"Look here, God, I'll really believe in you, if you give me this last
race ... it will be a miracle, God, if you do this for me, and I will
believe in your Bible, despite my common sense ... despite history ...
despite Huxley and Voltaire," then, going as far as I could--"yes, and
despite Shelley ... dear God, dear Christ, please do what I have asked."
My hand struck on a bottle of witch hazel as I rose. Impulsively, I
drank off half the contents. It sent a warmth through me. I straightened
up, invigorated.
"Come on, Gregory ... what's the matter?" it was Dunn, protesting,
"we'll have to run off the mile without you, if you don't come."
"I'm ready ... I'm coming."
* * * * *
All that I had in my head, when the pistol cracked, was to _run!_ ...
all I felt about me was only a pair of mad legs.
I licked out, neither seeing nor caring ... almost feeling my way along
the rim of the track with my toes, as I ran--as if I had racing eyes in
them. There was a continuous roar that rose and fell like the sea. But I
neither saw nor heeded. I just ran and ran.
On the home-stretch a fellow came breast to breast with me. It was
Learoyd ... running low like a swallow skimming the ground. But it
didn't worry me. I was calm, just floating along, it seemed to me.
I saw Dunn throwing his camera into the air, in the forefront of the
seething crowd. He was crying for me to come on. The camera fell in a
smashed heap, unregarded.
Barely, with my chest flung out, I took the tape ... trailing off ... I
ran half a lap more, with my class leaping grotesquely and shouting,
streaming across field after me--before I had my senses back again, and
realised that the race was over.
"Did I win? Did I win? Did I win?" I asked again and again.
"Yes, you won!"