but it let him through for only a scant yard. Near at hand the visiting contingent, wracked by suspense, shouted and howled and swayed about the corner of the gridiron. The Brackett’s captain held a conference with his quarter, and North Bank accepted the incident as a confession of weakness and jeered a bit. Then the attack poised itself once more, hoarse voices entreated or warned, the ball went back and the two lines surged together. Followed a long moment of doubt, for the ball was gone from sight and half the players on the field seemed inextricably piled on the ground, like a bunch of human jackstraws.

Then the referee, a slight man in an immaculate white sweater, plunged into the confusion, pawing, digging, like a small terrier after a buried bone, and one by one the writhing players were scattered aside [99]until, on his knees, one arm buried from sight, the referee looked toward the sideline and waved his free arm back up the field. Brackett’s had failed! No touchdown! North Bank’s cheer leaders sprang to duty and a long cheer vented vast relief. When the ground was cleared of bodies the ball lay less than a yard from the last white line. Brackett’s had, after all, nearly done the impossible!

So far as excitement went, that finished the game, for what followed was tame and lacking in thrills. As the period drew on Coach Thorne threw substitutes in bewilderingly until, at the last, only Nagle remained of those who had started the contest. Not to be outdone, or, more probably to seek revenge by the use of fresh material, the Brackett’s coach used his substitutes generously, and, as a result, the fourth period was as halting as it was devoid of interest. The teams remained of about the same relative strength and toward the last of the period North Bank added a third touchdown when, unable to get closer to the enemy’s goal than her twenty-yard line, she threw a successful forward pass that was easily converted into a score. No goal resulted, however, and the final score was 19 to 3, which was, oddly enough, the identical score by which Cumbridge had triumphed over the Brown! Those who had hoped to judge of the comparative merits of the Light Blue and the Dark by to-day’s game were disappointed.

There was an impromptu celebration that evening, and perhaps because it was impromptu it was a great [100]success from the standpoint of noise and enthusiasm. Dick and Jimsy joined the cheering procession and paraded around the grounds, arm in arm, and did their utmost to make the fact of their presence known. Dick was thrilled and ecstatic, but Jimsy, it appeared, would as lief have cheered for Free Trade or the State of Maryland as the football team. The important thing to Jimsy was the noise he could make and the fun he could have making it. Prolonged demonstrations in front of the houses elicited brief remarks from various of the faculty, from Coach Thorne, from Captain Trumbull and, eventually, from Doctor Heidler. The principal said the usual things in much the same way he had been saying them on similar occasions for years past, ended with a mild joke and retired indoors as a final cheer was called for. The celebration terminated in front of Founders’ Hall with the singing of the School Song.

In those days, though, it wasn’t the School Song that one heard about the campus, in the corridors and from behind the curtains of the showers. It was that more recent ditty known now as “Banners Flying,” for want of a more official title. Dick heard it whistled or sung or hummed on all sides, and felt rather proud. He wished that he had written the music, too, and wondered how one wrote music, and, seeking to solve that problem, spent a half-hour in the parlor in Baldwin one afternoon when the house was fairly empty strumming tentatively on the piano with unsatisfactory results.

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Dick passed through the week following the Brackett’s game in a condition bordering on nervous collapse. Jimsy called his trouble dementia footballitis, and made fun of him. Jimsy certainly wanted North Bank to win next Saturday’s game, but Jimsy wasn’t losing any sleep over the matter. He didn’t wear out the daily papers following the fortunes of the rival teams as narrated by the school correspondents, nor did he haunt the field whenever a pair of soiled khaki breeches appeared on it. Dick, however, did those things and more. Dick lived and even dreamed football, and no anxious trainer ever watched his charges more carefully than Dick watched the members of the team. If he passed Hickson on the way to morning prayers and detected a frown on that youth’s countenance, Dick became the prey to deep forebodings. If Benson’s tanned, good-humored face seemed to the younger boy to be a shade paler than usual the latter told himself that the left half back was worrying about Saturday’s game, and was less happy than before. Dick was football mad, in all truth, and Jimsy’s diagnosis was not a mistaken one. Dick couldn’t bear to consider a defeat for his school, and when some pessimistic acquaintance predicted a Cumbridge victory he had to bite his lips to hold back the flood of indignation that surged within him. Mass meetings were held almost nightly, and Dick never missed one. He sang loudly and cheered with a passionate enthusiasm that usually left him hoarse for the rest of the night.

The final practice was held on Thursday, and the [102]whole school marched across to the field with banners snapping in a chill east wind and stood around while the substitutes and the scrubs played a short game and the first-string men walked through a few plays and kicked or passed the ball about. Cheers and songs floated away on the wind, the khaki-clad heroes trotted back to the gymnasium and the gathering broke up. Dick, much moved by his emotions, walked silently back beside Jimsy and scarcely heard the flippant chatter of his chum. There were times, such times as this, when Jimsy seemed to Dick to be lamentably light-minded and his conversation of no moment.

Dick was not the only occupant of Number 12 whose nerves were aflutter in those poignant days. Bert Lodge suffered as much as did Dick from suspense, although perhaps he was a trifle less concerned with the outcome of the game than with his participation in it. Bert was still hanging on and still hoping. The fact that he had survived every cut in the squad gave him reason to hope. If Thorne didn’t mean to use him, he argued, he would have been dropped long since. On the other hand, there were three fellows ahead of him, aside from the two regulars who played the end positions, and it was only in moments of extreme optimism that he could picture himself getting into the big game. He had another year ahead of him yet, and if he failed this fall he still might succeed next, but Bert wanted those letters on his sweater, wanted the privilege of going home in the spring wearing the light-blue and white ribbon of the football man on his [103]straw hat, wanted the distinction that privilege would lend him.

He was a very trying companion to one who was himself keyed to a high nervous tension, and Dick fairly ached at times to throw a book at his head, or, hurling himself across the barrier of the study table, to bear Bert backwards and hammer his fists in the sneering, snarling face. One of Bert’s pet amusements just then was to sing “Banners Flying” while Dick was trying to study—and in those days trying was usually as far as he got—supplying silly, idiotic words to the tune. If Dick protested Bert apologized with mock regret and began again a minute later. Still, save that the endless repetition of sound was difficult to stand, the singing was of little consequence. Dick couldn’t get his mind on his lessons and it really made little difference whether he was disturbed or wasn’t. Most every one else was having the same difficulty, however, and the faculty, while sorely tried, made generous allowance.

Friday night’s mass meeting was something to remember long afterwards. There was the usual singing, the usual cheering to start the affair, and then the speeches began. Trumbull spoke, and so did Coach Thorne, and Jerry Benson, in his position of first class president, and Alan Linscott, crew captain, and Tom Warden and Jimmy, the trainer, and two or three more, and each was cheered when he arose and cheered when he sat down. And between whiles the Glee Club and the Musical Clubs added their bits.

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Coach Thorne was earnest and brief, and it wasn’t until the meeting was over and Dick was lying, very much awake, in his bed that he realized that not once had the coach predicted victory for his charges. Dick consoled himself with the explanation that the coach was one of the careful and conservative kind and remembered that almost all the other speakers had spoken of victory on the morrow as though it was an accomplished fact. His head still rang with the wild, exultant cheers, and, staring upwards into the darkness, he could still see the sober yet confident face of Captain Trumbull as he had ended his remarks with: “We’ll do our part, fellows. You do yours. Stand behind us every instant and let us know that you’re there!” Yet Dick’s last waking thought was: “I wish he’d said we were going to win, though!”

Saturday dawned lowering and chill. A cold wind blew up the river from the Bay. It was ideal football weather, doubtless, but Dick would have appreciated sunlight. There was something depressing for him in the low-hanging clouds and leaden appearance of the river. Victory for the Light Blue seemed less assured than it had yesterday. He ate very little breakfast, thereby following the fashion of the day, since only the phlegmatic few were capable of finding savor in the morning meal. Excitement and suspense were in the air. All recitations were canceled for that day, leaving six long hours to be lived through before the game without the diversion of lesson periods. A scrub game between McCrea and Ellicot to decide the house championship was played at ten o’clock, and Dick watched it, cheering for Ellicot’s team because Ducker Coy, who was a resident of “The Cot,” played left tackle on it. Jimsy cheered on all occasions and showed no preference. The game served to help pass the better part of two hours, what with delays and arguments over decisions, and in some way it was dinner time before either Dick’s mind or his stomach proclaimed it. He managed to do rather better at the noon repast, which was held half an hour earlier than usual, and then joined the crowd on the steps to cheer [106]the team when it came out. Most of the players were smiling when they appeared; only a few of the substitutes, fellows who had yet to face Cumbridge for the first time, looked a bit nervous or pale. Dick felt heartened by that view of the team. You couldn’t beat those fellows! No, sir, you just couldn’t do it!

He and Jimsy sought seats early. George Ferry sat beside Dick. George wouldn’t subscribe to Dick’s statement that North Bank was bound to win. “We’ve got a good team, Dick,” said George, “but so has Cumbridge. I’ll give you an opinion after the first quarter’s done. I wouldn’t expect too much, though. Then you won’t feel disappointed if things don’t go just right.”

Dick set George down as a pessimist. Jimsy confided that old George was always like that. Wouldn’t say a team was going to win until the game was over; and didn’t like to even then!

Long before two o’clock the stands were full and the late comers were taking possession of the side lines. Cumbridge had brought a band with her, not a very large band nor a very excellent one, but it made a good deal of noise and added to the general excitement and confusion. The rival school boasted of a much larger student body than did North Bank, and it seemed that every Cumbridge fellow must have accompanied the team. Across the gridiron the visitors’ stand was a solid mass of dark blue.

Cumbridge’s warriors came on first, cheered by friend and foe, and began warming up. Then North [107]Bank appeared and Dick fairly strained his throat when the cheer leaders tossed their big megaphones aside and waved their arms. That was a wonderful cheer! Sitting down, he intercepted an exchange of amused glances between Jimsy and George, but he didn’t mind. They were probably quite as excited as he, only they pretended not to be. The next moment he was singing, again on his feet, his gaze fixed unswervingly on Tom Warden’s swaying hand.

Then came a long cheer that seemed to shake the stand, and the teams were trotting out, spreading about the faded green of the field, the dark blue players to the west and the light blue in front of the east goal. Some one pulled Dick back into his seat just as the whistle blew, and a voice called “Down in front, Freshie!” an insult that Dick might have resented at any other moment! But he scarcely heard it then, so intent was he on watching the flight of the ball. Nagle [108]caught it straight in front of the goal, hesitated the barest fraction of a second and was off, slanting to the left, then to the right and then, eluding a Cumbridge end neatly, straight ahead, the quickly formed interference about him now. Ten yards, fifteen! Then he was tackled, was down, was crawling ahead, was stopped. The ball was just short of the thirty-yard line and North Bank was cheering madly.

Three minutes later, though, Trumbull had punted and the play was at the other end of the field. Cumbridge lost no time in trying out the adversary’s line. Her backs dived in, there was an instant of confusion and then North Bank lined up again four yards nearer her goal. Cumbridge cheered as wildly as North Bank had a few minutes earlier. The Dark Blue shifted and a single figure ran back, caught the quick pass and was off to the right. A sudden stop to let an enemy end spill himself on the turf and then a long overhand heave that sent the pigskin far up the field and to the left, well over the heads of the struggling lines. There was just one player awaiting that ball, and that player had dark blue arms to pull it down with and dark blue legs to bear it speedily over the intervening lines toward the North Bank goal. He was never seriously challenged, although Clary ran him a wonderful race and reached the goal line but a fraction of an instant behind him. Cumbridge scored her first touchdown in just five minutes and twenty seconds after the kick-off, and two minutes later she had kicked the goal!

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Somehow that incident failed to disturb North Bank’s equanimity very greatly. The thing had seemed so much of a fluke that it was not taken too seriously. Of course, it gave Cumbridge seven points, but, well, just wait until North Bank got going! So Dick and all the others cheered defiantly, encouragingly and the Light Blue kicked off to the enemy and the game went on again. Once more Cumbridge came back, but by smaller gains, and only to lose the ball finally on downs just short of North Bank’s forty. Nagle brought the home team supporters to their feet with a startling run of twelve yards around the Cumbridge left, but succeeding efforts were vain and Trumbull booted to Cumbridge’s five yards. The quarter ended after another brief march by the Dark Blue and another exchange of punts.

So far, excepting for that forward pass that had caught the home team napping, the rivals had shown football of much the same style and caliber. Each team seemed afraid to let herself go lest some miscalculation should be seized on by her opponent. Attacks between tackles diversified by an occasional end run and followed by a kick was the order of the day. Neither team had gained consistently through the opposing line and neither had shown superiority in punting. When it came to the ends, however, Cumbridge had decidedly the best of it, and there were those who watched who wondered that the visitor did not more frequently send her plays outside tackles. But that, as it was proved, was to come later.

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Meanwhile, during the second quarter Cumbridge still smashed at the North Bank line and North Bank still hurled Benson and Trumbull and Gray against the almost impregnable front of the enemy. There were gains, on both sides, but only once did the Dark Blue make her distance in the second period by line bucking, while North Bank failed of even that. The Light Blue twice made a good advance by dividing her attack and sending Nagle, with the ball, inside of tackle, quite alone. But that play was good only so long as its novelty lasted, and after that, since the Light Blue was not using the forward pass, there was little to do save punt. Although there were few stirring incidents in the second fifteen minutes, excitement continued at its highest. Over-eagerness twice set the visitor back, once for holding and once for being off side, and thrice North Bank suffered from penalties. When the half ended the ball was in North Bank’s possession on her own forty-one yards.

When the teams had trailed their blankets out of sight Dick settled back with a sigh that spoke eloquently of the nervous tension under which he had been. About him discussion was rife and argument was heated. Fellows who had never played the game in their lives were eloquent with criticism. A discussion behind him, in which Jerry Benson was blamed and defended for not playing the game he was capable of, irritated Dick until to drown the sound of it in his ears he turned to George Ferry and asked: “Do you think we can score, George?”

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George nodded. “Bound to, I think, Dick.”

“So do I,” agreed Dick stoutly. “That touchdown of theirs was just a piece of luck, wasn’t it?”

“Luck coupled with mighty fine playing,” agreed George. “Also with some punk work by our end. Butterfield lost his man completely. Too bad.”

“He’s done pretty well since then, though,” said Dick generously, and George nodded. The cheer leaders called for noise then, and conversation was ended for the time. Songs followed, and again Dick listened pleasurably to “Banners Flying.” North Bank went through her repertory and Cumbridge sent back a tuneful defiance. Occasionally, through the voices, could be heard the strains from the Cumbridge band! Surprisingly soon, a mad cheer arose from the North Bank stand, and fellows jumped to their feet. The team was coming back! Cheer leaders ran to their places. “Long cheer, fellows! Long cheer! Make it good! Come on!” It was good, although the final “North Bank!” was drowned by the crashing welcome that Cumbridge hurled forth as the Dark Blue warriors trotted into sight.

Jimsy voiced prophecy as the teams took the field and the cheers died away. “We’ll score once and they’ll score again,” said Jimsy with the impersonality of a Fate. “No matter how you figure it, fellows, we’re a gone coon!”

“You shut up,” begged Dick. “You don’t know anything about it, anyway. We’re going to win this, aren’t we, George?”

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“Let’s wait and see,” was the unencouraging answer. “You never can tell till it’s over, Dick.”

Dick had to be satisfied with that as he squirmed forward to the edge of his seat and thrust his tightly clenched hands into the pockets of his trousers. It was cold enough for heavy overcoats to-day, but North Bank eschewed such garments. It was a sort of a principle there that a sweater was enough for any occasion, and there were many on the stand who were suffering for the principle!

North Bank ran foul of ill luck soon after the second half began. All season long the team had escaped serious injury to any of her members, and now, when such injury could be least endured, it happened, and not once but twice in a brief five minutes! First it was Norris, the big center, who was led limping away with something wrong with a shoulder or an arm, and then, after a pile-up, Jim Clary remained on the ground and when time was up was helped off between two substitutes. It was then, I think, that North Bank first saw the shadow of defeat hovering over her. With Clary out of the line, the Light Blue was a poorer team by far. She could have better lost any man in the rush line than Jim. Some predicted comfortingly that he would be back when the last quarter started, but the prediction proved false and Sinclair played the game out at right tackle, and played well but not as Jim would have played. Canton went in for Norris and gained fame that day.

North Bank was less steady in the line after the retirement of Jim and Cumbridge began to make gains where, before, she had met repulses. She took the ball down to North Bank’s twenty-four yards, running the ends for variety, and then was stopped. A forward pass on third down grounded and she tried a placement kick that, fortunately for the Light Blue, failed widely. North Bank opened up with a few tricks late in the quarter and Gray twice got away inside tackle for good gains, while Benson brought every North Bank fellow to his feet with a wide end run, with good interference, that placed the pigskin on Cumbridge’s nineteen yards. That was the Light Blue’s opportunity to even the score, and the cheerers did their part loyally, but something went wrong. Afterwards, some said that Trumbull got his signals crossed and some said that the fault was Nagle’s. The facts never appeared, which was just as well, for even a football hero is human and fallible and accidents will happen, and so why attach the penalty of blame?

An accident happened in this case, for after Benson had made two yards through the Cumbridge center and Gray had failed to find a hole at the right, Trumbull [114]went back to kicking position, the ball was passed to Nagle and there was none to take it! Cumbridge piled through, and Nagle, running back and seeking a chance to toss forward, was downed eight yards behind the line! It was fourth down then, on the twenty-seven, and North Bank played it safe and wisely, and Trumbull sent the ball over the bar for three points.

Three points was so much better than none that the Light Blue cheered exultantly and prolongedly, and accepted the incident as an augury of further success. The quarter, however, ended without further scoring by either side and the teams changed goals. Coach Thorne sent Temple in for Butterfield, but that was the only change he made then. Dick remembered Bert Lodge and tried to pick him out on the bench below, but he couldn’t identify him. Dick just then felt a bit sorry for Bert, for Mr. Thorne had used but three ends so far and Bert’s chance was still distant. But Dick had bigger things to worry about than his roommate and his thoughts speedily went back to them. First, there was the fact that even if Cumbridge failed to add to her present score North Bank would have to do better than secure another field goal, for she would in such case still be a point behind. A touchdown was imperative and some one had to make it inside the next fifteen minutes, and Dick prayed hard that some one would!

Cumbridge pushed her way across the center of the field and then placed the ball on the forty-two yards by [115]means of a short forward pass. A minute later, however, a fumble brought the advance to an end and the ball went to the Light Blue. Benson made four on a split-attack play and Gray got two right through center. Trumbull faked a kick and ran to the left, but was downed for no gain and Nagle punted to the opponent’s seven yards. Again the North Bank ends were slow and the pigskin was brought back to the twenty-one. Cumbridge tried two rushes and kicked. Nagle caught near his thirty-five and made two strides before he was tackled. Again North Bank tried Benson and then Trumbull and then Benson again and made seven yards. Trumbull prepared to kick, but Nagle changed signals and the backs returned to three-abreast formation. But Cumbridge refused to believe her and when Dimond, skirting the line behind, took the ball from Nagle and went on to the right he found a comfortable hole and dashed through for six yards. A bedlam of cheering rewarded that gain. But a few moments later Trumbull was forced to punt and the ball rolled over the goal line and the teams lined up on Cumbridge’s twenty. North Bank chanted “Touchdown! Touchdown! Touchdown!” But the Dark Blue, with a comfortable lead in the scoring, was taking no chances, and on second down she punted out of bounds at North Bank’s forty.

Time was slipping away fast. The twilight of a cloudy day was making the figures at the farther end of the field hazy and uncertain from where Dick sat. Coach Thorne threw in two substitutes, relieving [116]Gray and Hickson. The big left tackle had played a fine game and was about ready to fall. Nevertheless, he fought stubbornly against retirement, so stubbornly that it required the efforts of Trumbull and the umpire to get him off the field.

Some one announced that but six minutes remained, and Dick’s heart sank sickeningly. A moment later it was bobbing about in his mouth, for Nagle had shot a superb forward pass to Benson, and Benson was speeding like a shot along the further side line. With luck, he might have gone half way to the goal, but luck wasn’t smiling on the home team much this afternoon. At Cumbridge’s forty-two yards he was tackled and thrown, and a groan of sorrow went up from the Light Blue stand. Again Nagle threw forward, but this time it was a Dark Blue player who pulled the pigskin out of the air and shot away with it. Dick watched that fleet-footed quarter back despairingly. Time and again he was almost stopped, time and again he stumbled, time and again he was forced toward the side line, yet on he went for what to one watcher at least seemed interminable aeons. In the end he was brought to earth, though. Dick could almost hear his inert body thump against the sod and he was not surprised when, after Benson had unwrapped his arms from the foe, the latter lay where he had fallen. But that quarter back wasn’t made of glass, not he! After a minute he was up again, shaking his head impatiently, thrusting aside the trainer. He had taken the ball thirty-three yards straight through the whole North [117]Bank team, and he wasn’t to be discommoded by a little thing like a hard tackle!

Cumbridge was howling wildly, triumphantly. It was the Dark Blue’s ball on the enemy’s twenty-five and she could see no reason why another touchdown shouldn’t eventuate. But North Bank did see. Cumbridge ripped off five yards on the first try, getting past Dimond. Two rushes took the ball the rest of the distance and made it first down on the fourteen. But there the Light Blue stood fast. Two smashes at the center netted but three yards. A fake forward pass, left half aiming at tackle, added another. Cumbridge set herself for a try-at-goal, or, it might well be, a forward pass. The North Bank stand was silent. Every fellow stood, straining his eyes through the gray murk of evening. Back shot the ball. The player in kicking position held it aloft on one palm and stepped back and to the left. Confused cries filled the air. Bodies shot hither and thither. Then the ball launched forward. Back of the goal a mass of straining arms showed momentarily. A horn squawked ominously. An excitable youth behind Dick shouted: “Game’s over! Game’s over!”

But it wasn’t. Instead a Cumbridge player was nestled to earth back of the North Bank goal with half the opposing team about him. Cumbridge cheered doubtfully. The horn squawked again. The referee had the ball, was stepping back from the ten-yard line. At the fifteen he placed it down. “Cumbridge off-side!” The joyous cry turned into a cheer of relief [118]and the Cumbridge stand became silent. Dick had stopped thinking of victory now. But three minutes remained, maybe less for aught he knew. North Bank couldn’t win. He realized that at last. But, oh, if she could only save herself from the added humiliation of another score! He prayed for that and that only, clasping his hands so tight that his finger nails bit into his palms, stretching himself on toes that trembled.

Two more substitutes were sent into the North Bank line. Then the whistle piped once more and Cumbridge’s signals floated down the field. Back went the kicker again. This time, it seemed, there could be no doubt about it; it was to be a try-at-goal. And it was. But it was only a try, for North Bank, defeated but never so desperate, broke through the enemy line as if it had been of paper and the ball went bounding off up the field!

A dozen players trailed it, reached it, missed it, stumbled, fell, in a veritable comedy of errors. Then one, at last, captured it, strove to run and was pulled down. Cumbridge cheered and North Bank cheered, for at that distance dark blue and light blue were much the same. But it was North Bank’s ball and the teams lined up once more on the thirty-two. Coach Thorne was emptying the bench now. Dick saw Bert Lodge go sprinting on, one hand frantically seeking attention. One by one the veterans came trudging slowly off, limping sometimes, their heads turned to watch the game they were leaving.

“One minute,” some one announced, and: “That’s [119]enough,” declared another. “Just let Benson get away once! We aren’t beaten yet!”

Hope dies hard, and Dick for a moment felt an almost agonized thrill of confidence. Then the lines were swaying together again and some one had shot through for several yards. There was a wait. Some one was down. Then he was up again and again the lines faced each other.

The timekeeper, watch in hand, hovered ominously between side line and players. Something went shooting through the air toward the further side of the gridiron. Forms followed it. A single player ran back and back, followed desperately by a second. The ball came down, was clutched by the first. The two forms went down together close to Cumbridge’s forty-yard line and the field streamed up. The North Bank cheers burst forth imperiously. Another gain like that and victory might yet come to the Light Blue!

Hurriedly North Bank lined up. The timekeeper walked a few steps nearer, his gaze alternating between watch dial and players. Trumbull was going back. Surely not to punt! No, it was another forward! And there went Dimond almost alone! He had it! He had it! He was running now, but two of the foe were close on his heels. If he could make it—A great groan went up from the North Bank stand. He was down! But he had almost reached the twenty, and if there was time—

A horn blatted. The teams drew away from each other. Around Dick fellows were moving and stretching. [120]Across the field the stand was emptying. Dick watched dazedly. Surely it wasn’t over? It couldn’t be. Why, just when another minute would have meant victory? The Cumbridge band was playing loudly and the visitors were forming behind it to march about the trodden field and under the goals. Jimsy’s voice reached Dick as from a long distance.

“Dog-gone the rotten luck!” said Jimsy feelingly.

Beaten! Dick wanted to cry, wanted very badly to cry. But no one else seemed to. Fellows all about him were talking and even laughing, though not very joyously. He wondered how they could. He looked up to find George observing him half smilingly but very understandingly. George put an arm over his shoulders.

“Got to take the bad with the good, youngster,” he said softly. “Our fellows played well and there’s another year coming.”

Dick looked up, swallowed, smiled soberly and nodded. Below them they had started the School Song. Dick joined in, rather tremulously at first and then more strongly. Singing those words seemed to give him courage to stand the disappointment. Jimsy was singing, too; and George. It was something to stand like that, shoulder to shoulder with your comrades, and meet adversity with a brave countenance. Dick’s voice gathered volume and his heart swelled until it hurt him, but the pain was very pleasant.

[121]

A week of cold weather followed, and Maryland’s winter, seldom severe when judged by Northern standards, seemed to have begun nearly a month too early. The crews came off the river and the shells were stowed back in winter quarters. The football gridiron was deserted save for an occasional group of very small youths who disported themselves joyously and noisily with a battered old ball. The tackling dummy was gone from the “gallows” in the corner of the field and would be seen no more until spring. The disreputable old fellow, headless and footless, with a dark blue C painted on the front of his stuffed canvas body, had retired to private life for the while. And so, too, had many of those who had so rudely assaulted him a fortnight back: Trumbull and Benson, Nagle and Norris, and various other erstwhile heroes. Already their fame was waning. Every dog has his day, and the gridiron bulldog must now give place to the lither terrier of the basket-ball floor.

Dick for awhile was one of those terriers.

He had followed Jimsy’s advice and had a heart-to-heart talk with Mr. Tanner, the physical director. Mr. Tanner was a small, broad man with a countenance almost entirely enshrouded in whiskers. He looked [123]rather like a benign old English sheep dog, Dick thought. Dick wanted to know if he might go in for basket ball, and Mr. Tanner asked him why not. Dick soon discovered that the physical director was much fonder of asking questions than answering them. Dick explained that at home he had been told to abstain from all athletic activities calculated to tax his heart unduly. Mr. Tanner said: “Humph! Ever noticed anything wrong with your heart?”

“N—no,” answered Dick. “Only sometimes it—it sort of jumps.”

“Jumps? When?”

“Well, when I get excited, I guess.”

“So does mine. Strip down to your waist.”

Five minutes later Mr. Tanner stopped tapping him and pressing a whiskered cheek ticklingly against his chest and laid aside the funny instrument with two tubes. “All right,” he said, and Dick got his clothes on again. “What sort of things do you want to do?” asked Mr. Tanner.

“I’d like to play basket ball and baseball, sir. And, maybe, next year I’d like to try for football.”

“Never mind next year yet. Basket ball? All right, but don’t overdo it.—Baseball? Certainly.—No reason why you shouldn’t. There’s nothing the matter with your heart, my boy. It’s as good a heart as they make. Lungs are sound, too, but you’ve never given them a chance to develop. You ought to be two inches bigger around the chest. Muscles aren’t bad, either, considering. You’re small, but you’re quite normal. [124]Well built, I’d say. Good bone structure, straight spine. How are your feet? Better take the left shoe off. All right. Put it on again. General health good? Ever have fever? Scarlet fever? Measles? Measles, eh? Much trouble? Good. Well, you’re all right.” Mr. Tanner delivered a hearty blow on Dick’s back that almost upset him. “What you should do is join one of the gymnasium classes. Let’s see.” He drew a book from a corner of his desk and leisurely turned a few pages. “I’ll put you down for F Class. Four-thirty every afternoon but Saturday—and Sunday, of course. We’ll get you breathing right in a month, and put two or three inches on you. Wouldn’t be surprised if we helped you grow a bit, too. Stretch your spine a little. All right. Good morning.”

“Then—then you don’t think,” began Dick.

“Not a bit of it! Pooh, pooh! Some one’s been trying to scare you. Nothing to it, Dodd. Better if you’d done what other fellows do. That’s your main trouble. Haven’t had enough play. A good year behind in development. But we’ll fix that. Easy. Good morning.”

When some one has said good morning to you twice it is time to go. So Dick went, although he had thought of several other questions to ask. On the whole, though, he was quite satisfied. He didn’t know what his folks would say when they learned that he was playing basket ball, but then, maybe he wouldn’t play it. There was nothing certain about it yet. And [125]if he did play, why, perhaps his folks had best not hear of it until he got home at Christmas time. Then he could break the news to them gently.

As it turned out, he didn’t play basket ball. That is not much. He reported with some forty-five other candidates and practiced nearly a week, but he was included in the first cut of the squad. After that he tried to make the junior team, composed of third and fourth class students, and lasted another week. It wasn’t that he didn’t show ability or speed, but he was too small to last long against the other players. Most of them, even those of the junior team, topped him by head and shoulders, and they had a most mortifying way of tossing him about, if he happened to impede their progress over the floor, much as if he had been something that had dropped down from the balcony and didn’t belong there! That was very discouraging, and when he was informed that his connection with the third squad of the junior team was at an end he took it philosophically and retired to splash more witch-hazel on his various bruises.

Jimsy was condoling and sympathetic, but seemed to imply that any one silly enough to try such things deserved disappointment. Dick went regularly to the gymnasium at four-thirty and, in company with some fifteen or sixteen others, performed rather monotonous feats with chest weights, dumb-bells and clubs and contorted his body into strange shapes. After a fortnight, though, the program became more diversified and included interesting stunts with bars and rings, and [126]he spent less time lying on a mattress and waving his legs in the air. Before he went home a few days before Christmas he had, in fact, increased his chest measurement by one and a half inches and could breathe in a manner never before conceived of!

But there were other things beside physical development to engage his thoughts. There were, for instance, studies. Following the end of the football season, Dick had discovered that all was not well with the relationship existing between him and certain of his instructors. The fact was forcibly impressed upon him when he was invited to visit the office of the principal and there discuss the subject of preparation. It seemed that mathematics and English were not, according to the reports received, getting as much attention from Dick as, in the opinion of Doctor Heidler, they deserved. The discussion was quite amicable. The Doctor was reasonable. He acknowledged to Dick that there was a temptation on first entering school to lose sight of the more important business and to become too greatly concerned with such fascinating things as football and similar interests. He added, however, that they looked for a change about this time; indeed, rather insisted on it! Dick couldn’t think of any good reason why they shouldn’t, and so there was no argument. He went away a bit chastened and resolved to improve, and since improvement depended principally on devoting more time to study he succeeded. Jimsy, who had also been riding for a fall, followed his example, although he didn’t, as he frankly explained, [127]believe in taking the bread out of his preceptors’ mouths.

“If a fellow learns everything before he goes into class,” said Jimsy, “what good’s the instructor? First thing he knows he won’t have any job. Best way’s to divide the work, Dick. You learn part of the stuff and the instructor teaches you the rest. Live and let live, that’s my motto.”

Fortunately, aside from a fortnight of basket-ball endeavor, there wasn’t much to prevent a decent application to studies, and Dick was soon back on terms of mutual respect with the faculty. The month that intervened between the Cumbridge game and the holidays was devoid of great events, even of excitement, although there was one interesting incident to break the not unpleasant monotony. That concerned Bert Lodge.

Bert had won his football letters, but the fact had not seemed to improve his disposition. Bert’s outlook on life remained as pessimistic as ever and his regard for Dick was no warmer. It must be acknowledged, though, that Bert was a trifle less obnoxious after the football season was over. Either that or Dick had become callous. Bert had struck up a sort of friendship with a senior named Walker. Walker had been a substitute guard and, like Bert, had won his letters by two minutes of play in the last period of the Cumbridge game, a fact which perhaps brought them together. Walker was also a crew candidate, and Bert informed Jimsy one evening, in a burst of unprecedented [128]confidence, that he guessed he would go in for rowing after the holidays. The emphasis is Bert’s. Jimsy looked extraordinarily grave and replied, “That’ll be fine, Lodge,” adding hopefully in the next breath, “You can’t swim, can you?” Bert seemed slightly puzzled, but said that he could, and the glad light in Jimsy’s face faded.

Of course Bert knew of Dick’s basket ball ambitions, and, although he seldom if ever looked in on practice, he possessed an uncanny knowledge of his roommate’s progress—or, rather, lack of progress. Consequently, Dick had to stand a good deal of malicious joking on the subject; although perhaps joking is too charitable a word to use. When Dick retired from basket ball activities Bert spent a full quarter of an hour condoling with him, and Dick wanted very much to hurl a dictionary at him.

Then, one night, Bert happened to catch Dick in the act of inflating his lungs and observing the result, with considerable satisfaction, in the glass. That gave the older boy a new idea, and after that Dick was continually twitted about his physical development. Bert pretended to detect a striking likeness between Dick and a certain gentleman whose portraits adorned the advertising pages of the magazines, a gentleman with a chest like a pouter pigeon’s and muscles that would have shamed Samson himself. Bert declared that Dick might have sat for that picture, it was so like him! He envied despairingly what he called Dick’s manly strength and hoped that some day he, too, would be [129]big and powerful and able to break matches between his fingers! Dick never dared so much as glance at his reflection in the mirror after that, for fear that Bert would see him and start nagging. One evening some ten days before the end of the term Dick went up to Jimsy’s room about nine o’clock looking so close to tears that Jimsy noticed and questioned. George was not there and Dick found relief in pouring out the tale of his woes. He had had to study pretty hard that evening, and Bert had been at him more than half the time, and he hadn’t learned a thing for to-morrow, and Mr. Logan would jump on him, and—and he was just tired of the whole thing! What between some difficult problems in algebra and Bert’s attentions he was quite pathetically unnerved.

Jimsy was silent awhile. Then he said decisively, “Dick, we’ve got to stop that fellow’s nonsense. The time’s come!”

“How are we going to do it?” asked Dick dolefully.

“Don’t know yet. We’ll have to think of a way. We’ve got to get something on him so that when he starts to rag you you’ll have a comeback. Shut up and let me think. What’s the guy’s big weakness, Dick?”

“You told me to shut up,” answered Dick, smiling wanly.

“I want you to, son. I’m just thinking aloud. Let’s see now. Conceit? Surest thing you know! That’s the lay! Wait a minute!”

Dick had to wait more minutes than one before [130]Jimsy, with an exclamation of glad triumph, seized a block of paper and began to write. Dick refrained from intruding on his frenzy, and at last Jimsy, smiling modestly, handed the result across. Dick read the effusion, doubtfully at first, and then with a chuckle of appreciation. We won’t concern ourselves with what he read, for it was but the first rough draft of the finished article. Drawing a chair beside Jimsy’s, Dick lent his enthusiastic aid and counsel, and word by word, line by line, the composition was amended until at last the two leaned back in triumph. Then Jimsy read it aloud. It bore an address in New York City, was dated two days later and ran as follows:

Bertram Lodge, Esq.,
North Bank School,
North Bank, Md.

Dear Sir:

It is the intention of the publishers of Who’s Who on the Gridiron to make the coming volume more comprehensive than ever, and to this end it will be extended to include those players of the more important preparatory institutions who have made their marks during the past season. Every effort will be made to keep the volume at the same standard of excellence, however, and to maintain its value as an authoritative reference. Your name has been suggested to us as one deserving inclusion in the forthcoming edition, and, should the plan meet your approval, we would be grateful if you would favor us with a brief sketch of your career, more especially that portion concerning your school life and athletic success. Such sketch [131]should not exceed two hundred words and should include place and date of birth, height, weight, and all particulars of your football activities. If possible this information should be accompanied by a photograph of yourself, preferably in football costume, suitable for reproduction.

As this invitation is of necessity extended to but a very limited number of representative football notables, you are asked to treat it as confidential, whether you decide to accept it or not. The acceptance places you under no obligation. You will, of course, want a copy of Who’s Who on the Gridiron when ready. The price to contributors is $1.50, and that amount may be sent with your sketch and, we hope, photograph. The book will be forwarded to you by post as soon as published. If, however, you do not find it convenient to make payment in advance, a written acceptance of this offer will suffice, and you will be notified when your copy is ready for delivery to you.

Trusting that we shall be favored with an early and favorable reply, we beg to remain,

The Editors,
Who’s Who on the Gridiron.

Kindly address your letter and all later communications to Gerald P. Thompson, Chief-of-Staff.

“It’s simply corking!” gurgled Dick. “But do you think he will fall for it?”

“Like a ton of bricks,” answered Jimsy confidently. “And I’ll bet he will send half a dozen photographs, too!”

“I don’t believe he has any,” said Dick doubtfully.

[132]

“Then he’ll have some taken,” chuckled Jimsy. “Why, say, that letter would fool any one! I’ll copy it off to-morrow morning on Ducker’s typewriter. I wish, though, we had a sheet of paper with printing on it. You know, ‘Editorial Offices of Who’s Who on the Gridiron,’ or something like that. But we’ll have to make the best of it. He won’t think about that, probably. I’ll write a note to Thompson to go with this and tell him to be on the watch for a letter, and send it to me as soon as it comes. Oh my, oh my, what a rag! If only it goes right, Dick, that chump downstairs won’t dare to open his mouth again while he’s in school!”

Three days passed during which the conspirators watched and waited. The letter to Bert Lodge from Who’s Who on the Gridiron should have reached him by that time, unless, as Jimsy owned was not impossible, Gerald Thompson was away from home. Nothing occurred to indicate that the letter had come. It was easy enough for Bert to receive it without Dick’s knowledge, but Dick was pretty certain that he hadn’t. Then, on the fourth day, their anxiety was set at rest. Returning to Number 12 about half past two, Dick saw the letter on the table, spread out at Bert’s elbow. Bert was writing a reply. There could be no doubt as to that, for every few moments the scribe re-read portions of the letter, always laying it aside again with every indication of satisfaction. In fact, it seemed to Dick that Bert would have been highly elated had his roommate referred to the letter and so given him an excuse for exhibiting it. He moved it about the table as though seeking to draw Dick’s attention to it while the latter was busy at the other side with his books, and Dick, inwardly convulsed with mirth, had hard work keeping his face straight. He hurried off to find Jimsy and impart the glad tidings, leaving Bert still struggling importantly with his answer.

[134]

The next afternoon Bert was seen making his way to the railway station with a large bundle under one arm. That the bundle contained his football togs and that he was on his way to Annapolis and a photographer was quite beyond question, and Jimsy and Dick fairly hugged each other. That evening Bert moved about in a mood of exaltation and pride, a strangely benign mood that knew naught of nagging. He hummed happily and, instead of studying, sat for long minutes staring into space, his saturnine visage fairly transformed by the radiant pictures his mind was conjuring up.

The following day Gerald Thompson was heard from. Gerald, an erstwhile crony of Jimsy’s, was most complacent. He said he hoped the joke was a good one and that Jimsy must tell him about it when they met. Meanwhile here was the letter, and Jimsy would kindly note that he had to pay postage like any one else and so settle up like a gentleman when the business was concluded. Eagerly Jimsy slit an end of the enclosed envelope. The missive that he drew forth was, at first glance, disappointingly brief, but a perusal of it brought only satisfaction. Here, shorn of salutation, is what Bert had written:

I’ll be pleased to be represented in your publication, as per yours of Dec. 15. I am preparing the sketch and will forward it within a day or two. Also photographs. There will be two of these. Please select the one you consider the best for publication and return the other to me soon. Put me down for a copy of [135]the book and let me know when it is ready and I will send the money. Trusting this will be satisfactory,

Respectfully,

Bertram C. Lodge.

P. S. The sketch and photos will surely reach you within four days, so don’t forget me. B. C. L.

“Isn’t it a scream?” demanded Jimsy joyously. “Did he fall for it? Oh, no, he didn’t fall! He—he just collapsed! Oh, boy, when we get those photos!”

“What’ll we do with them?” asked Dick, grinning with anticipation.

“Do with them? Why—” Jimsy stopped and his smile languished. “Gee, I don’t know, Dick. We might put them on the notice board in Hall, eh? No, I guess that would be too raw. Well, I don’t know as we can do much with the photos. It’s the letter we want, the sketch of his football activities. Wonder if he’ll own up to playing only a minute and a half in the Cumbridge game. Bet you he’ll get around that somehow, Dick! Has he got the photos yet?”

“I don’t believe so. It takes about a week, generally, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe, but friend Lodge isn’t going to let it take any week this time. He’s scared blue the Who’s Who folks won’t wait for him. Did you get that pathetic postscript? ‘Don’t forget me!’ Oh, we won’t, Bertram, we won’t!”

The photographs must have arrived when Dick wasn’t about. Or perhaps, unnoticed, Bert made a second trip to Annapolis and got them from the photographer. [136]Jimsy favored the latter theory, adding that Bert had doubtless taken the sketch with him to town and mailed it with the photographs there. As for the sketch, Dick had watched its composition fascinatedly during two evenings, what time he should have been studying. Bert had labored hard with it, had written and erased, had corrected, amended, deleted, extended, copied and recopied. He had gazed unseeingly at the wall, had writhed and groaned and sighed, had written feverishly, had written falteringly, had, on one occasion, caused Dick’s heart to sink by savagely tearing up the entire result of an hour’s labor. Dick had not been present at the triumph of completion, but that that stage had been reached was beyond doubt, just as it was beyond doubt that the photographs had been received, for on the Monday preceding the Wednesday of exodus came a second consignment from Gerald Thompson. Gerald drew attention to the obvious fact that he had had to put four two-cent stamps on the package and hoped to hear from Jimsy soon.

In the seclusion of Jimsy’s room the package was opened amidst a breathless silence and the contents revealed. The conspiracy had succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. There were two panel photographs of Bert in football attire. In one he was standing, his feet slightly apart, his hands on his hips, against a vista of meadow and forest that recalled the backgrounds of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ masterpieces. Bert wore a stern, heroic expression, and the beholder felt [137]at once that here was one of those brilliant, hard playing, hard fighting youths whom the writers of football fiction took for their heroes. Even Jimsy was momentarily impressed and said “Gee!” half under his breath in unwilling admiration. The second portrait showed Bert in a more careless, genial moment. He was seated, staring smilingly at the beholder, a football clasped carelessly to his stomach and one hand resting negligently on a khaki-clad knee. Before him lay head guard and nose guard, as though, having led his companions to victory a moment before, he had thrown them aside for an instant’s relaxation. This latter photograph was less impressive, although, as Dick pointed out, it was even more remarkable than the other, inasmuch as it portrayed the hero good-natured and smiling. Jimsy said they were both “corkers” and that he wouldn’t take a hundred dollars for them!

But the masterpiece, when all was said and done, was the “brief sketch of your career.” Jimsy read it aloud unctuously.

Bertram Charles Lodge

North Bank School, North Bank, Md.

Born Ellsworth, Pa., June 9, 1904. Attended school in Ellsworth and became prominent in athletic circles. Founded the Keystone Junior Athletic Club, 1917. Captain Ellsworth Grammar School Baseball Team, 1918. Played on Ellsworth Grammar School Football team two years, during which period Ellsworth defeated all teams of its weight. Entered North Bank School, [138]1919. Played with freshman team and made the School Second the next year. Joined the School Team last autumn, playing end. Missed taking part in early season games because of illness. Played left end against Cumbridge School. Height, 5 ft. 8 in. Weight, 136 lbs.

Lodge is an unusually brilliant player for his years, his style reminding the spectator strongly of the renowned Pierson of undying fame. Although light, he is particularly strong on offense, and his speed is phenomenal. He is a heady player, always diagnosing the enemy’s intentions with certainty. His ability as an end was finely exemplified in the North Bank-Cumbridge game when he was never once stopped when carrying the ball and never missed a tackle. He also displayed an all-round brilliancy worthy of a more experienced player. This promising player will undoubtedly make even more of a name for himself next year.

“Gee!” breathed Dick. “He’s pretty good, after all, isn’t he?”

“He is the way he tells it,” answered Jimsy, grinning. “Wait a sec. Let’s count the words.” After a moment he added: “Just two hundred and one! Say, it’s like him to try and sneak over an extra word on us!”

“Well, maybe he didn’t count right,” said Dick charitably. “Or maybe you didn’t. He—he writes pretty well, doesn’t he?”

“Great! I’ll bet he sweated blood over this! That about reminding the spectator of the renowned Pierson [139]is a little bit of all right. Say, who the dickens is Pierson? Ever hear of him?”

Dick shook his head. “Some one before our time, I suppose.”

“Must be. Well, we’ve certainly got the goods on Brother Bert! Now the question is what’s to be done with these photos.”

“I think we ought to send them back,” said Dick.

Jimsy considered long, holding them before him and gazing admiringly upon them. “Well, I don’t know but that you’re right, Dick. We sort of got them by false pretenses. How would it do to write and tell him that they’re both so good we couldn’t choose between them, and so we’re sending them both back?”

“It doesn’t sound just right, somehow.”

“What do we care how it sounds now? We should worry! That’s what we’ll do. Now let’s read this sketch once more. Say, Lodge would make a fine press agent, wouldn’t he? Do you know, Dick, I believe he could be almost as great a publicity man as he is a football player?”

Now that the deed was done, Dick had misgivings. After all, it didn’t seem quite fair. Even if Bert was a pest, and worse than a pest, the trick they had played on him looked, now that it was accomplished, rather mean and small. That thought did not, however, seem to occur to Jimsy. Jimsy re-read the sketch and commented and chuckled, and in the end it was pinned to Bert’s letter and laid safely away in a drawer.

“I don’t believe,” said Jimsy contentedly, “that we’ll [140]ever have to show those to any one. Fact is, I’d rather hate to, Dick. I’d do it, though, if I had to, all right. But I fancy Brother Bert will take the hint and be good!”

Strangely, though, Brother Bert was good without any hints. Perhaps elation over inclusion in the forthcoming volume of Who’s Who on the Gridiron sweetened his disposition, or perhaps he was too concerned with the approaching recess to bother with Dick. At all events the few remaining days passed without further nagging, and Dick had no excuse to make capital of the secret documents. This rather disappointed Jimsy, but up to the very moment of leaving for home he remained hopeful. “You wait till he gets those photos back again,” advised Jimsy. “Then he won’t be so sweet tempered.” But the photographs didn’t return. Perhaps Gerald Thompson was away from home, or perhaps he had decided to render no further service until he had been reimbursed for postage. Be that as it may, the end of the term arrived and North Bank was practically depopulated one forenoon, and Bert went off to Ellsworth, Pennsylvania, still convinced of his fame.

Dick and Jimsy parted in Baltimore, each regretful. Still, as Jimsy said, vacation lasted only eleven days and they’d soon be together again! Jimsy sent Dick a silver pencil at Christmas—silver pencils were much in vogue that winter—and Dick sent Jimsy a silver pencil, too. As each wanted one, each was pleased. Dick saw Alan Linscott just once during recess, which [141]was later explained by the fact that Alan had spent but three days with his folks, going to Joe Whittier’s for the rest of the time. The one sight of Alan was brief, occurring on Main street the afternoon before Christmas Day. Whether Alan saw him, Dick didn’t know. If he did there was certainly no recognition forthcoming. Fortunately, Dick’s father and mother took it for granted that he and Alan were friendly at North Bank, and so Dick was spared embarrassing explanations that, he feared, would have aroused Mr. Linscott’s ire and might have made unpleasantness for Alan. And even if it seemed to him that Alan hadn’t been altogether courteous, he didn’t want to be the cause of any trouble for him. Dick was faithful in his allegiance still.

Dick had a very pleasant visit at home, renewed old acquaintanceships, attended several parties, posed a bit quite unconsciously and finally, one cloudy, wintry morning, set off again for school. Although at school he had often and often wished himself at home, now, having been home ten days, he was impatient to be back at school. The fact came to his notice, but he didn’t trouble himself to explain it.

He got back to Number 12 Baldwin House to find that Bert Lodge had not yet arrived, a fact that caused him no regrets. Even if Bert never arrived he would, he told himself, manage to survive and even derive some pleasure from life! Having set his bag down, he contemplated running upstairs to see if Jimsy had come, for their carefully arranged plan to meet in Baltimore had miscarried. Then he decided to get unpacked and settled down before Bert’s arrival complicated the process, and a minute later, placing some books on the table, his glance roved to Bert’s side of it and fell on a largish brown-paper packet. He didn’t need to look at the address to know what the packet contained, but he did. Bert’s photographs, rejected by Who’s Who on the Gridiron, had arrived by mail during his absence and been placed on the table. Dick resolved to be absent from the room when Bert found them!

Ten minutes later he climbed the stairs to Number 33 and discovered George Ferry admiring a new lacrosse stick that had come to him at Christmas. George hailed Dick with evident pleasure, shook his hand warmly and dragged him down to the window seat beside him, inviting his admiration of the crosse. [143]Jimsy, it appeared, had not yet put in his appearance. But he arrived not many minutes later to drop a big kit-bag, alarmingly new and hugely monogramed, inside the door and strike an attitude depicting some strong emotion, possibly joy. When quiet had again fallen—comparative quiet, that is—Jimsy told a moving tale of missed connections and a long and fruitless search for Dick in the Baltimore station, while George, having produced a hard rubber ball, was running it tentatively up and down the new stick, registering supreme satisfaction in his sober way. Later, Dick told Jimsy about the photographs, adding: “You’ve got to go down with me when I go back, Jimsy. I’m scared to go in there alone. He will be wild, I guess!”

But he wasn’t. They found him sullen, sarcastic and generally unpleasant, but no furniture was broken and he didn’t attempt to bite any one. The packet was gone from the table. Jimsy stayed long enough to assure himself that no bodily danger threatened Dick, and then returned upstairs to unpack. It was an unpleasant feeling of guilt that prompted Dick, when Jimsy had departed, to ask in a friendly tone: “Have a good time, Bert?”

“No, I cried all the time I was gone,” replied the other with snarling sarcasm. “Why wouldn’t I have a good time, you silly little fool? Say, you been mussing around my side of the table? I left a tin box here when I went away with—”

“It’s on your dresser,” said Dick calmly.

“Oh! Well, I didn’t leave it there. You quit moving [144]my things about, kid, or I’ll rumple that nice slick hair of yours. Was mama glad to see her little darling?”

“I didn’t touch your box,” said Dick warmly. “And never mind my mother, Bert.”

“Gosh, we’re touchy, aren’t we? They must have fed you raw meat, kid. You’ll be stronger than ever, eh? How are the little muscles coming on? Take a long breath for papa and let him see little Sweetie’s chest expand!”

“Cut that out, won’t you?” asked Dick patiently. “Let’s start the term fresh, Bert, and see if we can’t get on without—without that sort of thing.”

Bert stared in surprise. “You’re starting it fresh, all right,” he ejaculated. “Listen to me, young whippersnapper, if you don’t like what I say, why, you can”—Bert had to think a moment—“you can lump it! Talk’s free here and I say what I please.” Bert grinned. Then he scowled disgustedly. “Gosh, it’s tough enough, anyway, being stuck with a little two-for-a-nickel runt like you always under my nose! Why didn’t they keep you at home where you belong when they had you there?”

Dick was silent a moment. Then he said pleasantly: “I’ll tell you, Bert, why they didn’t. I wanted to stay, but my father wouldn’t let me. He said if I was ever to be like Pierson I’d have to go back and finish.”

“Pierson?” said Bert. “Who’s Pierson?”

“Why, the renowned Pierson,” answered Dick innocently.

[145]

Bert stared hard, puzzled.

“Of undying fame,” added Dick casually.

Bert shot a glance toward the table and then returned an uncertainly suspicious glare on Dick. Two small red disks showed over his cheek bones. He opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it and closed it. Dick viewed him calmly. Finally, “Say, you’re crazy, I guess,” muttered Bert. He dropped his gaze and turned silently to his dresser and began a rather feverish rearrangement of the contents of the top drawer. Dick, inwardly smiling, outwardly grave, picked up a magazine with which he had passed the time on the train and pretended to read. But he only pretended, and Bert’s frequent puzzled glances over his shoulder were not lost on him. After many minutes Bert spoke again.

“Where’d you get this stuff about Pierson?” he growled.

“Eh?” Dick looked up a bit vacantly. “Pierson? Oh, every one knows Pierson. The renowned Pierson, you know.” He dropped his gaze to the magazine once more. He heard Bert gulp. Then the drawer was shut very softly, in defiance of Bert’s usual manner of closing a drawer, and again there was silence. Dick peeked over the top of a page. Bert was standing motionless by the dresser, his gaze fixed thoughtfully, frowningly on the wall. After awhile he moved suddenly toward the table, drew out the drawer there and, out of sight of his companion, slipped something from the drawer to his coat pocket. He seemed to feel more [146]comfortable then, for he cleared his throat loudly, kicked a chair out of the way and left the room, pulling his cap down with a gorgeous assumption of ease.

Left alone, Dick winked gravely at the closed door. Then he tossed the magazine aside, laughed, stretched and jumped to his feet.

“Got to tell Jimsy,” he chuckled.

Jimsy dropped in at Number 12 that evening after supper. He wasn’t in the habit of doing that, for he didn’t take much pleasure from Bert Lodge’s society and Bert never failed to indicate his distaste for Jimsy’s. To-night, though, Jimsy made the visit gladly, in spite of the fact that he knew Bert would be in. The latter’s greeting was as ungracious as usual.

“Hello, Ravenous,” he said with his unpleasant smile. “You back, too?”

“Back again, Logical!”

“Don’t get fresh,” warned Bert. “Fellows who get fresh get put out.”

“Not me,” answered Jimsy cheerfully. “It takes a lot to put me out, I’m that good-natured.” Jimsy sank into a chair and smiled blandly about him. “Have a good time, Lodge?”

“I sure did! A whale of a time! Spent Christmas in the city.”

“What city’s that?”

“Philadelphia.”

“Oh, well, I like a quiet time, too.”

“Is that so?” snarled Bert. “I suppose you had a wild time in the country where you were!”

[147]

“No, things were quiet there, but I wasn’t home long. Just over Christmas. Spent the rest of the time with Pierson.”

Bert jerked his head up and shot a startled look at Jimsy.

“Who—what—who’s he?” he asked anxiously.

“Pierson? Never heard of him? Why, the fellow’s famous, renowned. One of the greatest football players of the century, Lodge. Guess you’ve got a rotten memory!”

Bert glared for an instant. Then he swallowed hard and looked away. Jimsy continued chattily. “Nice fellow, Pierson,” he confided to Dick. “Unaffected, too. Modest, you know. You’d never think he was any one at all to listen to him.”

“Really?” asked Dick. “You’d rather expect a fellow like Pierson to be stuck-up, wouldn’t you?” From the corner of his eye he could see Bert watching them, his lowering, disquieted gaze moving from Jimsy to him and back to Jimsy.

“Rather!” agreed Jimsy. “That’s what I liked about him, though, his—his naturalness. No airs at all, Dick. Just like you or me or Lodge, say. Do you know, Lodge, you—” Jimsy half closed his eyes and cocked his head on one side—“you sort of remind me of him?”

“Never you mind about that!” snarled Bert. “You fellows think you’re pretty smart, don’t you? Reading other folks’ letters! You’re—you’re a couple of little sneaks!”

[148]

“Them’s hard words!” exclaimed Jimsy with great surprise. “Whatever do you mean?”

“You know what I mean!” Bert’s angry gaze sped to Dick. “You little bounder, you got into my desk! Yes, you did! I never left that letter around!”

“Letter!” echoed Dick. “Why, Bert, I never went near your desk! What letter do you mean?”

“You’re lying! If I——”

“My, my!” interrupted Jimsy reprovingly. “You oughtn’t to say such things, Lodge. Pierson would never talk like that!”

Bert choked, his sallow face red with anger. He started to speak but stopped, his mouth open, as a crafty expression crept into his eyes. His mouth closed into a sardonic grin and he laughed. “You fellows think you’ve got something on me, don’t you?” he asked jeeringly.

“The whole episode,” murmured Jimsy, looking questioningly at Dick, “leaves me at a loss. I merely mentioned Pierson, a fellow of undying fame, and Lodge flies quite off the handle!”

Bert flinched, but laughed again contemptuously. “Go on, you smart Alick! I don’t mind. What you saw was just something I was writing for a joke, a—a—”

“A sort of brief sketch of your career?” asked Jimsy helpfully.

“Go to thunder!” snapped Bert. “You fellows think you’re mighty clever, but you’ve got nothing on me, nothing at all!”

[149]

“But we never said we had!” expostulated Jimsy.

“Anyway, no one would believe you,” added Bert triumphantly.

“We wouldn’t expect anyone to,” said Jimsy calmly. “That is, not without documentary evidence.”

“Sure,” agreed Bert. “And a copy wouldn’t be evidence!”

“No, that’s so. One would need the originals.”

Jimsy’s gaze and Bert’s held for a long, silent moment. Then Bert’s eyes fell. He laughed a bit discordantly and shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, you make me sick, Ravenel,” he growled. “You don’t know anything about it. Go on and spring your joke. No one will believe you.”

“I do wish I knew what you were talking about,” said Jimsy plaintively. “I come in to have a chat with Dick and you get all excited and queer. What was it we were talking about, Dick? Oh, I know, Pierson! I was telling Dick about the renowned Pierson when you—”

“Oh, shut up!” bellowed the harassed victim. He jumped up and seized his cap. “Go on and jabber, you—you little fools!” He strode to the door and jerked it open. “I don’t have to listen to you!” The door closed with a crash.

“First,” murmured Jimsy, “he tells us to shut up and then he tells us to go on! Most bewildering!”

Dick laughed, and then sobered. “Do you think he knows that we have the—the sketch, Jimsy?” he asked.

Jimsy nodded. “I think he do, Dick, I think he do. [150]And what’s bothering him more than anything else right now is curiosity, consuming curiosity! He’s trying mighty hard to dope out how we can have the stuff he mailed to New York, and he will hatch more—more theories than enough before he’s through. But—” Jimsy arose, stretched luxuriously and smiled contentedly—“but I think, Dick, that we’ve cut his spurs. Unless I’m much mistaken Brother Bert is going to sing small for a long while!”

That, in fact, is just what Bert did do. For days afterward it was apparent to Dick that his roommate was still seeking an explanation. Glancing up while at study, Dick frequently encountered Bert’s gaze fixed questioningly on him, and there were times when it seemed that Bert was going to yield to curiosity and ask outright what he was dying to know. But Bert never did. Only twice after that evening of Jimsy’s visit did Dick have to introduce the word “Pierson” into his discourse. Bert accepted the bargain. He gathered that so long as he was careful not to displease Dick the brief sketch would remain unseen of the public and the name of the renowned “Pierson, of undying fame” would remain taboo. It wasn’t easy for Bert to live up to his part of the implied agreement, for the incident had not increased his affection for Dick, and the habit of being disagreeable died hard, but he did succeed fairly well. Life in Number 12 did not become exactly joyous for Dick, but, at least, he was spared the constant heckling that had made it a misery.

[151]

Whether Bert guessed that the affair of Who’s Who on the Gridiron had been a hoax or whether he expected the volume ultimately to appear neither Dick nor Jimsy ever knew. Nor did they much care. The deception, of which each was, I think, a little bit ashamed, had accomplished its purpose and, in so far as his relations with Dick were concerned—yes, and with Jimsy, too—Bert Lodge was a chastened youth. Perhaps in the course of time Bert would have outlived his fear of ridicule and returned to his old form as a pest. That will never be known, for in February occurred an incident that changed the course of Dick’s affairs amazingly.

A letter from home summoned Jimsy away from North Bank the last week in January. His father was dangerously ill with influenza and it was thought best that Jimsy should be at home. There was a good deal of influenza that winter, although no case of it had developed at school. Dick’s mother had had a slight attack, and each letter from her recorded the severe illness, once the death, of a near neighbor. Jimsy went off very hurriedly one Friday forenoon looking grave and anxious. Dick and George went to the station with him and waved him good-by as the electric train went on toward Baltimore. Jimsy had promised to write as soon as he got home, and, of course, he would be back again before long. But Dick was rather down in the mouth as he and George walked back to school over the hard and rutted road. The weather had been severely cold for more than a fortnight, and to-day a blustering wind buffeted them rudely and forced Dick to put his bare hands in his pockets for warmth and to step out briskly at George’s side. The prospect of shelter and a good dinner raised his drooping spirits toward the last of the journey, and after dinner he managed to forget Jimsy’s absence [153]for a while. But life threatened to be pretty dull, and was.

There was no word from Jimsy until Tuesday. Then he wrote cheerfully that his father was out of danger, although “the old boy” was still pretty sick, and that he wasn’t returning until Sunday. The letter was addressed to George, but there were many messages to Dick, and so, after all, it was quite like getting a letter himself. He remained in Number 33 quite a while after the letter was read, and he and George talked about the absent one and about lots of things while the shadows deepened over the room and the lights appeared one by one in Ellicot. When Dick finally left, apologizing for staying so long, George was very nice.

“Long?” he repeated. “Nonsense! Glad to have had you, Dick. Come any time and stay as long as you like. Jimsy says you and Lodge don’t get along very well, so don’t think you have to stay down there just because Jimsy’s not here. If I’m busy you won’t mind if I don’t talk. Just make yourself at home. I sort of miss Jimsy, and it’ll be nice to have someone around.”

Dick made the most of the invitation during the rest of the week. He got in the habit of taking his books up to Number 33 and studying, stretched out on the window seat, while George occupied his place at the table and bent over his own books. Such visits always ended in a lazy, leisurely talk that Dick thoroughly enjoyed. George’s topics of conversation were [154]different from Jimsy’s; usually more serious; usually more interesting. It was quite remarkable what weighty matters they discussed at such times, and Dick always departed feeling not a little proud that George, who was two years older and far more experienced, should enjoy discussing them with him.

One evening Dick confided his secret sorrow, which was his inability to “do something.” “Mr. Tanner said I might play basket ball and baseball, but I tried basket ball and didn’t have any sort of a chance, and I guess it will be just the same in the spring. I’m too small. I might get on a scrub team, I suppose. Maybe I can make the Baldwin team, but I doubt it. Jimsy says the fellows on the house nines last year were all pretty old and big. There doesn’t seem to be anything I can do!”

“You’ve got two years after this,” responded George consolingly. “Most fellows don’t get into anything until their third year. You’ll probably be considerably larger next fall. You keep up the gymnasium work, Dick, it’s fine stuff for you. You might try lacrosse in the autumn. Size isn’t a very great factor there. If you have lots of speed and can keep going, all you’ll need to do is learn stick work and a few things. Lacrosse is the best game there is, Dick, and I think you’d like it. You could have a try this spring, for that matter, but I wouldn’t advise it. In the first place, you need training; and then, in the spring a new candidate hasn’t the chance that he has in the fall. There isn’t the time then to try out new men. If you think [155]seriously of it, I’d advise you to join the track workers in March and develop your speed and your wind. You’ll need good lungs for lacrosse. And then keep up the training during the summer. Do a few sprints every week and jog a mile, maybe, every two or three days. Of course, I’ll help you any way I can, especially in the fall.”

“I’d like it a lot,” replied Dick warmly. “If I did that I wouldn’t try for baseball at all, George. I’d just put in all my time at running.”

“Well, don’t overdo it. You’re quite a youngster yet. Take it easy, that’s the wisest way. Tell the track trainer what you want to do and he will work out a schedule for you.”

Dick was quite cheered up by the possibility of lacrosse and went back to gymnasium work the next day with increased interest. Now that the drudgery might lead to something it seemed far more worth while. On Saturday, though, there was no gymnasium class, and when dinner was over he found himself at a loose end. Outdoors the sun was shining brightly enough, but there was a regular gale blowing out of the west and the thermometer showed the mercury hovering around thirty. It was no day for a walk, Dick decided, for he detested being blown about. A little after two he went up to Number 33 and ran into George at the door.

“Hullo,” said the latter, who was capped and sweatered. “Sorry, Dick, but I’m just going out. I promised to paddle Browning over to Ferndale. He’s going [156]over to spend the evening with some friends and I told him I’d save him the trip by rail. Want to come along?”

Dick hesitated. He had seen the river from his window not ten minutes before, and the idea of being tossed about by whitecapped waves and assailed by the cold wind wasn’t appealing. Nevertheless, he would have accepted if George hadn’t rescinded the invitation the next instant.

“Guess you’d better not, though,” said George. “It’s fairly rough and it’ll be hard going. Three might be one too many, Dick. I’ll be back in an hour or so. Drop around, won’t you?”

Dick agreed and parted from George on the floor below, returning disconsolately to Number 12. Now that he couldn’t go, it seemed to him that he had wanted to badly. He picked up a book and tried to read, but couldn’t. Presently he was on his feet again, wandering about the room. He felt blue and lonely, so lonely that he almost wished that Bert would come in! From the window he looked past the Hall to the sunlit Severn. From shore to shore and for as far as he could see downstream, the surface of the river, very blue to-day under the wind-swept sky, was dancing with whitecaps. It looked decidedly rough, Dick thought, although he had frequently seen the waves much bigger. He tried to discern Bert’s canoe—or, rather, Browning’s—but it was not in sight. Probably the Hall hid it from his view, since Ferndale, which wasn’t a town but only a community of a dozen scattered [157]residences, lay across the river in that direction. They would probably paddle straight toward the stone landing over there, keeping the sea on the stern quarter. Dick didn’t know a great deal about canoes and canoeing—only what little he had learned on such occasions as he and Jimsy had been able to borrow a craft for some excursion—but it seemed to him that when it came to getting back alone George would have his hands full. Dick got a bit uneasy, watching the antics of wind and current, and recalled dimly a remark that Jimsy had once made when they had been discussing swimming. Dick wasn’t certain whether Jimsy had said that his roommate didn’t swim at all or that he didn’t swim well. No one who didn’t swim strongly, Dick thought sternly, had any business in a canoe on a day like this. George had been crazy to try such a stunt, even for Rod Browning. Browning was a corking fellow, the sort that made you eager to do things for him, but he oughtn’t to let George make that return trip alone. If Jimsy was here he would have stopped him. Dick wished Jimsy was here!

Half an hour later, after another determined but unsuccessful attempt to find interest in the book, Dick put on his coat-sweater under his jacket, pulled his cap down tightly and left the room. He just couldn’t stay indoors any longer. There were very few fellows in sight. Voices, borne on the gale, came to him around the corner from the volley-ball court as he left the house and took the curving path past McCrea. [158]A fellow curled up amidst cushions in one of the first floor windows tapped on the pane and waved to him. Dick waved and went on to the end of the gravel and then toward the grove of trees by the river bank. The wind wasn’t so bad here, for the plantation held many evergreens and they provided some shelter. He passed through the fringe of the grove and found the spot where Jimsy and he had loafed one afternoon in the fall. He remembered watching the crews come out and go gliding up the river, remembered that Jimsy had been fashioning rabbit snares of long black horsehair, snares that had caught no rabbits but that had provided a deal of fun. He sat down on the slope of the bank. He knew he couldn’t stay there long, for, although the worst of the wind swept over his head, it was much too cold for comfort. Being outdoors wasn’t any better than being in, he reflected morosely. If you had the blues you might as well have them where it was warm!

His wandering gaze caught sight of a two-car train moving slowly along the distant bridge. It looked very small, and there was no sound from it, for the wind took care of that. Perhaps Jimsy had come on that train! But that was only a make-believe thought, for Jimsy wasn’t coming until to-morrow. He remembered George then, and bent his gaze toward the landing under the red clay bluff at Ferndale. It was time he was coming back, but he saw nothing of him; nothing until, his gaze returning across the dazzling expanse of sun-flecked, wind-tossed river, it encountered [159]something darker than the blue and white of water and the yellow gold of sparkling sunlight, something that he lost again instantly and had to search for ere it again took shape. Then he saw that it was a canoe holding a single figure, a figure that knelt too far aft, to Dick’s thinking. The bow of the craft was out of the water and catching the wind badly. Dick stood up and went slowly along the path, peering intently, a little anxiously, at the voyager. That George was having a hard time of it was obvious enough. He had, probably, tried to paddle directly across for the boathouse float and, finding it impossible to keep that course with the wind blowing the bow downstream, had pointed the craft upriver, almost into the gale, doubtless meaning to reach a point well above his goal and then cut across and down. But paddling against wind and tide was no mean task, and Dick could see that George was making very little progress. Now and then a stronger gust would sweep the bow around and George would have to paddle desperately to regain his course. Dick waved once, meaning to convey encouragement, but George probably didn’t see him. Even if he had he couldn’t have ceased his labor long enough to answer. Dick, braced against the gale, forgot to be cold and kept his eyes set anxiously on the distant canoe. He wished he had gone along. He wasn’t a very capable paddler, but he could have helped. If no more he would have kept that bow down in the water. It was strange that George didn’t realize that he should be further toward the [160]bow. Afterwards Dick learned that George had realized it, but not until he was well away from shore. Then, since a thwart had barred his way, he had not dared try to change.

Ten minutes had passed from the moment Dick had first sighted the craft—possibly more. George had reached a point nearly opposite the Hall now, and Dick expected each instant to see him turn the nose of the canoe toward the landing. Gazing so intently that the dazzle hurt his eyes, Dick had to close them occasionally for a moment. He did so now, and, opening them again after a brief respite, he stared at first in puzzlement and then in alarm. The one object had become two! There was the canoe, bottom up, a dark maroon line on the water, and there, well upstream, was a dark speck that came and went as the whitecapped waves intervened!

For an instant, an instant that seemed interminable in retrospect but that in reality endured no longer than it took his heart to beat chokingly a half-dozen times, Dick stood rooted to the spot. Then he was off, running toward the boathouse steps at first, then plunging, sliding down the bank beside them, the center of an avalanche of earth and gravel and broken tree roots.

Afterwards he could recall little of what happened until, coatless and bareheaded, he was plunging his oars into the broken water, heading the little skiff straight out into the current. Vaguely he remembered struggling with the heavy boat, heavy enough to call ordinarily for the strength of two, and of looking despairingly for oars where only canoe paddles rewarded his search. Yet he must have found oars eventually, just as eventually he had worked the skiff down the run and across the float to the water. Now, buffeted by the gale, dragged seaward by the tide, he was rowing with all his strength toward midstream. To reach that was his first thought.

The capsized canoe must soon be opposite the landing. Indeed, it might be there even now, and the thought put new power into Dick’s already aching arms. He wanted to look, but dared not yet risk the loss of a single stroke. Time enough for that when the boathouse lay further astern. It receded very slowly, and, in spite of his efforts, it was already upstream a bit. That, though, was not important. It might prove fortunate in the end. Speed was the main thing, for the current was running strong and the wind was aiding, and he must be where he could [162]act swiftly and certainly when the canoe came abreast. He was taking it for granted that George had reached the canoe, although the alternative lurked in the back of his mind. If he had not reached it—but Dick wouldn’t think of that!

Presently he dared pause for an instant at his work, turn his head and look about him. Then he was bending frantically at his oars once more, turning the skiff’s nose further downstream, for not a dozen yards away was the overturned canoe, almost opposite him, floating sluggishly. There had been no time to see whether George was clinging to it, and not until he had spent himself in another dozen strokes did he look again. Then his heart sank leadenly. The canoe was beside him—he could have touched it with an oar—but no hand clutched it!

Despairingly his gaze flew upstream, toward the further shore, downstream. The canoe was beyond reach now, for Dick’s oars still dug the water, although he no longer had any conscious plan. His eyes met only glinting, whitecapped river. And then, faintly distinct above the splash of the waves and the rushing sound of the wind, came a cry!

“Here! Dick!”

Dick saw then. Between him and the North Bank shore something dark bobbed above the surface. He swung the boat desperately and bent at the oars. Every stroke carried with it now a sob of exhaustion, but that horrible moment of despair had passed and hope and joy lent him a new courage and a final remnant [163]of strength. Twenty hard strokes, and he looked over his shoulder. Ten more would do it!

He tugged again. Those last strokes taxed his endurance to the breaking point, but he made them. Then he looked. George’s face, set and white, stared entreatingly at him but an oar’s length away. He was almost past exertion, ready, it seemed, to give up. Somehow he kept himself afloat, striking out weakly with numbed limbs, but he made no progress toward the boat. Even in the moment that Dick looked, he moved past the boat’s bow, borne on the current. Dick dug one oar, shipped both and leaned over the side. George was beyond aiding in his own rescue, for it was only by almost overbalancing that Dick’s hand was able to reach the other’s wrist. As it did so George ceased even the slight struggle he had been making, and his weight fell on Dick’s arm, and his body settled into the water.

“George!” panted Dick. “You’ve got to help! I can’t get you in here alone! Take hold of the gunwale!”

George thrashed weakly with his legs and managed to clasp one hand on the edge of the skiff. Dick guided his other hand to the edge and changed his own grasp to George’s armpit. Then for an instant he rested, fighting hard for breath, longing for strength to complete the task. “I’m going to try and pull you in, George,” he said finally. “You’ve got to help, though. Can you?”

There was no answer, but the lolling head straightened [164]for an instant. Then: “Now!” said Dick. He tugged. The gunwale dipped toward the surface. George thrashed and his fingers strained weakly at the edge. Then one arm was over the side, and a shoulder, and Dick quickly changed his hold and was straining at a handful of cloth that went slipping from his fingers. But in the next moment he had seized one of George’s legs and, with a final heave, had conquered. The water poured over the gunwale, but George was in the boat, limp, exhausted, a huddled, sodden form between the seats.

Dick tried to prop his shoulders up, but George shook his head slowly. His lips moved, but Dick caught no sound. His eyes were tightly closed and great, long breaths tore at his lungs. Dick sank to the seat, nerveless, even a little sick, and the boat floated on down the stream, pitching crazily, the water it had shipped swashing from side to side. After a long minute Dick roused himself and reached wearily for the oars. Then his eyes sought the shore. They had drifted far below the school already and the railway bridge, although still far distant, was moving toward them. He must work out of the current and make the shore as best as he could. The thought of working the oars again filled him with despair, for it seemed to him that he could not lift them, much less use them, and the nausea that had seized him still lingered. But he did manage presently to get the oars back into the rowlocks and even to head the skiff about with a few weak strokes. It was then that he heard a hail and, [165]looking over his shoulder, saw two boats pulling down on him from the direction of school. After that he attempted only to keep the skiff headed into the seas. Overwhelming relief gave him the strength to do so much, but further effort was beyond him. At his feet, George stirred and opened his eyes. His gaze encountered Dick’s. His lips moved as his eyes closed again.

“Thanks,” whispered George.

At the boathouse landing it was a question with the rescuing party whether George or Dick needed attention most, and they solved the problem by carrying them both, Dick expostulating faintly, George not at all, up the hill and to their rooms. Dick was aware of passing many staring faces but was too done up to recognize any. In fact, he had no curiosity in the matter. He longed for warmth and rest, and oh, he did want to be left alone! When, however, they had his clothes off and he was tucked in bed and had swallowed a whole tumblerful of something very hot, rest didn’t seem so essential. Of course, he was tired, but he could see no reason for spending the rest of the day in bed, as he was instructed to. He asked after George, but no one seemed to know much about him. Joe Whittier, however, promised to find out about George and let him know shortly. What Joe Whittier was doing there Dick couldn’t make out, not knowing that Joe had been one of the first to witness the accident and had, with two others, formed the first rescue party.

[166]

Presently Joe and several other fellows had gone and Dick was left to himself. He felt deliciously warm and, save when he moved, thoroughly at peace with the world. He started to go over, rather hazily, the recent astounding events, but fell asleep almost at once. Later he awoke to find that Bert was sitting at the table and observing him in an oddly respectful, even awed manner. But Bert wasn’t interesting just then, and Dick went off to sleep again.

When he awoke once more the room was dark and he was alone. His muscles ached frightfully when he moved, and he abandoned his impulse to get up and turn the light on. After all, it didn’t matter much what the time was. He did hope, though, that some one would see that he had supper! Even when you are aching in every inch of your body you still need food!

He wasn’t forgotten, however, although it seemed to him that supper was rather skimpy. Afterwards Bert returned and asked gruffly, yet with an apparent desire to be cordial, how he felt. And Dick told him that he felt fine thanks, and would he please stick that tray out in the hall. Bert wanted to hear just what had happened, but Dick was so sketchy that he got disgusted and went out to seek information elsewhere. Dick got up and made his way in a rather wobbly fashion to the table. A fellow had to study, he supposed, whether he had been put to bed or hadn’t! Back in bed once more, with his books beside him, he felt interestedly of his arm muscles. Gee, [167]but they were sore! Pinching them until they responded painfully was quite a fascinating occupation, but it palled after awhile. He guessed George’s muscles were worse than his were, and he wondered how old George was.

Just then, as if in answer to his thought, there was a loud knock at the door and Joe Whittier entered, and with him, a most amazing fact, came Alan Linscott! Dick, hugging his knees, stared incredulously. But it really was Alan, and Dick found himself getting red of face and embarrassed, although it wasn’t at all clear to him why he should. The visitors came over to the bed and Joe asked cheerfully: “Well, how are you feeling now, Dodd?” And then, without waiting for answer, he continued: “By the way, you know Linscott, don’t you? He tells me you used to be friends once.”

Dick nodded and then found himself shaking hands with Alan.

“I thought you’d forgotten me, Dick,” said Alan smilingly. “I tried to find you in the fall, when you first came, but you were out. Why didn’t you come and see me? Sort of haughty, weren’t you?”

“Had a right to be,” grunted Joe. “Told you you ought to look him up again.”

“I—I didn’t know,” stammered Dick.

“Didn’t know I’d called here? That’s funny. I told your roommate to tell you. Left word with him that you were to come to see me. Perhaps he forgot.”

[168]

“He must have,” agreed Dick thoughtfully.

“Looks as if he could forget pretty easy,” commented Joe.

“Dick, I’m sorry,” exclaimed Alan contritely. “I got your note, you know, and came over here, the next day, I think it was, and you weren’t in. So I told that idiot to tell you I’d called and that you were to come over right away. When you didn’t come I thought you didn’t care to. I looked around for you several times, but you’ve changed a lot since I saw you last, and I never recognized you. You’ve sort of filled out, haven’t you? I guess it’s two years since we met, eh? You must be sixteen now, I suppose.”

Dick shook his head. “Fifteen, Alan. I’ll be sixteen—”

“Some stunt for a fellow your age, Dodd,” broke in Joe Whittier warmly. “And you aren’t so blamed big, either, even for fifteen, if you don’t mind my saying so! The fellows are still talking about it. School’s proud of you, youngster.”

“You certainly showed pluck, Dick,” said Alan. “How did it happen, anyway? No one seems to know exactly. Mind if I sit here?”

The idea of his objecting to having a hero like Alan sit on the side of his bed seemed so incredible to Dick that he forgot to answer. So Alan sat down where he could lean his broad shoulder against the footrail, and Joe pulled a chair up with: “Yes, let’s have the real dope, Dodd.”

So Dick told what had happened, too much impressed, [169]though, with the wonderful fact of Alan’s presence to give a very succinct account, and it was only by subsequent questioning that the audience got the events straight in their minds.

“Mean to tell us,” said Joe, “that you snaked that skiff out of the boathouse all alone?”

“I think so. I mean, I must have. You see, I don’t remember much about that part of it. I do remember, though, that it was awfully hard to get started. Probably that was because the boat was sort of heavy.”

“Heavy!” ejaculated Joe. “I’ll say it’s heavy! It’s the heaviest old tub in the lot, Alan. Wasn’t it hard rowing out there?”

Dick nodded emphatically. “Yes, it was, because the wind and tide were together. That boat—” he paused reflectively—“that boat seemed to pull sort of hard, anyway.”

“It certainly does,” corroborated Joe. “I’ve pulled it! Well, I say you did a man-sized job in a mighty nifty manner, Dodd. You put some inches and beef on you, youngster, and we’ll have you pulling stroke in the boat some day!”

Dick smiled to signify that he realized that Joe was just fooling, and then asked: “Have you heard how George is?”

“Yes, he’s doing all right,” answered Joe. “Silly ass to try a stunt like that, anyway. Deserves to feel rotten, I say. Fellows who can’t swim ought to keep out of boats. Especially canoes.”

[170]

“Looks to me,” said Alan, “as if Ferry managed to do quite a bit of swimming.”

Joe shrugged. “Paddled around. Kept his head out. A decent swimmer would have either got back to the canoe or struck out for shore. Ferry would have drowned if Dodd hadn’t got him when he did. Says himself he’s a rotten swimmer. Blamed idiot, I say.”

Alan spoke about home and asked after Dick’s folks, and then, rising to go, added: “Guess you’ll be feeling top-hole in the morning, Dick; hope so, anyway. Now don’t feel sore about what happened. I mean because we missed each other. You know where I am. Come and see me, Dick, and we’ll get acquainted again. If you don’t like me you’re bound to like Joe here. Every one does!”

“I like him already,” said Dick impulsively. He wished, the next instant, that he hadn’t, but Joe laughed and clapped him on a particularly sore part of his arm.

“Glad to hear it, youngster!” he said. “That’s a sure-enough compliment. School hero says he likes me, Alan. Get that? Must be some good in me, eh? Come on before he changes his mind!”

They went out merrily, calling good night to him from the doorway, and Dick sank back on his pillows with a sigh of content. Alan hadn’t gone back on him after all! His hero was still without reproach! He was so glad of that that when, a few minutes later, Bert Lodge came back, he didn’t bother to tax him [171]with that lapse of memory. Of course Bert hadn’t really forgotten. He had purposely withheld Alan’s message. But now that Dick had found Alan again it didn’t seem to matter.

George Ferry seemed to be quite himself again by the time that Jimsy returned, although he did not accompany Dick to the station. The two had spent much of the morning going over yesterday’s events. George remembered far more clearly than Dick did. “I was just about giving up when I saw the boat,” said George, “I couldn’t swim well enough to reach the canoe, so I tried to make for the shore. All I could do was keep afloat. I never was anything of a swimmer, perhaps because I was born on the coast and have lived there all my life! It’s the fellows who come from away inland who know how to swim! I was—well, pretty scared. That is, I was quite certain that I could keep going only a short time and that after that I’d drown. Perhaps scared isn’t the exact word. I was awfully panicky for a minute after I was turned out, but afterwards I wasn’t so much frightened as—well, sort of amazed, incredulous and sorry for myself. I didn’t want to die a bit. It didn’t seem fair, somehow. Toward the last, after I’d swallowed a good deal of water and was plumb tired, I didn’t care so much. In fact, I got to wishing for the time to come when I couldn’t struggle any longer. Just as long as I could struggle, though, I knew that I had to, no [173]matter how much it hurt. And it did hurt, Dick. Then, all of a sudden, I saw your boat. I didn’t know at first who was in it, and it looked as if you weren’t looking for me. I tried two or three times to shout, and couldn’t make a sound. Then, finally, I did, but it didn’t seem to me that I’d called loud enough for you to hear me. I tried to get toward where you were, but it wasn’t any use. Then I saw you turn the boat around and start my way, and the relief was so great that I mighty near quit trying any longer. I guess I just shut my eyes and sank, for I swallowed a lot of water and had to thrash to get into the air again.” Then he ended gravely, even a little solemnly: “You saved my life, Dick. If it hadn’t been for you I wouldn’t be here now. That’s—that’s a queer thought, isn’t it?”

Dick squirmed and nodded.

“I’d know how to thank a fellow for—well, for most things, Dick, but I don’t know how you do it, what you say, when some one has saved your life.” George looked across in puzzlement. Dick squirmed some more. Then, after a moment of silence, he said:

“I don’t see why you need to thank any one for pulling you out of the water. Gee, it’s a perfectly natural thing to do, isn’t it? What else could—could a fellow do? He couldn’t just look on, could he?”

“No, but he might not risk his own life, Dick.”

“I didn’t risk anything,” declared Dick impatiently. “If I’d overturned I’d have hung to the boat and [174]kicked ashore somehow. I’m as glad as anything I got there in time, George, but there’s no sense in fellows making a scene like they did this morning. It was sickening! And then Doctor Heidler, last night, and—” his voice died into morose silence.

George smiled faintly. “At breakfast?” he asked.

Dick nodded gloomily and reddened. “I didn’t suppose they were going to act like a lot of—of silly girls, or I wouldn’t have gone in there!”

“I heard something about it,” answered George sympathetically, although he seemed secretly amused by Dick’s indignation. “They got up and clapped, didn’t they?”

“They—they cheered!” exploded Dick resentfully. “Stood up and howled! Made me feel like—like a lead nickel! Gee!”

George laughed frankly now. “Don’t be an ass, Dick,” he said soothingly. “You did something mighty fine, and every decent fellow likes things that are fine. You’d have cheered just as hard as they did if some one else had been the hero.”

“Wouldn’t,” grunted Dick. “I’d have had some—some regard for the poor chap’s feelings!”

“Dick you’re a joy!” laughed George. Then: “If you’re going to get to the station before that train gets in you’ll have to move, won’t you?”

Dick cast an alarmed look at his watch and sprang up. “I’ll have to run half the way, I guess,” he exclaimed. “See you later!” At the door he stopped to ask: “Quite sure you’re all right?”

[175]

“Sure,” assented George. “Beat it!”

Dick beat it and reached the little box that did duty as a station just as the electric train clattered into sight around the turn beyond. Dick’s fear that Jimsy might not come after all was quickly dispelled, for Jimsy leaped from a car before it had stopped rolling and the next instant they were squabbling good-naturedly as to who should carry the bag. Once on the road, Dick unfolded his news. It wasn’t very sensational news, as he told it, but Jimsy was properly thrilled and flatteringly exclamatory.

“Gosh! It was lucky you were around!” said Jimsy. “He’s a perfectly punk swimmer and I’ll bet he’d have gone and drowned himself if you hadn’t picked him up. He hadn’t any business going out in a canoe on rough water, anyway. I’ll bet he wouldn’t have done it if I’d been there, the silly old goose!”

To all this Dick agreed and, after Jimsy had asked more questions and had received answers which, he dimly felt, were not altogether satisfactory, the talk turned to other things, and it wasn’t until he and George had been left together by a reluctant Dick that he got a full and true story of the accident. Ten minutes later he was banging at Dick’s door downstairs, and, not waiting for an invitation, was inside. Dick gazed at him with mingled apology and defiance.

“You’d better look like that,” exclaimed Jimsy, shaking a finger at him threateningly. “You’d better look ashamed of yourself! I’ve heard what you did yesterday, you deceitful little cuss! A nice stall you [176]gave me! You were in a boat and picked him up! What did you tell me all those lies for?”

“I didn’t lie,” muttered Dick.

“Might as well have then, you—you bloomin’ hero!”

“I’m not!”

“You are!” Jimsy strode forward and ruffled Dick’s hair ungently.

“Jimsy, I’m not!” Dick cried indignantly. “Don’t you act the silly fool like—like all the rest of them!”

“I will, too!” Jimsy tweaked Dick’s tie up under one ear and punched him affectionately in the ribs. “Bloomin’ hero, that’s you!”

Dick pulled his tie back into place and stared morosely at the blotter. “I thought,” he muttered finally, “you’d have more sense. I wish you would, Jimsy! I—I’ve had to put up with a lot since it happened.” He looked up to find Jimsy grinning broadly. “Gee,” he almost wailed, “it’s enough to make a fellow wish he hadn’t done it!”

“Oh, well!” Jimsy sobered. “It won’t last long, Dick. Fellows’ll let up on you in a day or two. I won’t say anything more about it if you’d rather I wouldn’t. Only—only, honest, Dick, I’m mighty proud of you!”

“You needn’t be,” muttered Dick. “I—I wish you’d shut up!”

“All right. What are you doing this afternoon? Aren’t going to study, are you?” Jimsy glanced disapprovingly at the open book. “Come on out. It’s a gorgeous day.”

[177]

Dick shook his head. “I’ve got some Latin to do. You stay here.”

“And watch you work? What’s the fun? Bring your book along and we’ll find a nice sunny place.”

Dick shook his head again. “I’d rather—I can’t, Jimsy.”

A light dawned on the visitor and he whistled softly. Then he grinned and walked to the window and peered stealthily out. “Honest, Dick, there isn’t a soul in sight,” he said.

Dick flushed. “There would be if I got out there,” he sighed.

“Well, you know you’ve got to face them some time!”

“Maybe they’ll forget it by to-morrow,” said the other hopefully. “It—it’s fierce, Jimsy!” Then, in a sudden burst of confession: “I didn’t have any dinner!”

“What!” Jimsy stopped grinning. “You blamed little idiot! Honest, Dick, you ought to be spanked! Where’s your spunk? Gosh, think of a fellow doing what you did yesterday—Oh, shut up! I’m not talking about it!—doing what you did and then being afraid to face a few fellows! You make me tired! Aren’t you hungry?”

“Not so very,” answered Dick wistfully.

“You are, too! You’re starved! Come on out of here!”

Jimsy seized him by an arm and pulled. Dick resisted. “Where to?” he asked suspiciously.

[178]

“Upstairs. I’ve got some eats in my bag. Figs and dates with nuts stuck in ’em. And old George has some crackers, I think. Come on before I beat you up!”

So Dick went. Only, at the foot of the stairs he clutched the speeding Jimsy and detained him. “Don’t tell George I didn’t—didn’t—”

“I won’t,” agreed Jimsy. “You’re an awful fizzle for a hero, Dick!”

“You cut that out!” wailed Dick.

Jimsy’s prophesy came true. The school did forget in a day or two. Or, more truthfully, the school acted as if it had forgotten, which, from Dick’s point of view, was quite as satisfactory. That Sunday night Jimsy had finally persuaded him to go to supper and Dick, not very happy, had walked half the length of the dining hall to his seat without awakening a demonstration. Fellows had stared, and some had called to him as he passed, and at his own table his arrival had been greeted with jesting remarks and inquiries as to his whereabouts at dinner time, and he wasn’t allowed to forget that he was still a celebrity. But it hadn’t been nearly so bad as he had feared, and he had been extremely hungry and had managed to forget everything save satisfying his appetite until, looking up unguardedly, he had encountered Jimsy’s mocking grin. But on Monday he breathed easier. Fourth class youngsters still embarrassed him by watching his passing with round eyes and audible whispers, and older fellows observed him with respectful curiosity, but by keeping [179]his own eyes averted Dick was able to weather these things. Then, on Tuesday, something happened that made him forget self-consciousness. Jimsy came into Number 12 while Dick and Bert were still dressing with the news that George was awfully sick and the doctor had been sent for.

“He woke me up about four o’clock,” narrated Jimsy. “He had a lot of pain, he said, and he was as hot as anything. I didn’t know what to do for him, but I got him some water and put a wet towel on his head and sat around awhile, and pretty soon he went to sleep. But he had me up again about five and I hustled on my clothes and got Mr. Hiltower up there, and Hiltower said he had pleurisy and telephoned over to Annapolis for the doc. He hasn’t come yet. The matron gave him some stuff, though—I mean George—and he’s asleep, sort of. I don’t like the way he looks, though, fellows. Gosh, he’s all sort of funny!”

“Pleurisy’s awfully tough,” said Bert. “My sister had it once and nearly died.”

“Gosh, you’re comforting!” said Jimsy disgustedly. “Well, I’m going to get some breakfast. I’ve been up since five. I’ll let you know what the doctor says, Dick.”

An hour later George was moved to the little infirmary in Ellicot and it was known that not pleurisy but pneumonia had seized him. George’s mother arrived that evening, rather tall, very calm and very capable-looking; as Jimsy said, a whole lot like George.

Anxious days followed. Jimsy fairly haunted Ellicot to learn of George’s condition and Dick dogged Jimsy’s footsteps to get the news from him. The news wasn’t reassuring. George was very ill indeed, and the nurses who took turns at his bedside seldom gave encouraging reports. The night nurse was Jimsy’s special abhorrence. He invariably awaited her as she went off duty and, as Jimsy put it, she “always looked as if old George had just passed away!” Another anxious youth was Browning, for whose sake George had made that hazardous trip across to Ferndale. Browning blamed himself bitterly and became something of a nuisance to Jimsy. Jimsy declared that things were bad enough anyway without having Browning almost weeping on his shoulder every day! Jimsy found relief at that period in an irascibility usually quite foreign to him.

Dick, deprived of Jimsy’s society more than usual, went over to McCrea on Friday afternoon and knocked at the door of Number 6. There was no answer, however, and he departed not ill satisfied. He had kept his promise to call on Alan and had been saved the exertion of making conversation and listening to it when [181]he didn’t feel a bit like it. He would try again some evening, he told himself. He would be more likely to find Alan in after supper.

Then came the day when the crisis of George’s illness was due to occur, and Jimsy lugged Dick off for a walk, a long, mad walk that took them all over the surrounding country, it seemed, and was made more than half the time in silence. They got back just before supper time and went right to Ellicot. Dick remained downstairs while Jimsy went anxiously up to the infirmary. Jimsy soon returned. They didn’t expect the crisis until that night, he told Dick. Doctor Morton had just gone, but was coming back later. Dick didn’t find much appetite for supper, in spite of all the exercise he had had, and afterwards he and Jimsy sat in Number 33, pretending to study, until nearly ten. Then Jimsy made another trip to Ellicot and returned with no news.

“Guess we won’t know until morning,” he said dully. They were standing in the entrance of Baldwin, where Dick had awaited his return. The sky was bright with millions of twinkling stars and the night was frostily cold. Jimsy sighed. “Poor old George!” he whispered.

“Somehow,” said Dick, “I think he’s going to get well, Jimsy. You know the doctor said he was so healthy that he had every chance.”

Jimsy nodded. After a minute he said, half defiantly: “I’ve been praying for him every night, Dick.”

“So have I,” answered Dick simply.

[182]

“Seems to me that ought to—ought to help,” murmured Jimsy.

“I think so, too.”

They parted rather silently at the head of the first flight.

In the morning Dick got the good news before he was well out of bed. Jimsy burst in, all excitement and joy. George had passed the crisis and was going to get well! Jimsy overturned Dick on the bed and pummelled him breathless, and Dick, too happy to defend himself, took the punishment. Even Bert looked less sour, although he coupled his expression of pleasure with the hope that Ferry would have more sense after this!

That evening Dick said: “You know Alan Linscott, don’t you, Jimsy?”

“Yes, pretty well. I guess I know him better than he knows me, though.”

“Let’s go over and see him. Will you? I ought to, you know.”

Jimsy looked dubious. “I don’t believe I know him well enough for that, Dick. You know how it is. Those first class fellows have kind of short memories sometimes.”

“Oh, well, I know him,” answered Dick, “and I’ll introduce you. You know Joe Whittier, anyway.”

“Yes, but, I guess you’d better go by yourself.”

“Shan’t! You’ve got to come along.”

So Jimsy surreptitiously felt of his tie and smoothed his hair down and went. He didn’t really want to, but [183]the good news of the morning had made him very happy, and, being happy, he was willing to oblige. The incident was robbed of any embarrassment for Jimsy owing to the fact that when they reached Number 6 McCrea only Joe Whittier was in. Joe said that Alan would be back in a few minutes. No one ever felt embarrassed with Joe, and by the time Alan did come the visitors were quite at their ease.

Alan greeted Dick warmly and Jimsy with flattering cordiality. It was evident that for one brief instant he didn’t remember Jimsy’s name, but he recalled it almost at once. Dick was proud of Alan, proud that he was his friend, for the crew captain was so very good-looking, with the sort of good looks that boys admire, so big and kind of splendid! He glanced at Jimsy to see if the latter was properly impressed and gathered from Jimsy’s attitude and tone of voice that he was. There were inquiries about George Ferry first, and then the conversation wandered from one subject to another in an easy, comfortable fashion, and the visitors found themselves feeling surprisingly at home in the attractively furnished room.

The evening was half gone and Dick was about to drag himself out of the comfortable chair in which he sat when Joe, harking back to Dick’s rescue of George, again expressed his wonder. “What gets me,” he said, “is a fellow no bigger than a piece—I mean no bigger than Dodd is—”

Jimsy’s chuckle interrupted him and Joe turned an apologetic look on Dick.

[184]

“No offense, Dodd,” he said. “You aren’t very big, you know, but I’ll say you’re all there!”

“Dick isn’t touchy about his size,” Jimsy reassured him, “although he does trouble about it a good deal. You see, Linscott, Dick wants to do big things: captain the football team or pitch for the nine or—”

“Shut up,” said Dick earnestly.

“Wouldn’t wonder if he’d take Whittier’s job, at a pinch!” continued Jimsy. “Dick has a six-foot ambition, believe me!”

Alan laughed. “Dick will grow, I guess, eh, Dick?”

“He doesn’t need to,” said Joe. “He’s got everything any of the big ones have, and then some! Can’t see that he needed any more inches the other day when he pulled Ferry out of the water!”

“He’s got plenty of pluck,” agreed Alan heartily, and Dick hoped that he wasn’t blushing. “Tell you what he would make, Joe. He’d make a corking cox!”

“Wouldn’t he, though? By Jove! Say, that’s an idea! Would he have any show, Alan?”

Alan shook his head. “Not this year, of course, but I wouldn’t wonder if he’d cop it hands down next fall. Gage will be gone and there’s only that little simpleton of a Warren left. Ever think of coxing a crew, Dick?”

Dick shook his head, blankly. “Could I?” he asked.

“I’ll bet you could!” interposed Joe with enthusiasm. “You’ve got the size and the grit, youngster, and if you knew rowing—”

“Nonsense!” Alan cut in laughing. “No cox we [185]ever had knew anything about rowing, Joe! Don’t ask too much.”

“There’s something in that,” Joe agreed, with a grin. “Still, it wouldn’t hurt if Dodd did learn port from starboard! Say, what harm would there be in his coming out this spring? Mike wouldn’t mind his getting some training, especially as Tommy Gage will steer his last boat in June. Ever do any rowing yourself, Dodd?”

“Not that sort,” said Dick. “Do you really think Mr. Carmichael would let me try, Alan? Is it hard? A coxswain doesn’t do any rowing, does he?”

“Now you’ve started something,” sighed Jimsy, viewing Alan reproachfully. “Who’s going to play center on the football team next fall if Dick becomes a coxswain?”

Dick only frowned on the levity. He was too excited to join in the chuckles that followed the sally. He listened to Joe’s explanations of a coxswain’s duties with all ears, deaf to Jimsy’s flippant interpolations.

“Tell you what,” said Joe finally. “If you really want to try it, Dodd, I’ll speak to Mike about you when he gets back. I think he will be mighty glad to start you in training against next fall, for he’s got to have a cox for the second, anyway, then. If you make good, and I’ll bet a hat you will, you’ll be coxing the first boat a year from this spring. You’ll be a member of the crew, youngster, and wear the crossed [186]sweeps on your shirt and the blue-white-and-blue on your hat. What do you say? Want to try it?”

“Y-yes!” blurted Dick.

He walked back to Baldwin with Jimsy a few minutes later treading on air. He asked so many questions that Jimsy threw up his hands in despair and declared that he was neither a Courtney nor a Rice. “You beat it over to the library to-morrow, Dick,” he advised. “There are heaps of books on rowing there, I guess. Anyway, plenty of ’em have been written. Maybe you’ll find one that’ll answer about half of your questions. Sorry I can’t, but I never coxed an eight in my life.”

“Well, but, Jimsy, do you think I could do it?” asked Dick intensely. Jimsy shrugged.

“Why not?” he responded. “I’ve seen many a fellow sitting in the stern of a shell who didn’t look to have any more sense than you!”

On the morrow Dick, still chock-full of enthusiasm, sought the library. Jimsy’s assertion that he would find heaps of books on rowing was proved erroneous, but he did find four. Three of them were by English authorities, two of whom had coached American crews with but scant success. But Dick didn’t know that and so read the works with veneration and respect. For the next month he divided his leisure about equally between the school curriculum and the science of rowing, and Jimsy, after finding that levity was not favorably received, sympathetically aided and abetted by placing before Dick any and all matter pertaining to [187]the subject. This matter ranged from clippings from the newspapers and magazines through a really helpful book borrowed from a friend back home to a dissertation on the Roman war galleys discovered in an ancient tome in the school library. Much of what Dick read was hard to understand, since he had never swung a sweep, but in a fashion he assimilated it all. He got Joe Whittier to go down to the Hall basement with him one day and show him the two shells which were stored there and explain the matter of rigging and much more. Dick looked almost with awe at the tiny seat in the stern, and handled the rudder with its two white lines, laid carefully on the floor, with deep reverence. Joe was always willing to talk rowing, always willing to answer questions, and from him Dick heard many epics of the river that added new fuel to his enthusiasm. And so February passed and March came, and with March the opening of the spring rowing season. But before that, other events occurred deserving of record.

George’s recovery was slow, but there finally came a day when he left his bed and sat in a chair by an open window in the sunlight. By backing tightly against the wall of Follen and getting on your toes you could just see George’s thin face peering out of a nest of blankets. If you said “Hi, Ferry!” you got a smile and a wave of a hand. Then one day still later Jimsy was allowed to call, and then the next day Jimsy and Dick both called, and after that they regularly spent an hour or so up there. Browning got [188]his spirits back and no longer buttonholed Jimsy on campus or stairway. But when a fortnight had passed it became evident to the doctor that George had reached his limit of recovery. He stood still, and didn’t want food and didn’t seem to care whether he went back to Number 33 or spent the rest of the year in the infirmary! So, in the end, it was decided that George was to go home and not return to North Bank until the fall, and that he was to spend the summer somewhere in the mountains and not do anything but breathe pure air into his lungs and put good food into his stomach.

George accepted the verdict placidly. His only regret was for missing spring lacrosse, although, as Jimsy pointed out to him, he would have been just about as much use to the team as a rubber dumpling in a stew! George replied that he guessed the rubber dumpling would have him beat, for he wouldn’t even look like a player! “You and Dick had better hitch up after I go,” said George the next day. “Dick doesn’t like the fellow he’s in with, and I guess the faculty will let him change.”

Dick demurred on the score that George might decide to come back later in the spring, but George assured him that he wouldn’t, so when one day George went off in an automobile with his father beside him, and Dick and Jimsy had waved a last good-by, they went together to the office and saw Mr. Ledyard and obtained permission. The next morning Dick transferred his possessions up to Number 33, leaving behind [189]him a very surprised and disgruntled Bert. Bert declared a great number of times that the arrangement suited him all right, but it was plain to be seen that the prospect of being alone didn’t really please him a bit.

Two days after George’s departure Dick and Jimsy hung over the edge of the balcony in the gymnasium and saw North Bank defeat Cumbridge in the second basket ball game of the series. Cumbridge had won the first contest on her own floor by a score of 28 to 22, and as the rivals played only two games the championship was decided by the final total of points. Therefore it was necessary for North Bank to accumulate at least seven points more than Cumbridge on this occasion. And she did it quite handily, just doubling the Dark Blue’s score. Dick got frightfully excited toward the end of the first half and would possibly have fallen over the railing if Jimsy hadn’t kept tight hold of him.

Tom Warden, captain and center of the North Bank five, gathered scoring honors by tossing five goals from the floor, two of which were long, diagonal shots. Cumbridge shifted her line-up continually, using in all more than two full teams, while North Bank stuck to her original make-up until just before the contest ended, when several substitutes were sent in that they might get their letters. Cumbridge’s defensive play was much better than her offensive, and in the first half she stood an intensive bombardment stubbornly. She clung closely to North Bank and [190]reached the intermission on the short end of a 12 to 8 score. North Bank scored first with a long shot from near the center of the floor by Debrion, left forward. Cumbridge tied the game at 3-all and again, later, at 5-all, but after that the Light Blue forged ahead. Debrion’s ability to throw goals from fouls counted considerably in both halves. Cumbridge, on the other hand, was woefully weak in that department, and although three of her players tried free throws during the forty minutes of playing time, she accumulated but four goals from sixteen attempts.

During the second half Cumbridge scored but two field goals. She clung throughout to the short, diagonal passing game and, although she was frequently able to work the ball under North Bank’s basket she didn’t seem able to lift it in. North Bank varied her attack, in the first half relying on a quick toss over the heads of the players and in the second half alternating with a long, high toss to a player under the basket that usually took Cumbridge by surprise. That second half was monotonously North Bank’s, though the audience seemed to approve of the monotony. When the last whistle sounded the Light Blue was 26 and the Dark Blue 13, and the former had won the series by the safe margin of 19 points. As that was the first victory over Cumbridge that year it was vastly appreciated. If it didn’t take all the sting from the football defeat it was at least soothing!

The Prize Debate came off toward the last of February, too, and if Dick didn’t get quite as excited over [191]that as he had over the basket ball game he at least enjoyed it. As a matter of fact, there was a surprising amount of suspense and interest in the affair, and a good deal of cheering when the prize was awarded to Cas Kirkham. Dick tentatively added debating to the select list of worthwhile things deserving his attention next year. Just now his mind was too occupied with aquatics to have room for much else.

Jimsy had pointed out Tom Gage to him one day on the campus and Dick had been extremely surprised. Gage wasn’t at all Dick’s idea of the flashing-eyed, stern-browed, shrill-voiced occupant of the coxswain’s seat. Tom Gage was eighteen, fairly tall and about as thick through as a broomstick. So far as absence of weight went, well and good, but there wasn’t any flash to Gage’s near sighted brown eyes and if he could ever look stern his present expression belied him. Gage, in short, looked like a very quiet, mild-mannered youth who would much prefer a book to rudder-lines. Jimsy, though, said he guessed Tom was a pretty good cox; that, anyway, he had been coxing quite awhile and still held his job! Dick wondered if his notion, gathered from rowing stories, of what a coxswain should be was all wrong. Certainly, the thin, lanky fellow carrying a load of books from the library didn’t tally with either text or pictures!

Then March came in and Coach Carmichael appeared one day on the campus in a suit of loud-checked tweed, and Dick’s heart leaped.

March Seventh!

Ever memorable day!

On the boathouse float was activity, confusion and color. The two slender cedar shells had been carefully carried down from the Hall and now lay on their trestles side by side while Coach Carmichael and several of the crew members were going over them carefully. About them, frequently getting in their way, were a dozen or more muscular-looking youths in “shorts” and sweaters and woolen stockings, while about the doorway lounged a sprinkling of on-lookers attracted by the crews’ first appearance. Amongst the onlookers was Richard Dodd. Dick hoped to be more than an observer presently, but as yet he was only one of the chorus, in a manner of speaking. He watched the coach fascinatedly, for that short, wide-shouldered, thick-chested person in an old green sweater and very dirty gray flannel trousers and a funny little round cloth hat held Dick’s destiny in the capable-looking brown hands that were busy about the first crew shell.

Coach Carmichael was forty-two years old. He had a roundish, deeply seamed face from which a pair of sharp gray eyes looked. Under a beaklike nose a rather long mustache, once red-brown but now grizzled to an indeterminate shade, hid most of a generous-sized [193]mouth. The fellows said that that mustache was “Mike’s” one vanity. In any case it is true that he carried a small mustache comb in his pocket and in moments of leisure abstractedly brought it forth and ran it through that adornment. Mike was no longer first of all a rowing coach. That day had passed. He had been a good one once, it was said; for that matter he was a good one still, but now coaching was only a sideline and his real business was the conduct of a shoe store in Baltimore. He had coached North Bank six years, had, indeed, taken hold there when the first Light Blue crew had dipped oars in the Severn. No one outside the faculty knew what salary Mike drew for his services, but it was generally believed that it was less that salary than the love of boating that attracted him.

Dick was on the float by direction of Joe Whittier. Joe had spoken to the coach about Dick, and, while Mike had made no promise, it had been agreed that the new candidate for a coxswain’s seat was to report for what Joe called “the swift glance.” Now Dick was waiting for the coach to finish with the shells and for Joe to come and get him. Joe was doing something with a screw driver near by and grunting hard. At the side of the float the little rented launch, the “Sprite,” was lying ready, Bromley, of the first class, in overalls and jumper already well grease-smeared, in charge. The afternoon was bright but far from warm, and Dick appreciated the shelter provided by the boathouse wall against whose sun-warmed surface [194]he was leaning. A southeasterly breeze was ruffling the blue surface of the river and bringing a fascinating odor of gasoline and hot metal from the launch to his nostrils. Far down the river the tall chimneys and golden dome and gleaming walls of the Naval Academy stood sharply against the blue sky.

Beside Dick, Grantley, a large, heavy, second-class fellow was nibbling peanuts and trying to hold converse. Grantley was always nibbling something, a large freckled hand making periodical excursions from pocket to mouth. Dick had nothing against him, but he was too intent on the coach to do much talking. Several late comers clattered down the steps and joined the fringe of the little crowd. Tom Gage, his thin legs covered with green golf stockings and a knit cap on his head, a blue sweater enfolding him loosely, came out of the boathouse with the rudder under an arm. Gage looked a little more alert to-day. The second shell cox, Warren, was on hand, too. Warren was small and weasel-faced, with a pair of gimlet eyes and a high-pitched voice. The first crew’s boat was ready for the water now, and it was lifted from the supports, turned bottom up, borne to the edge of the float, righted and lowered into the dancing water. Gage fitted his rudder and took his place in the stern. Sweeps were fetched and laid on the float.

“Four!” called the cox, and Tom Warden stepped into the shell. The others followed by numbers. The coach examined stretchers and slides. Then: “Take ’em away, Tommy, and paddle around. Some of the [195]stretchers may want changing. Keep your sweaters on, fellows.”

“Ready,” called Gage. “Forward!” The eight oarsmen moved up with their slides. “Paddle!” The oars dipped and the slender shell moved from the float.

“All right with this one,” said the coach, and the second crew boat went over. The oarsmen laid their sweeps down and awaited the word. Warren was strapping the tiny blue megaphone to his mouth. The coach watched impatiently. “What’s the matter, Kid? Has your head grown since fall? Don’t keep your men waiting!”

“Places!” piped Warren. “Four!”

The second shell slid away, too, and the “Sprite” began to chug impatiently. Dick’s heart was in his boots, for Joe had gone off in the first shell and doubtless Coach Carmichael had forgotten all about the coxswain candidate. The coach was addressing a handful of substitutes left on the float. “You fellows get the pair-oars out and do some paddling. Don’t try racing strokes to-day. It’s cold and your muscles are stiff. Go down to the red bank and back, and take it easy.” Then, turning to the little throng of onlookers: “Dodd here?” he asked crisply.

Dick’s heart jumped as he stepped forward. The coach looked at him sharply, critically, as he crossed the landing. Then he put a broad hand out and Dick’s was swallowed up in it. “Glad to meet you, son,” said the coach. “Come along.” He jumped down to the float and climbed into the launch. After an instant [196]of doubt, Dick followed. He wasn’t certain that he had heard correctly, but evidently he had, for the coach motioned to one of the uncushioned seats that ran lengthwise of the launch and said: “Make yourself comfortable. Let her go, Ben!”

The “Sprite” chugged more loudly, choked, chugged faster and swung into the stream. Coach Carmichael stood at the bow, one hand on the wheel. The “Sprite” was only sixteen feet long, an open launch with neither glass nor spray-shield. Further aft, Ben Bromley presided over the small four-cylinder engine. Bromley cared little about rowing, but he cared a lot for launches and gas engines, and now he was in his element. The “Sprite” had speed, if few refinements, and almost as soon as they had started Mike was holding up his hand and the launch was slowing down. A little distant lay the second crew, sweatered, capped, their faces turned toward the launch. The “Sprite” floated closer.

“All right, Second,” called the coach. “I want you to go easy to-day. Remember that this is your first work-out and don’t put much into it. Take ’em up to the second bend, Kid, and go slow. Coming back you’d better keep over near the other shore. Keep your strokes long and slow, fellows. Give ’em about a couple dozen hard ones coming back, Kid, and see that they finish out. That was one big trouble with most of you last fall. You didn’t finish your strokes out. Number 4, look after your hands and remember what I told you. Let her go!”

[197]

The second slipped easily upstream through the choppy water and the coach turned his attention to the First which was coming slowly up. “That’s rotten, Number 3!” he called. “You’re not catching. Put some water on that blade. All right, way enough!” And when the shell was floating placidly near by: “All I want to-day is some paddling, you fellows. It’s a good time to study your stroke and see what’s wrong with it. You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you before your first race, and the sooner you make up your minds to get down to business the better. Last fall you were rowing every man for himself. See if you can’t get together. Tommy, watch Three and Five. They were clipping badly just now. Slow and long, fellows, and finish out. Take ’em up to the second bend, Tommy. All right.”

“Touch her, Seven! Steady! Ready all! Forward! Row!”

The shell went off with slow strokes of the long, blue-tipped sweeps and the “Sprite,” her engine throttled down, followed. The coach turned to Dick, “Come up here, son,” he said, and Dick slid along the seat to the narrow bow. “Joe Whittier tells me you want to be a cox,” Mike continued. “Well, that suits me all right. Glad to have you try it. Know anything about rowing?”

“I’ve been reading a good deal about it,” answered Dick. “And Joe has been telling me things.”

“Reading, eh?” mused the coach dubiously. “Well, I don’t know. Better than nothing, I dare say. Guess [198]you’ll learn more out here, though, in one afternoon. Ever row any yourself?”

“Only in a skiff or a dory, sir.”

“Well, that’s something. You know why a boat moves forward when you put the blade of an oar in the water and pull the haft toward you. More than some fellows ever do know. Have a look at that boat ahead there. Seeing anything wrong with it?”

Dick looked at the slowly moving shell that, from the launch, had the appearance of a big bug walking up the river. After a moment he answered doubtfully: “She’s sort of uneven, isn’t she? I mean she rolls a good deal.”

“Sure does! So you could see that, eh? Know why she’s rolling?”

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“Watch the starboard oars then. See the second and third ones? They’re doing it. Rowing light again.” He picked up the long blue megaphone from beside him and roared through it. “Three! Five! Help the boat along! You’re catching badly and you aren’t finishing. Get a hold and pull through! Lengthen that stroke, Joe! Don’t hurry it! I said lengthen it! That’s better. Eyes in the boat, Five! Tommy, keep ’em steady! Watch ’em!”

Mike set the megaphone down again and leaned against the coaming, his face toward Dick but his gaze fixed for the most of the time on the shell ahead. “We’ll need a new cox next fall,” he went on. “Gage leaves and Warren will have to take the first, I guess. [199]That leaves a place for you, son, if you can get the hang of it. Trouble is, though, that coxing a crew is something that you can’t learn by reading. Something I can’t tell you, either; not much, anyway. You’re a nice size and a nice build for a cox, though, and I guess you’ve got gumption. Know what gumption is?”

Dick smiled. “Horse sense,” he hazarded.

Mike grunted. “Sort of. Gumption’s what tells you where the current’s fastest and what to do when your crew lays down on you in the last quarter and how water looks when the eel-grass is reaching for you and how to steer when a launch drags her anchor and comes down on you to port and an empty barrel lies ahead and a course buoy is close astarboard. That’s gumption. Think you’ve got it?”

“I don’t know,” said Dick, doubtfully.

“Well, I think you have!” The coach smiled down at him. “Didn’t you pull a fellow out of the river here awhile back? Sure! That took gumption, I guess. I wouldn’t wonder—” He broke off to seize the megaphone again. “In the boat! You’re all rowing too short again! Lengthen out, lengthen out! Bow side, keep your hands up! Number Seven, you’re bending your arms too soon! Steady down now! Let me see you do twenty clean strokes. Come on! One!—Two!—Three!—”

Presently he was addressing the boy beside him once more. “I wouldn’t be surprised, Dodd, if we made a cox out of you by the fall. You stick around and [200]keep your eyes open, son. See if you can tell when a crew’s rowing right, and why. Find out where the mistakes are. Some day I’ll let you go out in the four and hold the lines. Meanwhile you show up afternoons and help me coach. Lots to see if you keep your eyes peeled. Little things that may help some day. Coxing isn’t an easy job; good coxing, I mean. Any one can steer a shell after a fashion, but it takes brains to bring a racing crew over the mile-and-seven-eighths ahead of the other boat. I’ll say it does! You’ve got to learn your men and know ’em as well as you know yourself; got to know what you can get out of ’em and how to get it out. You’ll find eight different sorts of fellows in a ’varsity shell; no two alike, all different. One will be high-keyed and another low, one will loaf if you’ll let him and the next’ll row his heart out. That’s the way it goes from bow to stroke. Got to know ’em, got to watch ’em, got to handle ’em. Some coxswains think the boat’s all they need to have on their minds, but they find out different. There’s—For Pete’s sake!”

Mike grabbed the megaphone again.

Almost every day thereafter for many weeks Dick “helped coach.” Mike jokingly referred to him as “my advisory.” Between the two quite a warm friendship sprang up. Dick enjoyed every instant of those afternoons on the “Sprite” and Coach Carmichael seemed to enjoy having Dick beside him in the bow. He talked to the boy quite as though the latter was, indeed, a skilled and experienced oarsman, and spoke of things still beyond Dick’s comprehension. Mike seemed to find relief in speaking his thoughts aloud, and if, returning to the float, Dick had repeated only a few of the things he had heard, many a self-satisfied member of the first or second crew would have been surprised and dismayed. For Mike didn’t believe in scolding unnecessarily, nor in risking discouragement by too captious criticism.

But there was time for instruction, too, and interspersed with comments, often caustic, were many hints that the boy stored away against future needs. Before March was over he had learned a whole lot about the tides and currents in the river thereabouts, where the slack water lay and where the fast, and how far out at Fletcher’s Bend the weeds and shoals extended, and how, negotiating the bridge at the draw, you had [202]to bear hard aport until you picked up the wireless tower far down the river. He learned, too, what to do when you were holding the lines and a “false current” swung your bow, and how, by changing your course two boat-lengths upstream of the mile marker, you could shave the buoy and gain half a length. And he learned many things that were not told him, just by keeping his eyes and ears open and putting two and two together in the long-established fashion. He discovered for himself, as an instance, that when a shell rode badly you looked first to the stroke-oar for the cause, and that when an accident happened there was just one thing you shouldn’t do, and that was lose a stroke. A broken oarlock or outrigger meant one man lost to the crew, but it mustn’t slow the boat. You just went right on, rowing seven men, and won if you could. And the idle man didn’t jump into the river in the old spectacular fashion, for that rocked the shell and lost you distance. Instead, he repaired the damage if such a feat was possible, or, failing that, he just made himself small and prayed hard!

There was many a day on the river in March when Dick had to huddle himself up and keep his hands in his pockets for warmth, days when the wind blew cold and the river showed whitecaps, even in the sheltered stretches, and the shells went out with the canvas spray strips stretched along the sides. But there were other days, especially as April drew near, when the Severn was a smooth, blue, laughing reflection of the cloudless sky, when the sun shone warmly and the little “Sprite” [203]fairly danced up and down the course. Such days grew more frequent as time went on and Dick acquired a perceptible coat of tan on face and hands. He made friends with Bromley, listening to wise words anent the peculiarities of gas engines and the freakishness of ignition, and hearkening with no sign of boredom to the technical explanation of the engine he was going to build some day. Dick could almost have qualified as assistant engineer along in April!

He saw much less of Jimsy afternoons, but since they were together most of the rest of the time that didn’t matter greatly. Life in Number 33 Baldwin was splendid. Jimsy was an ideal roommate, and now that Dick had reached a point beyond saving, in his strange ambition to “do something,” Jimsy no longer made fun of him. Instead, Jimsy displayed a real interest in rowing affairs and in Dick’s slow progress toward the goal of his desire, which goal was now some few square inches of polished seat in the stern of the second boat. Together they spent many evenings in Number 6 McCrea when study was over. Dick had not lost his secret worship of Alan, but he had added Joe Whittier to his company of heroes. Joe was such a “corker” that you couldn’t help sort of loving him. Alan was perhaps grander to Dick, more exalted, but he was also, and for that reason, less approachable. Alan tried to be nice, and was nice, but he hadn’t Joe’s comradely ways. Alan always found it difficult to step down off his pedestal, even for a minute. Oddly enough—or perhaps not oddly [204]at all!—Jimsy got on better with the crew captain than Dick did. Alan took to Jimsy right off, found him amusing and enjoyed talking to him. That generally left Joe and Dick to make their own converse, and, needless to say, it was usually on rowing matters. Frequently there would be others there when Dick and Jimsy arrived: Tom Warden and Ducker Coy, Hickson and Lee, sometimes Tommy Gage, of the crew; Caspar Trumbull or Jerry Benson of the football crowd. Always there was plenty of talk and entertainment, and, although Dick and Jimsy were out-aged, the youngsters never felt awkward in the company. Perhaps Jimsy wouldn’t have under any circumstances!

The evening they found Gage there proved more than usually interesting to Dick, for the first crew coxswain attached himself to the neophyte and talked to him as though to a brother cox. Dick suspected that Gage would have appreciated a few confidences, such, for instance, as what Mike’s opinion of Tommy Gage’s recent work was, but Dick made believe he didn’t suspect and Gage accepted failure gracefully. He said one thing that made Dick a little happier.

“If you can please Mike,” said Tommy, “you’ll pop into the first boat next fall, Dodd. This is between us, you understand, and no offense to Purley Warren. Warren isn’t a cox and never will be, and Mike knows it. If you had ever steered a crew he’d have you in the second boat right now, I’ll bet a doughnut! So just you say nothing and saw wood, boy. Mike’s taken a [205]shine to you, all right, and he’ll put you through hard and fast. Glad of it, too, for you look like a peppy guy to me, and you ought to make a rattling good chap for next year’s boat. I’ll put you wise to one thing, though. Don’t ever try to argue anything with Mike. He’s a good old scout, but if he tells you you’re wrong, why, you be wrong! Don’t make any cracks, Dodd. Just sit still and take it.” Gage stared reflectively at the toes of his rusty shoes a moment. “Generally,” he added then, “you will be!”

Dick was glad that Gage had added that, for he secretly believed that Coach Carmichael was infallible, or, at least, as infallible as one can be in this fallible world. Gage raised himself in Dick’s estimation by that bit of candor. When, presently, Gage’s attention was summoned elsewhere Dick had decided that he liked the first crew cox immensely.

There had been several letters from George Ferry since his departure in each of which he had reported cheerfully that he was feeling a lot better. He was at Atlantic City in March and sent Dick a postcard photograph of himself and his mother in a wheel chair. Jimsy, studying it, remarked that George might be better but was a long way from being best! One letter contained this: “You and Dick had some patter about ‘the renowned Pierson of undying fame’ just before I left. It was some crazy secret you had, I suppose, but I understood that Pierson was a football player. I came across this the other day in a newspaper and [206]wondered if this was your man. If so, you had the name wrong, you funny kids!”

“This” was a few lines cut from the columns of a daily paper and pinned to the top of the sheet of hotel writing paper “‘Scrapper’ Presson, the former All-America football end of 1907 and 1908, was a guest of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Eddy at the Wavefront on Tuesday. Those who recall Mr. Presson’s wonderful playing in the Princeton-Yale game in ’08 would scarcely have recognized him on the board walk. He has put on weight since those good old days and would look more at home in the center of the line than at the end.”

“Gee,” laughed Jimsy, “that’s a good one! Brother Bert didn’t even get the fellow’s name right!”

“It would be rather fun,” mused Dick, “to send him that. Only, we wouldn’t be around when he read it.”

Perhaps that was the reason Bert didn’t see the clipping, but more likely it was because he had ceased to be of interest to the occupants of Number 33. Or maybe because Dick’s thoughts were centered on more serious things in those days; such, for example, as the first boat race of the season to be rowed on Saturday between the North Bank first crew and the Navy plebes.

As a contest, that race wasn’t much, for the Navy youngsters took the lead at the first quarter-mile flag and increased it all the way, until at the finish of the mile course they were seven lengths ahead. Some said nine lengths, but it is well to be conservative, and a length more or less doesn’t matter in such a case! Dick [207]and Jimsy watched the contest from the shore, close to the finish, not because they preferred to view matters from so long a range but because they could neither borrow a canoe nor beg accommodations. North Bank didn’t do so badly, when all was said, for the Navy’s first year crew was an exceptionally good one, as later events proved. But there were two changes in the Light Blue boat on Monday, nevertheless, for there is nothing like a real race to show up the weak places. Tom Warden, rowing at Six, changed places with Ducker Coy, at Three, and Chase yielded his place at Five to McKim, of the second. Dick couldn’t say that the new arrangement improved matters, but Mike seemed better satisfied, and so the “advisory” concluded that the change was for the best.

It was two days after that race that the coach made good his early promise and gave Dick his first test with the rudder-lines. A four-oar was manned with Chase and three other substitutes and Dick was placed in the stern. Mike counseled the new coxswain with grave countenance. “Don’t bring ’em in, Dick,” he ordered, “until they can do thirty strokes that you’re satisfied with. See that they finish out every time. Chase, use your legs and don’t finish sitting up. That goes for you, too, Debrion. Walker, look after your body and don’t swing out of the boat. Lobell, watch your catch. All right, Dick. Better go upstream, I guess.” He waved a hand and Dick swallowed and called: “Ready all!” He had no megaphone, nor needed one, but he wished that he did have one since it would have [208]hid much of his face and helped conceal the fact that he was far from at ease. Walker, rowing Stroke, grinned at him sardonically and, in spite of the command, turned his head long enough to say something to Chase over his shoulder. Dick was glad that the crews had gone off and that there were few loiterers about the landing, but he was horribly embarrassed as he issued the next order and tried not very successfully to make his voice sound deep and authoritative.

“Touch her, Three! Steady! Forward! Paddle!”

The four oars dug into the smooth water and the little shell slid out into the river. Dick pulled anxiously at one rudder line and the slim bow crept to starboard. He pulled the other, surprised that the result had been so instant, and the boat straightened. Walker was setting a slow stroke and rowing well, Dick thought. Beyond him, Chase was following satisfactorily, but, in the bow, Lobell was late. “Bow, you’re late,” warned Dick. Then: “Pick it up, Stroke, now.”

Walker shot a quizzical glance at the coxswain and added a couple more strokes to the minute. Dick counted ten and then eased himself in his little seat and looked about. Quite a ways up the river was the first, swinging along with Joe setting what Dick judged to be about thirty-four. It passed from sight about the first headland as he watched. The launch, with the coach erect in the bow, came charging along from the landing, its little engine pulsing loud and fast. [209]Mike raised his megaphone and his voice came startlingly across the intervening water.

“Lengthen out, lengthen out!” he called. “Keep in the boat, Walker!”

The “Sprite” went past, Ben Bromley winking gravely at Dick, leaving a parted wake behind her. Dick watched Walker closely for a moment, but the big chap seemed to be doing his honest best, catching sharply, pulling strongly well through, recovering cleanly and moving back easily on his slide to the accompaniment of a well-feathered oar. Chase was getting more length into his efforts, too, and it was not until Dick studied the bow oar that he found cause for criticism. Lobell was again catching late and the boat was rolling a bit as a result.

“You’re late, Bow!” called Dick sternly. “Watch your stroke! That’s better!”

The four-oar crept up to the first bend and Dick swung obliquely across toward the further side. The First would be coming down presently on a time trial and it wouldn’t like broken water. Well out of the north course, Dick turned the bow upstream and said: “All right, fellows. Let her run.” The rowers ceased and the long sweeps hung dripping above the still water. “Better rest a minute,” said Dick. He looked upstream for the First and saw it coming fast, the launch boiling along behind. The others turned in their seats and looked, too.

“Mike’s sweating them, all right,” commented [211]Walker. “Doing thirty-eight, or I’m a Dutchman!”

“Some one’s splashing a bit, too,” said Chase. “Warden, isn’t it?”

“Yes, he can’t hit it up without splashing,” answered Walker. “I may be rotten, but I’ll bet I could pull Warden in a circle!”

“You might mention it to Mike,” suggested Debrion dryly, and Dick smiled faintly. Unfortunately, Walker saw it and frowned.

“I might mention a lot of things to him,” he growled, “but I don’t want my head bitten off.” Then, to Dick: “What are we waiting here for, kid? Think we can do better with stiff muscles?”

“Just letting the First come down,” replied Dick. “You won’t get stiff a day like this.” The First swept past them across the stream. Warden still splashed now and then, but on the whole the boat was moving nicely. Tommy Gage, swinging back and forth in the stern, looked very thin and very small as, clutching the lines beside him, the little blue megaphone hiding half his countenance, he leaned tensely forward. Voices floated across, Tommy’s first, then Mike’s. Then the sound of the “Sprite’s” exhaust drowned the voices and the rattle of the oarlocks and the shell became foreshortened and the afternoon sunlight gleamed crisply on the blue tips of the eight blades as, leaving the water in unison, they swept forward again over the oily swirls and were again buried from view. It was a fine sight, thought Dick, and he experienced a thrill at the recollection of Gage’s prediction. Next [212]year he might be in the picture himself! He came back to the present to find Walker’s gaze set sarcastically on him. He flushed a bit, for it seemed to him that the Stroke had guessed his thoughts, and to cover his discomfort he drew the lines taut again and called: “Ready all!”

The oarsmen wrapped their hands about the oars, slid forward at the next word and then dug the blades into the water again. After a moment Dick pulled gently at the line in his right hand and the shell turned into midstream. Then, with the stroke side oars paddling, the nose was turned down the river again. “Touch her, Bow! Steady! Let’s try those thirty strokes now, fellows. See if you can do them perfectly. Remember, use your legs, Two. Make them long and finish clean, fellows. Touch her, Two. Steady! Ready all. Forward! Row! One!—Two!—Three!—Four!—Lengthen out, Stroke! Five!—Steady; all! Six!—Seven!—Eight!—Nine! That’s the ticket! Ten!—Two, you’re not in time! Eleven!—Twelve! Finish out, Three! You’re clipping! Thirteen!—Fourteen! Pull through, Three! Finish your stroke! In the boat, Stroke! Fifteen! Half way, fellows! Keep it up! Sixteen!—Seventeen!—Eighteen! Stroke, don’t rush your slide! Steady! Nineteen!—Twenty! Lengthen that stroke! You’re all clipping! Lengthen out! Lengthen out, Stroke! Get the time, Two! Twenty-two—Let her run!”

“What’s that for?” panted Walker indignantly. “What’s wrong with us?”

“Lots,” replied Dick crisply. “You weren’t pulling [213]through, any of you. You did about twenty and then went to pieces. Bow, you were taking about a two-thirds stroke. You’ve got to catch harder and carry through. You’re much too short in the water. Two, you weren’t in time. You ought to watch the man in front of you and follow him. And you weren’t getting your legs into the pull. Three, you were all right until you tried to do it all with your body. You’ve got legs, too. Stroke—”

“Yeah? What about me?” asked Walker belligerently.

“I guess I don’t have to tell you,” answered Dick, returning his incensed gaze squarely. “You lean outboard when you get to the end of the stroke, and that throws the boat over and spoils your recovery, besides. You rowed a pretty stroke halfway through and then began to weaken on your finish and rush your slide. The boat wasn’t traveling for beans at the last. We’ll float awhile and then try it again.”

“Say, how long have you been coxing, anyway?” demanded Walker.

“About forty minutes, maybe; perhaps less.” Dick glanced imperturbably at his watch. “To be exact, thirty-two.”

“Yes, well, you want to get down to earth, kid. We’ve been rowing for two years and I guess we know a blamed sight more about it than you do, and—”

“I’m sure you do,” interrupted Dick calmly, although he wasn’t feeling calm. “That’s why I expect something better from you.”

[214]

“Oh, chase your blind aunt,” advised Walker peevishly. “We were pulling a good enough stroke for anybody that knows anything. You make me tired, Dodd. You’ve got a swelled bean, kid; that’s your trouble. You’ve been picking up a lot of lingo, talking to Mike, and you don’t know what it means!”

“Oh, shut up, Frank,” said Debrion. “Dodd’s all right. I know when I’m jazzing my stroke. We did go to pieces, and you know it, old son. Let’s have it again, Cox.”

“That’s all right,” answered Walker, “but this smart Alick will have us rowing all over the river! He doesn’t know anything but a lot of words he’s picked up!”

“Touch her, Two,” said Dick. “Steady! All right, we’ll have another try, fellows. Just keep your minds on the job this time and see if you can’t do better. Ready all. Forward. Row!”

Down the river they went again, the current helping greatly now. Dick found that he no longer had any conscious thoughts of steering. That matter looked after itself, it seemed. One just steered without knowing he was steering. Ten strokes brought the shell almost abreast of the boathouse. All four oars were in time and all four backs were bending and straightening in unison. Twenty strokes brought them past the bathhouses, and now again Walker was throwing his body to the right as his hands came up and, in the bow, Lobell was catching late and skimping his stroke all through. Dick warned them and caught up the count again: “Twenty-three—Twenty-four! Keep it [215]up! Not bad!—Twenty-five! Five more now! Steady, all!—Twenty-six! You’re short, Stroke! Pull it through! Watch the stroke, Three—Twenty-seven! Catch hard, Bow! Come through with it! Steady!—Twenty-eight!—Twenty-nine! Keep it long, fellows!—Thirty! Let her run!”

Four panting youths lay on their oars and bent inquiring looks on the small coxswain. Walker’s, though, was more than inquiring; it was challenging.

“Well, how were we?” he asked.

“Better,” said Dick. “You almost did it.”

“Almost! Where do you get that ‘almost’ stuff?” Walker exploded. “That’s as good as you’re likely to get, kid, and you might as well be satisfied with it. Let’s try a couple of starts, fellows, and call it a day.”

“I guess we’ve had about enough,” agreed Chase. “Want to try us on a start or two, Dodd?”

“Not yet, I think.” Dick shook his head resolutely. He was smiling, but his mouth was rather set. “We’ve got to do a smooth thirty before we go in, fellows. You heard what the coach said. Touch her, Bow!—Steady! Might as well make up our minds to it, I guess. We’ll have another try presently. There’s the Second coming up. The First, too.”

Walker turned to look, but his face was gloomy. “All right, I’ll go you once more, kid, but that’s the limit. I don’t intend to stay out here all night. Got to get my breath first, though.”

“Oh, your breath’s all right, Frank,” said Lobell [216]from the bow. “Let’s get it over with. Let’s have it, Cox. Say, wasn’t I better that time?”

“Yes, you rowed pretty well until about the twenty-fifth stroke,” replied Dick encouragingly. “See if you can’t keep it up for thirty this time, Bow. Same with the rest of you. It’s got to be thirty good ones, fellows, so let’s have them!”

Coach Carmichael waited at the landing. The first and second boats were housed, the sweeps were in the rack and the oarsmen had climbed the hill to the gymnasium and grateful showers. Scripps, the manager, kept Mike company; and a few fellows, lately out of canoes, lingered to find out what was up. Mike looked again at his watch and then searched the river. The hour was getting late. The shadows of evening fell far across the darkening surface of the water and supper time was drawing near.

“You say they went downstream?” he asked Scripps. “How long ago was that?”

“About three-quarters of an hour, I think. It was about ten minutes before the Second came in.”

“Something must have happened,” muttered the coach. “Don’t see what could, though, in water like this. Unless young Dodd steered ’em into the bank. The boy hasn’t had any experience with the lines, and I guess I was a fool to send him out. Still, Chase and Debrion are old hands; Walker, too. I suppose you can’t run that launch, Johnny?”

The manager glanced at the “Sprite,” lying silent at the shore end of the landing, and shook his head. [217]“Don’t know anything about the things,” he answered.

Mike turned to the half-dozen loiterers. “Any of you fellows know how to run a launch?” he asked crisply. One, an angular youth in a faded baseball shirt and a pair of soiled flannel trousers stepped forward.

“I guess I can,” he said. “I’ve run one a goodish bit. Anyway, I’ll take a chance, Coach.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to,” said Mike grimly. “See if you can get her started, will you?”

“Wait a minute!” exclaimed Scripps. “There’s something in sight; just under the bluff, there. Can you see it, sir? It’s in the shadow now, but—”

“I get it,” answered the coach. “Guess that’s the boat. Never mind about the launch.”

In a minute or two the small object struck a patch of lighter water and became recognizable as the missing four-oar. It came on slowly, very much as if the four oarsmen were tired, and many minutes elapsed before, at last, it reached hailing distance. Then: “In the boat!” bawled the coach. “Anything wrong?”

“No, sir!” That was Dick’s voice. “Coming in, sir.”

“‘Coming in;’” echoed Mike to Scripps. “Well, I’d hope so!”

“Way all!” came from Dick. The little shell floated closer. “Back water!—Steady all!” Scripps seized the nose of the boat and led it along the float while oars were unlocked and, at last, five youths, four very tired and one very stiff, stepped ashore.

[218]

“Where the Sam Hill have you been?” asked Mike, addressing Dick curiously.

“Pick her up,” directed Dick. “Steady, Three! All right! Take her in!” Then, replying to the question: “We’ve been down around the bridge for the last hour or so, sir,” said Dick. “There seemed to be less current there. You see—”

Walker came out of the boathouse and strode up to the coach.

“Coach, this kid’s kept us out there two hours! Wouldn’t bring us in, sir, and made us do about a million strokes. Kept us rowing long after we were played out. Said those were your orders. I’d like to know if he had authority to make goats of us!”

Mike heard the speaker patiently. Then he faced Dick again. “What was the trouble, Dick?” he asked.

“Why, you said I wasn’t to bring them in until they’d done thirty strokes and done them right.”

“And they didn’t? Just a minute, Walker, please!”

“No, sir, they didn’t, not quite right. The last try wasn’t so bad, though, and it was getting late, and I thought I’d better bring them back.”

“Forget it, Dodd!” said Walker. “We rowed the thirty all right, two or three times! You just got stubborn, that’s all! Why—”

“If you rowed thirty strokes the way they should have been rowed,” interrupted the coach firmly, “you did more than I thought you could do, Walker. You never did it for me, boy! Now lay off Dodd. He had his orders, and he obeyed ’em. He had a right to [219]keep you out until black dark. Seems to me you were lucky to get in so early. To-morrow you’ll have a chance to show me what you learned!”

Walker scowled, started to speak again, thought the better of it and turned away to the steps. Scripps was locking the door beyond which lay the shells. The others were already ascending the bank. Mike put an arm over Dick’s shoulders. “You beat it up there and get under a shower,” he said kindly. “Don’t wait for me. Can’t have you catching cold, Dick, for you’re about the only man in the bunch who knows how to obey orders!”

Dick threshed it out with Jimsy that night very earnestly.

“You see,” he explained, “I couldn’t do anything else, Jimsy. Mike said keep them out until they’d done it right, and they simply wouldn’t do it right. So I just had to, didn’t I?”

“Abso-lutely!” agreed Jimsy, grinning. “Oh, but I wish I could have been there, Dick! It must have been rich!”

Dick shook his head soberly. “It wasn’t,” he answered. “It was beastly. Walker got madder and madder and wouldn’t half row. And Chase got grumpy, too, although he was pretty decent, I suppose. They were tired, you see! If it hadn’t been for Debrion and Lobell standing by me they’d have come in half an hour before we did. Once Walker threatened to chuck me overboard.”

“He must have been waxy!” said Jimsy. “What happened?”

“Nothing. Chase told him to shut up and not spill the boat. Of course, if he had tried to put me over the shell would have turned turtle. So I wasn’t afraid of that. After awhile they saw that I meant what I said, and they really tried. Even Walker. He can [221]row if he will, Jimsy. They didn’t do a perfect thirty, of course. I had to shut my eyes toward the last, but they did a lot better than at first. It was more Walker’s fault than any one’s, for if the stroke doesn’t put his heart into it the others can’t do their best. He thought when we started out, that we were just going to have a nice easy paddle, that I didn’t know a decent stroke when I saw it and that all he had to do was go through the motions. I don’t see how he expects to make the boat if he goes at it that way.”

“Walker? He hasn’t any more chance of making the First than I have,” said Jimsy. “He will have to fight good and hard to even get into the second boat. He always was a bluffer. Glad you wore him out, Dick. If I’d thought you were still on the river I’d have been down there when you got back. But I supposed you were in long ago. It was white of Mike to back you up.”

“Why, he couldn’t do anything else, could he?” asked Dick. “I was only following instructions!”

The fate of the four substitutes was soon known throughout the school, and the school laughed consumedly. None laughed more heartily than Joe Whittier. Joe laughed until the tears fairly streamed down his weather-tanned cheeks. “Think of those four big hulks out there being bossed by that little tike, Alan!” he gasped. “Can’t you see it? Frank Walker, the big goof, getting madder and madder, and trying to mutiny? And the others not daring to! And the youngster, about as big as a good-sized bite, sitting [222]there and telling them they’re rotten and that they can’t quit until they’ve delivered the goods! My sainted aunt, it’s grand!”

Alan agreed that it was grand, and after a moment he added, while Joe wiped his eyes: “Looks to me as if young Dick was a born cox, Joe. Funny if he made the boat next fall!”

“Funny!” said Joe indignantly. “How do you get that way? It would be a blamed sight funnier if he didn’t!”

Dick didn’t go out in the four-oar again. For that matter, the four-oar didn’t go out itself. Chase and Debrion displaced Crane and Nelson in the second boat, and Walker and Lobell paddled about in a pair-oar or substituted on occasions. The coach’s big job now was to get the first crew in shape for the three-cornered race with West Shore and Brackett’s, and all his energies were being bent to that end. May came in very warm and stayed so, and the river was like a mill pond most of the time. Standing on the bluff any week-day afternoon one could, in the course of an hour, sight at least a half-dozen crews at work, for the Navy was out with her Varsity and her second Varsity and her third Varsity and her plebes, and there were the light-blue-tipped blades of the North Bank first and second. Launches sped after the toiling eights, canoes bobbed lazily about, sail boats got in the way, rowboats plied from shore to shore and the old Severn became busy and colorful.

Ashore, baseball and lacrosse squads were hard at [223]work. Indeed, both teams had already played several games. The tennis courts were filled at all hours and one might have wondered how the two hundred and odd young gentlemen ever found time for study; whether, for that matter, studies were still pursued at North Bank. But they were. Dick knew it well, and so did others. Still more, briefly losing sight of the fact in the press of outdoor engagements, were due to become thoroughly, even rudely, cognizant later. Dick had survived midwinter examinations without great difficulty; had even attained some slight credit; but now that rowing affairs had become so important it wasn’t to be denied that lessons seriously interfered with his career! Still, he didn’t make the mistake that some made. He tried honestly to do what was required of him, even if by so doing he lost precious hours that might have been more pleasantly spent. As a result, he was keeping his end up when May came and could take thought of the onrushing finals without having his heart sink into his shoes. Jimsy, too, was playing it safe, although his idea of safety was not Dick’s. To Dick it seemed that his chum was always treading precariously on the very edge of misfortune!

Frank Walker had never forgiven Dick for that incident on the river. He might have forgiven the thing itself in the course of time, but the joking and “ragging” he had received as a result of it was too much for him to overlook. He invariably met Dick with a ferocious scowl that was intended to convey contempt and hatred and that succeeded fairly well. [224]As they met frequently, at the boathouse if nowhere else, Dick would have led a miserable life had he allowed Walker’s manifestations to trouble him. But he didn’t. To more than make up for Walker there were plenty of other crew men who liked Dick and let him know it. Unofficially at least he was a member of the rowing squad, for although he didn’t sit at training table he was always on hand at rowing time, helping at this task or that, smiling, quiet and ready. Almost always he took his place beside Coach Carmichael in the launch when the crews were boated and went off up or down the river, as the case might be, “helping coach.” And so affairs went until the Tuesday preceding the race with West Shore and Brackett’s. That afternoon, when the first was out of the way, the coach sprung a surprise.

“Get a move on, Second,” said the coach, turning from watching the first get away. “Anstruth, how’s the shoulder? All right? Good boy! Hold on, Paine. You needn’t row to-day. Nelson, you go in at Two. That’s right, I guess. And Dodd—Where’s Dick Dodd? Oh, there you are! You take the lines to-day, Dick. Kid, you come along with me in the launch.”

Warren yielded his megaphone to Dick with patent surprise, but without, so far as the younger boy could see, any resentment. Warren, however, was not one-half so surprised as Dick was. Dick accepted the megaphone rather dazedly and turned a blank look on the coach. But the latter was talking to Paine, and Dick’s glance, going past him, encountered Walker’s sneering [225]scowl. That steadied him and he went inside, squeezing past the crew who were bringing out the shell. In the dimness of the shed, odoriferous of paint and varnish and cedar scrapings, he took a long breath. Then he followed out with the rudder. The shell was righted, lowered, and the men tramped up the slope again for the sweeps. Dick fitted the rudder and cautiously seated himself, bringing the lines past him and crossing the ends on his lap. Then he fitted his feet into place. The sweeps were on the float and the men ready.

“All right,” he called. “Four!—Five!—Three!—Six!—Two!—Seven!—Bow!—Stroke!”

Oars were locked and sweaters peeled. Dick looked along the boat. Anstruth, facing him, smiled back. Further forward, Debrion grinned and gave his head a sidewise shake as if saying, “We’re getting on, Dodd!” Dick smiled back. They were a fine, eager-looking lot, he thought, and he sincerely hoped he wouldn’t make a mess of his part of the proceedings. Coach Carmichael was speaking to him now.

“Better let Stroke work the boat to-day, Dick,” he said. “He knows the programme. Watch ’em sharp, though, and see if you can help smooth the stroke out. They’re still rowing ragged. I’ll pick you up later at the head of the course. All right, Second. Remember you’ve got a race to-morrow over the full course, and for Pete’s sake get together to-day. Take ’em out, Cox.”

“Up or down?” asked Dick of Anstruth.

[226]

“Up, Cox. We’ll take it slow for awhile and then try a good breeze from about the first point. Keep her inshore going up, for the current’s setting out pretty strong. And, say, watch for a roll, will you? One of our troubles of late has been to keep an even keel. All right, if you say so.”

“Ready all! Forward! Paddle—Way all! Five and Seven, back water! Stroke and Six, paddle!—Steady all!—Touch her, Stroke! Steady! Ready all! Forward! Row!”

The eight blades caught together, the slides traveled forward, the shell slipped ahead, the oarlocks rattled musically, the wet blades emerged from the swirling ripples, paused in air and again disappeared. But now bow side was a little late and Dick began to time them: “Row!—Row!—Row!—”

The locks clicked in unison again and the slight rock of the shell was gone. It was traveling evenly once more. Anstruth smiled at the Cox. “That’s Norwell,” he said softly. “Number Five. Watch his catch, Dodd.”

Dick watched, and then: “Five, you’re catching late!” he called sharply. “Watch Seven! Get your time from him! That’s better!”

Anstruth quickened his stroke a little and the shell began to travel at a good speed. It was exhilarating to feel the air in his face and to watch the eight rowers moving forward and back, the muscles of their brown arms swelling into cords as the oars caught at the blue water. This, thought Dick happily, was different from [227]steering the four; different in more ways than one. Here were fellows not only willing to work and do their very utmost but eager, even anxious. The very feel of the lines was different, for the long shell was like a horse with the bit in his teeth. It paid but slight heed to the gentle tugs that would have veered the four-oar widely from her course, and when, at the first point, Dick sought to steer to starboard he was forced to a second attempt and so lost water that in a race would have been invaluable. Anstruth saw and smiled again.

“Got to pull her,” he grunted. “Give ’em ‘Way all,’ Dodd.”

They rested on their oars a minute under the shadow of the bluff and watched a Navy crew go rattling past, her Cox hoarsely exhorting them to “Get her up! Get her up! Get her up!” Anstruth shook his head. “That’s rowing, fellows,” he said. “I’ll say that’s rowing!”

“That was their second, wasn’t it?” asked Dick.

The Stroke nodded. “Yes, and it’s just as good as their first, if you ask me! Gosh, those guys can certainly handle a sweep! Well, let’s go, Cox. Better try a racing start, I guess.”

Dick nodded. “Racing start, fellows!” he called. “Ten strokes and then lengthen out. Get deep and don’t splash any more than you have to.” Dick was repeating stuff he had heard a score of times. “Touch her, Seven! Steady! Are you all ready? Forward!—Row!—Two! Three! Row! Row! Five! Six! Seven! Eight! [228]Nine! Steady down! Lengthen out! That’s it! You’ve got ’em! Row! Row! Row!”

Anstruth gradually let down the stroke and they went on at a thirty-two clip, rowing very well for aught Dick could see. “Good start,” he megaphoned. “Nice work, Second!”

Short of the second turn they ceased rowing once more. Anstruth looked approvingly at the new cox. “Dodd, I wish you were going to be here to-morrow. You’ve got real pep, boy.”

“He’s a cox,” said Number Seven, with warm approval. “Let’s get Mike to let us have him. What’s the chance, Dodd?”

Dick shook his head, trying not to look too pleased. “Guess I’m not up to a race yet,” he answered. “I’ve only been out once before; in the four-oar.”

“Seems to me I’ve heard something about that,” laughed Norwell. “How about it, Deb?”

Debrion grinned. “Dodd’s the heartless tyrant, all right,” he replied. “Any fellow got a bottle of pop handy?”

“Shut up!” growled Bow. “I’m as thirsty as a sponge!”

“Well, wet your wrists,” said Anstruth. “Let’s try another start, Cox. We can do better than the last one.”

Twenty minutes later the first crew came up with the launch hard on its heels and Mike’s voice bellowing through the big horn. Then the “Sprite” swung about and came sidling down on the second.

[229]

“Tried your starts, Captain?” asked the coach.

“Two, sir.”

“How’d they go?”

“Pretty good, I think.”

“What do you say, Cox?”

“Good, sir.”

“All right. I’ll take you down a ways and then you can go in. Hit up a thirty-two to the big maple and then run it up to thirty-eight and let’s see if you can keep together. All right!”

Behind the shell came the launch, the water curling away from her sharp nose, the big blue megaphone and the coach looming in the bow. These things Anstruth could see, but not Dick. Dick only got the occasional booming of Mike’s voice as the shell went rushing through the water. Stroke’s muscles swelled and his breath came hard and fast. Thirty-six to the minute now. “Slower back, Five!” warned Dick. “Watch your man in front!” Thirty-eight, Dick guessed. The shell was certainly traveling! The nearer shore slipped past rapidly. The first point was coming up to port. “Watch your catch, Two!” shouted Dick. “You’re late!”

“Get together!” roared the voice through the megaphone in the launch. “Bow side, you’re ragged!”

Dick tightened his grasp on the left line, ready for the turn, but before he needed to pull Mike’s voice came again. “That will do, Second!” called the coach.

“Way all!” said Dick.

The launch came nosing into sight beside him. The [230]crew were leaning heavily on their oars and breathing hard, their eyes, however, seeking the coach’s face.

“Not so very bad,” said Mike. “You aren’t together half the time, of course, and you won’t be until you learn to use your ears as well as your arms and legs. If you’ll listen for the rattle of the locks you’ll get the time. There ought to be just one sound instead of two or three or half a dozen! Five, you start your slide too soon. Get your weight onto your stroke before you drive your slide. Two, you don’t get your blade out clean. Drop your hands more. Bow, you were a lot better to-day. You’re getting more out of your legs. You, too, Stroke. You’re improving right along. All right. Take ’em in, Cox. Better paddle back. You’ll have a real job on your hands to-morrow!”

Back at the boathouse, the shell housed, Dick waited to see the First come in. Scripps and Anstruth leaned beside him in the shadow, for the sun, although well down, still shot its hot rays athwart the landing. “I wish,” said the second crew captain presently as he watched the Navy plebes go swinging downstream, “that Mike would let us have Dodd here for keeps. I like Kid Warren all right, but Dodd’s got him beat to a froth as a cox. Think he would, Johnny?”

The manager looked a bit surprised. “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe.” He looked past Anstruth at Dick. “You’ve been out only twice, haven’t you, Dodd?” Dick nodded. “Well, I don’t know,” repeated Scripps thoughtfully. “If you like, I’ll throw out the hint, [231]but you know how Mike is. He has everything doped out a month ahead.”

Anstruth nodded, and Dick said relievedly, “There they come!” and walked toward the float. The First was coming down fast, Joe Whittier setting a thirty-eight stroke. Some one on the bow side, probably Warden, was splashing, although not badly. Anstruth, joining Dick, looked and commented.

“They’ll beat us by about ten lengths to-morrow,” he said sadly.

The “Sprite” circled outward and came up to the landing from downstream as the shell glided up to the float. Dick caught an oar-blade and led it along the edge. The crew lay tiredly on their sweeps, their eyes fixed on Mike, standing in the bow of the launch as it puffed slowly up. There was silence when Bromley shut the motor off, silence save for the lapping of the water against the float. Mike shook his head slowly as he leaned on the big blue megaphone and looked across at them.

“Not so good, to-day,” he said regretfully. “You’re still not together, and you’ve got to get together before you can hope to win a race. I wish you could carry one day’s form over to the next day, but it seems that you can’t. You were better yesterday, individually and collectively, than you were to-day. Stroke, you weren’t bad, but you’re still trying to feather under water. Try to correct that. Number Seven, what’s the matter? You crumple right up at the finish. Pull it through, pull it through! Number Six, you’re still [232]slow at the catch. I’m tired of telling you about that. Number Five, you did better about splashing. You’re not pulling clear through yet, though. Number Four, watch the angle of your blade in the water. Number Two, not bad for you to-day. You’re improving. Bow, you’re finishing in the air. Keep your hands out of your lap, for Pete’s sake! Cox, your steering might have been a sight better. Some day you’ll run the nose into the bank! All right. That’ll do.”

“Well, I don’t know,” confided Anstruth as he and Dick climbed the steps together. “Maybe they aren’t such great shucks after all, Dodd. Maybe we’ve got a chance with ’em, eh? What do you think?”

The Second did have a chance to win the race on Wednesday, but lost it when, near the three-quarters, Purley Warren steered the shell too close to the shore and lost the aid of a good, strong current. Perhaps, as Warren claimed afterwards, the first actually did crowd him there—there were no course markers—but, as Coach Carmichael dryly reminded him, since he was in his own water he was not required to give way to the first. Possibly the second would have been beaten even if that incident hadn’t occurred, for the bow-side oars were rowing pretty raggedly at the finish, Norwell, at Five, messing his stroke badly. It was, however, a pretty race, and the first crew had to extend themselves to get the length and three-quarters lead that was theirs at the finish line.

Dick saw the contest from the launch, in company with Johnny Scripps and ex-Captain Trumbull; and, of course, Coach Carmichael and Bromley. It is doubtful, though, if Bromley looked more than twice at the shells. The “Sprite’s” engine was acting hysterically that afternoon, and Bromley spent his moments watching it sternly. If Dick entertained a hope that he might pilot the Second down the river that afternoon, [234]he was disappointed, but I don’t think he did. If Scripps ever followed his own suggestion and hinted to the coach regarding Dick and the coxswain’s seat, Dick never knew it. When the race was over and Dick was helping on the float Captain Anstruth let fall a remark that, while it buttered no parsnips, pleased Dick. “We could race ’em again now,” said Anstruth, a trifle bitterly, “and beat ’em. We’d have beaten ’em then if we’d had you in the cox’s seat instead of that fried egg over there!”

However, the “fried egg” continued to steer the second. There was no more racing, but on Thursday the first went over the full course in 11 minutes and forty-one seconds, a performance that brought no joy to any one. Conditions were not ideal that afternoon, though, for there was only a sluggish current and a brisk wind quartered the course. The crew rowed fairly smoothly for the first mile and a half, but after that it was every man for himself, to use Mike’s dejected words. Still, they finished strong, and that was promising. Friday saw a few short stretches rowed while Mike tried to smooth out individual rough places. Then, on Saturday, West Shore, who had come down the bay in a big launch, her shell in tow, appeared off the boathouse in the forenoon, and Brackett’s School arrived about twelve. After that events came fast. The race was started upstream at five o’clock. Dick had half expected that Coach Carmichael would invite him to see the contest from the “Sprite,” but he didn’t. Instead, the “Sprite” held three members [235]of the second, Anstruth one of them, Manager Scripps and the coach. Probably Bromley was there, too, but if he was he was so hunched over his beloved engine that Dick didn’t see him when the launch came; dancing past the spot where Dick and Jimsy were watching.

The race went to West Shore by a length and a half, with North Bank second and Brackett’s trailing six lengths behind the Light Blue. North Bank cut twenty seconds off her trial time, but that wasn’t good enough to nose out West Shore, who finished sitting up and who, it was generally conceded, might have added another length had she cared to.

There were, however, encouraging features for North Bank. Her crew, four pounds lighter than the winners, had rowed steadily, had, between the mile and the mile and a half marks, picked up two lengths on the leaders, and had finished the race, if not untuckered, at least in extremely good condition. As Scripps said later to Dick, if the course had been two miles instead of a mile and seven-eighths North Bank would have evened matters up with West Shore. Her attempt to spurt at the end had not been successful, but she was, declared Scripps, getting more out of her stroke before that than West Shore. Moreover, added the manager, there remained three weeks before the Cumbridge race, and he’d trust Mike to do a whole lot in three weeks!

Mike did do a lot in those three weeks, and several unforseen things happened during them. On Thursday [236]of the week following the three-cornered event Dick became permanent coxswain of the second boat. No one seemed much surprised save Dick. Even Warren appeared to have been anticipating it and, on the whole, took it very well. Debrion did quote him as having remarked that “there was no use putting up a fight against a fellow who lived in Mike’s pocket!” But Warren may be excused some slight expression of chagrin. Dick went to the second crew training table and sat between Anstruth and Nelson, where, fortunately, he was on the same side as Walker and so did not have to see that gentleman’s disapproving looks. Anstruth called him “D. D.” and teased him because he ate so little, and liked him immensely. For that matter, so did the others, with the exception of the unrelenting Walker, and boasted in the hearing of first-crew fellows that they had the best cox on the river. In something like three days Dick became “Dicky.” For several years he had dreaded that appellation, had on occasions fought glorious battles to protect his name from the diminutive termination, and now it had come and he didn’t mind it a bit! He liked being “Dicky” because there was no loss of dignity entailed. The second crew adopted him enthusiastically, renamed him to please themselves and were proud of him. He was, they declared, the smallest cox on record and the pluckiest and the cleverest. Debrion would catch him up and sit him on a broad shoulder and parade the length of the float. Lobell, from the bow of the boat, would beg him to take his [237]megaphone off a minute so he could see him. They all made affectionate fun of him and babied him until he felt almost ashamed. When, however, he tried to assert his dignity they laughed harder and “roughed” him gently and quite spoiled his effect.

At North Bank, as at every place where feet lace into stretchers, there was one inviolable rule regarding new coxswains, and Dick fell foul of it two days after his promotion. It was Saturday afternoon. The First had boated and was lying off the landing. The “Sprite” awaited the coach’s pleasure. The second crew fellows and a small gathering of onlookers were standing about while Mike and Scripps discussed something earnestly at the doorway. Dick, megaphone in one hand and polished rudder in the other, was talking to Ben Bromley when Debrion and Chase joined him.

“Let’s see that rudder,” said Debrion. Dick yielded it. At the same moment Chase tugged at the megaphone. Dick yielded that, too, glancing up wonderingly from his conversation. Something in Chase’s grin warned him, and he stepped back. He had no suspicion of what was coming, but Chase’s expression certainly hinted at mischief. He reached forth for the megaphone, but Chase only laughed and set it down on the edge of the landing beside the rudder. Dick stepped forward to rescue both articles, keeping, however, a wary eye on Chase.

“What’s the idea?” he asked.

They were all about him then, quite suddenly, a group of big, bare-legged, bare-armed, laughing captors. [238]“New cox! New cox!” they shouted gleefully. “Bathe the baby!” Dick knew then what was coming and submitted gracefully enough, although he did kick and squirm some as he was lifted and passed from one pair to the next down the runway and across the float to where, finally, Anstruth and Crane swung him twice backward and forward and then sent him, turning and twisting, far over the water!

Dick was aware of a mighty splash, realized that, in a manner of speaking, the splash was he, and then struck upward from the green depths. When he had shaken the water from his eyes he saw them there all lined up, laughing, and ready to help him out. “You big dumb-bells,” he sputtered. “You wait till I get you out!” He wasn’t in the least angry, but he knew that they would expect some show of dignity, would be disappointed if he took it too calmly. His threat redoubled their laughter, while Dick struck out for the float and was hauled out in a trice by many hands. Coach Carmichael, grinning until his bristly mustache pointed acutely upward, called: “Better get into some dry things, Dick. Some of the crowd can fix you up.”

Dick, shaking himself, was taken into the boathouse by Debrion and was soon in possession of a pair of shorts and a rowing shirt some six sizes too large for him. His reappearance caused renewed merriment, and Chase, gathering a handful of Dick’s upper garments, shook it, crying anxiously: “Shirt! Shirt, where’s Dicky?” Dick squirmed away, gathered up [239]his rudder and megaphone and sternly ordered the shell out; and then became aware that the first crew, still lying off the landing, had joyously witnessed the incident.

During his first week with the Second Dick learned the ropes fast. He got to know the river, from the sand spit to the railway bridge, extremely well. Along the three miles there were certain landmarks of recognized importance, each of which the crewman’s vocabulary had provided with a name. These Dick learned from Anstruth, who was an old timer on the river: Blue Ledge, Fletcher’s Bend, The Walnut, Second Point, Red Bank, First Point, The Beach, High Rock, the Boathouse, Laurence’s, Ferndale, Three Trees, Big Hole. “Hit it up, Stroke!” Dick would bark. “Swing her down to High Rock at thirty-four! Let’s see you push some water!” Or: “Keep it up, Second! There’s Laurence’s! Ten more strokes! Don’t let down! Eyes in the boat, Three! That’s fine! Come on, now! Right on down to Ferndale! Get the time, Six! You’re slow! That’s fine! Ten more now! Row! Row! Five more! Come on, Stroke! Three!—Four!—Five! Let her run!”

It might be stretching it a bit to say that the second crew was a better crew after Dick’s arrival in the cox’s seat, but certain it is that it showed more snap and did things in a swaggering, cocky fashion that would have pleased a veteran oarsman. When the Second brought the shell out, put her over and took their places, or, having returned from work, reversed the process, it was worth seeing. Dick, megaphone against [240]one small hip, very straight and slim and stern, said “Hep!” and they “hepped” as one man. They might grin as Dick barked his orders, catching the size of him from the corners of their eyes, but they obeyed like soldiers at drill and loved doing it. Coach Carmichael, watching, would smile, too, but it was an approving smile.

Thrice a week now there was a brush between the two crews, and some ten days after Dick’s initiation the Second won by a full boat-length in a mile race and got words of commendation from the coach, bellowed through the big blue horn as the launch swept by. That victory cost them dear in wind and muscle, but it was worth it, and they were a very cocky lot for two days, or until the First came back at them and rowed away from them at the finish. Once a week, usually Saturday, the two shells sped over the full course in competition, and always on those occasions it was Dick’s lot to watch the long, bent back of Tommy Gage as the line was neared, for the Second never won over the full course.

There were three such races during the interim preceding the final contest of the year. In one of them the First took the lead at the start and was never headed. In another the Second held her shell in the fore all the way to Ferndale, only to be beaten by more than a length at the line. The third—that was on the Wednesday preceding the Cumbridge race—was a heart-breaking affair from start to finish. Theoretically, the first crew should have won handily, for here it was [241]but three days from the Big Day and “Mike’s Pets” were supposed to have attained the height of their form. But Second grabbed the lead in the first six or eight frenzied strokes and kept it to Second Point. There Dick saw the rival shell edge up on the stroke side and from there to the half distance the First lapped and hung. Off the boathouse Dick called for a spurt and got it, Anstruth hitting up the stroke without losing drive, and the First shell’s nose receded from his sight. But Anstruth couldn’t stroke a mile-and-seven-eighths at full speed, and for the last half-mile the two boats see-sawed until, at the very last instant, the First shot ahead and won by less than a length.

That race didn’t bring the victors many compliments. The coach said harsh things at the landing and the school began to wonder whether Saturday’s race was to be the walk-over that of late it had anticipated. The time had been slow, everything considered, and there had been a good deal of splashing in the middle of the shell toward the end. On the whole, North Bank’s chances to win from Cumbridge were considered far less bright that Wednesday evening than before the race, and Coach Carmichael plainly showed that he was disappointed.

Anstruth bitterly reviled himself after the race and wouldn’t be comforted by his mates. If he could only have come across with a last spurt, he declared, they’d have won or tied. Every fellow had rowed a corking race but he, and he had failed them! Debrion told him to forget it. “Why, you slab-sided, double-jointed [242]Piute,” said Debrion scornfully, “we couldn’t have answered you if you’d gone a single stroke higher in that last hundred yards! We were all in and pulling with our nerves. Ask any of ’em, you lobster. Ask Dicky. Dicky knows we were rowed out, every mother’s son of us!”

And Dicky, who didn’t know anything of the sort, but who was too fond of Anstruth to withhold consolation, nodded vehemently. “It wasn’t your fault, Cap,” he said, “any more than it was theirs—or mine! You rowed a corking race. Why, gee, if you’d done any better you wouldn’t have been there! They’d have you in the other boat!”

“Yeah,” answered Anstruth dolefully, “that’s right! If I was any good I’d have been there long ago!”

“Oh, well, forget it,” counseled Debrion. “We made ’em mighty near kill themselves. Half the lot were draped on their oars when they finished. We did all right, every one of us. So did Dicky. Dicky steered like an old-timer all the way. Never lost an inch of water and took us past the second turn so close you couldn’t have dropped a match between my blade and the marker!”

“Dicky’s a little wonder,” said Anstruth. “He knows the rowing game already better than a lot of us. Dicky did his part, and if I could have come across the last time he asked for it—” The Second crew captain shook his head sorrowfully and turned away.

It was on the Monday before that the letter from George came. George wrote Jimsy that he was feeling [243]fine once more, was back at home and had been tutoring for more than a month. He was coming back next fall to try for the first class and expected to make it. He wanted Jimsy to visit him in August, he wrote: Dick, too, if Dick could manage it. But he would talk about that when he saw them, for he was running down to North Bank the following Saturday to see the baseball game and the boat-race; and so that would be about all for the present.

“That’ll be corking!” exclaimed Jimsy. “We’ll see what we can of the ball game and then get over in time for the race. Gosh, it’ll be like old times, won’t it? The three of us together again, I mean!”

But Jimsy was planning without the sanction of the future. When Saturday arrived, although George arrived with it, looking a very different George from when last seen there, and although Jimsy was still enjoying the possession of his bodily and mental faculties, there was no Dick to make the third at the reunion. Dick had a more important rôle to play that day than that of mere observer, for on Thursday the strong hand of the faculty reached forth and lifted two members of the first crew from the boat, with no thought, as it seemed, for what their absence might mean two days later. The faculty only knew that repeated warnings had failed to keep the two in good class standing, and now, like an impersonal and inscrutable Fate, the faculty acted, and Coy, at Number Six, and Gage, at Cox were eliminated from rowing affairs for the rest of the season.

[244]

The school, revolted by the tragedy, endured an agonized period of speechlessness, and then made itself heard in no uncertain voice. The faculty was a lot of dunder-heads, the faculty was this, the faculty was that. Principally, the faculty was a Traitor! But, although the storm waxed mightily, the faculty, like a bleak and solid headland, neither shook nor wavered. Appeals to Doctor Heidler were vain. A petition circulated all Friday morning and signed by more than half the students was politely tabled. The storm rumbled away, leaving a gloomy and sullen world behind.

Alan Linscott became almost lyric in his fervid denunciations and tragic expressions of grief that Thursday evening, and Dick and Jimsy, who had unwisely intruded, wished themselves back in Baldwin. Joe Whittier, gloomy enough though he was, accepted the matter with fair philosophy. Joe pointed out that Coy wasn’t the whole crew, and—

“It isn’t that,” declared Alan passionately. “We can replace Coy. There’s Anstruth, Debrion. But you can’t shake a crew up like this almost the day before the race without playing hob with it! You smash the whole works, I tell you! We had a slim chance of winning yesterday. To-day we haven’t. That’s all. We’re beaten before we start, Joe. Oh, it’s all right for you to sit there and shrug your fat shoulders! You’re not captain. I am. There’s the difference. What about Tommy? Think you can fill his place easy? Tommy’s worked with us two years and knows [245]the river, and knows you and me and how to handle us. Oh, well, we’ll get licked, but it won’t be our fault! Licked by the faculty! That’s us! Licked by a foozling old bunch of grannies! That’s fine, isn’t it? Laugh now!”

But Joe didn’t laugh, and after awhile the temperature lowered and they talked things over more calmly if no more hopefully.

“Who rowed six in your boat, Dick?” Joe asked.

“Never mind,” said Alan irritably. “I want Debrion. He’s the fellow for us. We’ll get him shaken in somehow to-morrow. You’ll have to cox us, Dick, I suppose.” Alan’s tone didn’t hold any flattering note of pleasure. “Warren’s no earthly use. Do you know the course?”

“Don’t be an ass,” said Joe pleasantly. “Dick knows the course well enough to steer us over it. He hasn’t had any trouble getting the Second down on our necks two, three times!”

“I know,” agreed Alan, more amiably. “Well—Say, I’ve got to see Mike! And Scripps! What’s the time? Geewhillikins! I’m off!”

Joe watched his departure sympathetically. “Hard lines on old Alan,” he said softly. “Rotten hard!”

The next day Debrion was snatched from the débris of the discarded Second and fitted his feet into the lacings of Number Six stretcher, and Dick, not a little tremulous and doubtful, was thrust into the stern, and the First went out on the river to learn a new cohesion [246]and, if possible, by so doing, wrest to-morrow’s supremacy from the husky dark-blue crew that followed it up the stream, a half mile back, like a gloating Nemesis!

Saturday dawned warm, still, lifeless. Not rowing weather, unless by chance the breeze came up later and cleared the haze away. The race was set for three-forty-five, which meant, in the light of experience, four or four-fifteen. There was a ball game with Cumbridge at two, the first game of the series, and optimistic fellows believed that they would be able to see the last man put out before it was time to seek a vantage point along the river.

George arrived quite early, so early that Jimsy, who had expected to meet him at the station, was taken by surprise, for the visitor walked in on him while he was still searching for a blue-and-white tie appropriate to the day. George was quite himself again. Indeed, he looked far better than Jimsy remembered ever having seen him. Presently they set forth on a search for Dick, but failed to find him. Dick was out with the crew, for, contrary to custom, Coach Carmichael had sent his charges up the river for a quiet paddle along the still reaches. It was a long wait for four o’clock to come and some of the fellows were restless and nervous. Mike could have wished for less enervating weather to-day. Dick returned to Number 33 about half-past ten, warm and inclined to be silent. [248]But the meeting with George acted as a tonic and the three of them sat as close to the open window as they could get and talked hard.

“I see,” said George, “that we’ve lost you for lacrosse, Dick, but I’m mighty glad you’ve found this other job. Like it, don’t you?”

Dick nodded earnestly. “I love it, George.”

“Going to win this afternoon?”

Dick’s face sobered and he hesitated perceptibly before answering. “I hope so,” he said finally. “Some of the fellows seem fairly confident, and Mike says we’ve got a good chance, but—I don’t know. There seems to be a sort of—sort of downheartedness in the air.”

“That’s just this beastly sultry weather,” said Jimsy. “It would take the starch out of a potato. Thank Heaven I don’t have to row in a boat race or play baseball to-day!”

George was observing Dick thoughtfully. “Don’t let it get on your nerves,” he advised. “Those fellows are going to take their cue from you, Dick, and if you look worried they’re going to feel so. Keep the upper lip stiff, boy, and even if you think you’re in for a licking, don’t let them know it.”

“But I don’t,” said Dick quickly. “That’s just it. I think we can win if we really do our best, but—but the others don’t! That is, a good many of them. Alan smiles and talks cheerful, but he overdoes it and the others don’t believe him. Joe Whittier is the only one of them who really expects to win, I guess. If [249]they’d only make up their minds to it, they’d do it, George. I’m sure they would!”

“What’s wrong with the boat? You know I haven’t heard much of the news since I left.”

“Well, of course losing Coy sort of upset things; Coy and Gage, too. We did pretty well yesterday in practice, though. Then Cumbridge has done the distance in nearly twenty seconds under our best time, and she was out yesterday afternoon where the fellows could see her and there’s no denying that she rows more evenly than we do. She has a shorter stroke, with a quick drive, that gets her along awfully smoothly. She looks hard to beat, and that’s a fact. Oh, I guess it’s just one thing and another—nothing special—we’re in a sort of funk, maybe. Two or three of the fellows are a bit on edge. Alan’s one of them. I’m scared about him. If any one breaks before the race is over it will be Alan, I guess. He’s all nerves and make-believe.”

“I know the symptoms,” answered George. “He will probably get over it after things start. It’s the suspense that’s wearing him out. Who’s got the weight, we or Cumbridge?”

“There’s not much difference according to the figures. They have a pound or two on us. I heard Mike say that they weren’t boated any too well, though; that they’ve got too much beef in the bow. Nice-looking crew, those Cumbridge fellows. I sort of wish I hadn’t seen them row yesterday. They came down the river after us, when we were coming back, doing [250]thirty-eight to the minute and not tossing a drop of water. It was mighty pretty, but it sort of got me scared.”

“That was showing off,” said George. “They wanted to scare you, Dick. Thirty-eight doesn’t mean so much when the stroke’s a short one, too. Don’t worry about them. Forget them entirely. Just get your boat down the river as fast as you can. That’s your job.”

“I know.” Dick nodded thoughtfully. “I wish it was over, though!”

About two o’clock the air freshened somewhat, but the heat was still severe and over on the baseball diamond the male portion of the audience folded their coats across their knees and pulled their hats down over their eyes. Jimsy and George, roasting side by side, hoped to witness a North Bank victory before they left to see the race, but the game dragged, for neither pitcher was effective and hits and runs were plentiful—and errors, too—and at three-thirty, the score being then 12 to 10 in Cumbridge’s favor, North Bank was just starting her half of the sixth inning. It was largely the lure of the comparative coolness of tree shade on the river bank that took them away then, for since boat races never did start on time they might safely have watched another inning though. But they unwedged themselves from their perspiring neighbors and made for the river, and were glad that they had done so for here there was a breeze which, though hardly more than a zephyr, dispelled the worst of the [251]heat. They chose a point about an eighth of a mile from the finish, joining a sprinkling of onlookers who had already gathered. From there the starting point was out of sight, but they would have the boats in view from the half distance to the end. Cumbridge had already gone up, they learned, the crew aboard the launch and the shell in tow. The judge’s boat was anchored at the finish line and all seemed ready. The time was twelve minutes to four.

A mile and three-quarters upstream the two crews were listening to the referee’s final instructions at that moment. He was speaking to them through a small megaphone from the bow of an immaculate white launch. To the left the black launch flying the dark-blue of Cumbridge floated down with the current and churned back to position again. To the right the little “Sprite” lay throbbing softly at a distance. Between the two shells, their sterns even, lay some forty feet of gently flowing water. The rowers, hatted, their white shirts plastered to their bodies, waited. No eye roved toward the starter. Every face was set toward the stern. Save for the lapping of the water, the chugging of the launches and the crisp voice of the referee everything was very silent. Once Dick glanced across the intervening space at the rival coxswain. He seemed, thought Dick, no older than himself, a slight, earnest-faced youth, his dark-blue megaphone pointing downstream in a queerly determined manner. Dick wondered if his own face looked, under its tan, as [252]pale as the other boy’s did. The speaker’s voice stopped and Dick jerked back to attention.

“Touch her easy, Two! Steady!”

“Are you ready?” asked the referee.

“Forward!”

The slides answered. Dick’s heart beat convulsively as he waited. The time seemed eternal. Then a pistol shot rang out.

“Row!”

Oars caught, bodies lurched in frenzied haste, locks rattled, blue-tipped oars swept forward and back, water churned. Ten seconds of wild confusion in which the shouts of the coxswains, the encouraging cheers from the launches, the beat of oars, the splash of water made bedlam.

“Row!—Row!—Row!—Row!—” bellowed Dick, his pulses leaping. Then: “Steady down! Steady down!” he shouted. From the corner of his eye he saw the Cumbridge shell sweeping along beside them, but they had caught the jump in those frenzied strokes and the bow of the Cumbridge boat no longer ranged even. “Lengthen out, Joe!” said Dick. “We’re ahead!”

Joe Whittier grinned as he answered. Down the length of the shell the rowers followed the slower, longer stroke. Behind, although Dick could not see, came the launches, gliding easily over the smooth water. Ahead, over the shoulders of the crew as they finished their strokes, Dick could see the wide blue river, almost unruffled, the course markers growing smaller and smaller in the distance, here and there a canoe, or a [253]sailboat with listless sail, some spots of white and faint colors along the bank where groups of spectators congregated. His small brown hands clutched the rudder-lines convulsively and his heart raced and stopped agonizingly. Beside them hung the boat with the dark-tipped oars, neither gaining nor losing.

Dick had been told that somewhere between the start and the first turn of the course Cumbridge would go into the lead. That, Mike had said, was certain. Cumbridge was rowing a shorter and faster stroke and was due to lead at the half distance if not before. North Bank’s business was to keep her stroke long, finish hard and wear the enemy down. “When she gets a length ahead, hang onto her rudder,” directed Mike. “Don’t get worried, fellows. Just keep your stroke long and bide your time. You’ll get her later. She can’t keep up that high stroke for the distance, and once she lowers it you’ll have her. The race will come in the last half-mile. Be ready for it.”

To Dick it seemed that Joe was pulling a lower stroke than the instructions called for, but Cumbridge was not drawing away and so that must be all right. They were down to the quarter-mile now, all in an instant as it seemed to him. Somewhere a launch whistle was shrilling wildly. Then the Cumbridge shell began to move up and up. Dick looked at Joe and knew that Joe saw. But Joe’s expression was as untroubled as ever. Beside him, across the little space of water, the Cumbridge coxswain moved into Dick’s range of vision. Cumbridge was leading now by a third of a [254]length, perhaps more. The quarter-mile flag was astern, the half mile was coming toward them. In the other boat the cox was doubled over, shouting stridently. Dick couldn’t hear the words. The boat crept past until its rudder was even with Alan. For twenty strokes it hung there, and then again it moved forward. Dick watched it anxiously. Then:

“They’ve got a length, Joe,” he said.

Joe nodded as he swept his slide forward. His stroke quickened a little. Hickson, at Four, was clipping, and Dick shouted warningly. Joe looked interrogation and Dick answered with: “We’re holding them!”

Cumbridge kept that lead to the half-mile flag and then on to the next. The work was beginning to tell now. Dick could see the tenser set of the jaws as the eight heads came forward for the catch. He shouted encouragement through his megaphone at intervals, “We’ve got hold of their rudder! They can’t do another foot! Keep it up, North Bank! Number Five, you’re slow! Four, you’re clipping again! Keep it long and slide it out! Come on! Come on! We’ve got them! They’re showing the grind! Row, North Bank! Row!”

Down to First Point the two shells swept, Cumbridge just showing open water between her stern and the North Bank bow. Then came the turn and Dick watched for the distance, swung slowly, steadily, saw the mile flag go past, almost grazing the sweeps, straightened out again. Cumbridge had lost water [255]there, had steered poorly, and now the North Bank shell just lapped the other.

“We’re on them!” cried Dick. “On them by six feet!”

But his triumph was short-lived. The Cumbridge boat suddenly regained her lead and lengthened it. She was a length and a quarter to the good now and still drawing away. “Hit it up, Joe!” cried Dick. “They’ve got more than her length and we’re past the half!”

And Joe hit it up, to thirty-six, to thirty-eight, and the open water lessened from yards to feet and disappeared. North Bank was lapping! But thirty-eight was no stroke to maintain at that distance from the finish and gradually Joe came back to thirty-four and then to thirty-two. Cumbridge moved away again slowly. How those fellows could keep up that fast stroke and still put the power into it that they did Dick couldn’t understand. The next flag came bobbing toward him and passed. Why, they were nearing the finish now! And Cumbridge was still leading! He sought for signs of weakening in the rival but could see none. Rhythmically, desperately the eight sweeps pushed the river behind them. The dark-blue oars had again opened water between them and the light-blue. Dick felt suddenly horribly sick. They were being beaten! Cumbridge was rowing away from them! He raised his voice huskily.

“Don’t lose them, fellows!” he begged. “We’ve got them if you’ll stick it out! Don’t weaken now! Only a half mile more, fellows! Two! Two, eyes in the [256]boat and pull it through! Hit it up, Stroke! Thirty hard ones now! Let’s go!”

“Not yet!” gasped Joe. “Wait!”

Dick got command of himself again. The boats about the finish line were plainly in sight now. Cumbridge was a good length and a half ahead. Dick watched the intervening water during a dozen strokes. It hadn’t broadened! They were holding Cumbridge now! If only, when the final test came—

“Two! Alan! Don’t do that!” Alan’s head was hanging at the finish and he was “riding his oar.” “Row, man! We’ve got them now! They’re coming back to us! We’ve got them, I tell you! Buck up, Two!”

Alan pulled himself together and bent harder at his oar. He was ghastly pale under the brown sunburn, and his mouth was drawn wide open. He would never last the race out, thought Dick hopelessly. Others, too, were weakening; Hickson and McKim weren’t half rowing. Debrion was splashing badly. He scolded and entreated. Another marker went past. “Half a mile to the line, Joe,” he called entreatingly. “We can do it! Come on now! Make them hard! Get together and row them down! Row them down! Come on, North Bank! We’re beating Cumbridge! Get that? Cumbridge! Don’t weaken now! It’s almost over! Less than half a mile, fellows! Come on for North Bank!”

Up went the stroke and the others pulled to it. At last Cumbridge was tiring, tiring fast. Three and five were splashing badly. The two shells drew together [257]slowly. The last marker went past. There was only a quarter of a mile left to cover. North Bank’s bow lapped the stern of the other boat. Dick shouted the tidings and urged them on. “We’ve got them! Keep it up! Only a little longer, fellows! Two, don’t quit now! Five, pull it through! You’re losing the race for us! Buck up, man, buck up!”

And then it seemed that they never would do it, after all. Cumbridge had come back until her cox was almost opposite the middle of the North Bank shell, but there she remained. Joe, the perspiration running down his face and neck, still held on valiantly, and valiantly the others strove to do their parts. But the stroke was a killing one. Bow was out of time, the shell was rolling, Alan was hardly more than a passenger. Yet Cumbridge, too, was breaking under the strain, and if only there had been another eighth of a mile, another hundred yards, even—

Then Dick shouted frantically, a new note in his voice. “We’ve won!” he shrilled. “They’re coming back fast! Almost even now! There’s the line just ahead! Ten strokes, fellows, only ten! Oh, you yellow dogs, don’t give up! Two! Four! Five! You quitters! You beastly quitters!” Dick was almost sobbing. “Can’t you even try? Only ten strokes, ten hard ones! Oh, you—you—”

The Cumbridge shell was almost even and the line was under them! Dick lifted his voice in one last and frantic appeal: “Lift her! Lift her over! Row! Row! Row—”

[258]

There was the dull report of a pistol, many sounds, cheers, the shrieking of whistles.

“Let her run!” called Dick.

There was silence in the shell as it went on out of the lane, the silence of exhaustion. Presently Joe lifted a drawn face.

“Did we—” He didn’t try to finish. Dick looked back toward the judge’s boat.

“I’m afraid not, Joe,” he said sorrowfully. “But it—it was a good race. You fellows worked like—like—” Dick broke down then and cried frankly.

“Never mind, youngster,” said Joe. “You did your part.”

“I—I called you quitters,” sobbed Dick. “I didn’t mean it! I was—”

“We’d have been beaten worse if you hadn’t,” growled Debrion.

“Look!” Lee was pointing weakly upstream. “The flag! We did win!”

Dick turned again. On the stern of the judge’s boat a big light-blue flag was fluttering lazily. There was a hail from close by, and Coach Carmichael, his face wreathed in smiles, waved from the bow of the “Sprite.”

“Good work, North Bank! Rowed, you fellows rowed! Well steered, Cox! A close race, but you won it, by gravy! Won it by a quarter of a length!”

They paddled back, scorning the proffered hospitality of the referee’s launch, paddled back proudly, untiredly, [259]passing the clustered boats at the finish with the superb indifference of conquerors, smiling tolerantly at the cheers that greeted them. Dick, in a happy haze of unreality, clung to the rudder-lines and beamed at an excellent world. They had won. North Bank had won; his school! A voice disturbed his rhapsody. It was Joe speaking.

“Happy, Dicky?”

Dick nodded and grinned a bit sheepishly. He hadn’t forgotten that he had wept weakly back there, like a mere kid! Joe nodded, too, understandingly.

“Nice race,” he said simply.

They were approaching the boathouse now. On the landing and float and along the rising bank above waited the school. Dick thought he could see Jimsy and George at the right, close by the steps. They’d be awfully happy, too, just as he was. Not quite so happy, of course, for, as he realized now, his happiness came less from the victory, than from the knowledge that he had “done something,” something for the School!

THE END

THE BOY SCOUTS YEAR BOOK

Edited by FRANKLIN K. MATHIEWS

The biggest book for boys! Contains stories by favorite authors, articles by experts, messages from famous men on all subjects nearest a boy’s heart.

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NED BEALS, FRESHMAN

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