A SHIFT IN THE BOAT
A FORTNIGHT later another letter packed full of the inevitable rowing
gush started on the long journey to Buenos Aires.
“DEAR MOTHER:
“I have so much to tell you about the crew this time and such a
wonderful story of luck that I must answer your questions right off at
the beginning or I shall surely forget to. You must let me know what
boat you’re coming on in June so that I can meet you at the dock. It
must seem funny to get two summers in the same year. If summer vacations
went with them, I should like that myself. It is all right about the
Comptons. I called there a long time ago. I did not want to go, but as
you wanted me to, I went, and had a very decent time after all. They
asked me to dinner a few days afterward. I had to accept because I
couldn’t very well get out of it. They gave me a swell feed, and there
were two girls there whom I had met at dancing school. Joe Compton is a
conceited little mutt. I will make my party call when the rowing is
over, as it will be after another week. I think I shall get
recommendations for 16 points, though the English isn’t certain yet. You
must not expect me to pass them all off. Nobody does that but the
sharks, and you know I am not a shark. Jason Dunn, the boy you ask about
who turned over a new leaf, keeps it turned all right, but as far as
studies are concerned, it is still blank. You don’t need to ask me to
help him, I couldn’t prevent it if I wanted to, as he studies in my room
almost every night. I don’t dislike him as I used to. I will order the
new suit, but I think the old one would do, and I could spend the money
more profitably on something else. The boys here don’t care much about
outside clothes, though they’re terribly keen about having fresh socks
and shirts every day, and they run wild on neckties. My laundry bill is
a whopper. Now for the real news.
“I rowed on the second a whole week. Of course we did not get a great
deal of Caffrey, but Mike is pretty good, and Pete Talbot would tell me
after the practice some special fault he had seen in me, and then I
worked with all my might to straighten it out. I kept on getting
accustomed to use my legs and run the leg motion into the body and arms
(that doesn’t sound right, but it is the best I can do to explain it),
and I found the work a lot easier. You see if you row with a fixed seat,
the whole strain is on the back and arms, and the pull is with strength
alone. On the sliding seat, you row against your stretcher (that’s the
foot-board) and the legs furnish most of the power. The skill comes in
in blending everything together in one easy, natural motion, and getting
back to take your next stroke without checking the boat by the return of
your slide. I could feel all along that I was gaining, though I was slow
on the recover, and bungled my oar still. The fellows all seemed to
think I was going to make good in the second, and I was delighted, for
our second is about the best second on the river, and Mac sets a
_perfectly wonderful_ stroke.
“One day near the end of the week Caffrey went out with us. He watched
me all the time, but he didn’t say anything to me in particular except
to get away on my slide hard at the start and slow down at the finish,
and to keep the top edge of my blade just below the surface of the
water, and not feather under. I knew all this before, but rowing
directions are awfully hard to apply. You have to watch the back of the
man in front of you for your stroke, and yet start at the very instant
he does. That means that you must feel when he is going to start and
start with him. That’s an example of what they expect of you in a boat;
other things are a good deal harder.
“On Friday the first went to Suffolk to race the Suffolk School. They
have a little course out there of about a quarter of a mile, and they
practice for just this short distance with an awfully quick stroke. Of
course they always beat the crews that come to row them because the
visitors are not used to rowing that way. It is like putting a
half-miler to run a hundred yards with a sprinter. Well, our crew pulled
an awfully snappy race and came within a quarter of a length of winning.
They would have won, too, Rust said (the cox), if Pitkin had not got
rattled with the fast stroke and caught a crab and lost a good
half-length. He was all in, too, at the finish, while Pete and Jim Eaton
and Bursley felt as if they were just beginning to row. The Suffolk
fellows always row themselves out. Rust told me all about it. Of course
I did not go. The crew had to leave at 12 o’clock to get the train, and
they don’t let you cut recitations here to see races. They think they
are terribly generous to let the crew off.
“Monday was our day on the river. We don’t row every day, because there
are not boats enough to go round, and only two coaches for eight
schools. Caffrey coached us for a while from a launch that belongs to
one of the boys, and then sent both crews up to the starting-place of
the regular mile course and told us to race down to the boat-house. The
first gave us a length start. Caffrey had said that we must think of our
form all the time and pull for all that we were worth every instant the
oar was in the water. It was the hardest work I ever did in my life, but
I gave all my attention to my form and my oar, and I didn’t notice how
tired I was till we got nearly to the Harvard bridge. For a while I
occasionally got a glimpse of the first behind us, and that kept me
encouraged, but about halfway down they passed us, and then I just had
to pull blind, and I did my best. I knew I could stand it if the rest
could. A little above the bridge, Mike called for a spurt, and Mac hit
it up three or four strokes faster. I saw Sumner’s head begin to wabble,
and I knew that he was getting to the end of his rope, and I began to
worry about what I should do if he gave out. But Jack is good stuff, and
he held out to the finish. By and by Mike cried out, ‘Ten strokes more!
Make ’em hard now!’ and I found I had plenty of strength left after all.
It is strange that though you seem to be pulling yourself out, there is
always something left over!
“When Mike called ‘Let her run!’ I was so tickled to think that I had
kept my form all the way and rowed a good race that I sat up and
grinned. That grin was worth a lot to me as you will see. Pitkin slumped
down in the boat as soon as he stopped rowing. Caffrey had been
alongside of us all the time watching every man. Afterwards he had a
talk with Pete. I heard him say, ‘Pitkin’s face was all screwed up the
last quarter, he was rowing weak; the other fellow just went white, and
at the end he sat up and laughed.’ They saw me look up at that so they
moved away. I guessed they were speaking of me, and I felt good, I can
tell you, to think I had done well and proved my right to be in the
second boat instead of the pair-oar.
“Pete asked me to wait for him (he’s an awfully slow dresser), so I hung
round on the float and watched some of the other boats. Caffrey had gone
out with Waterville High who were waiting for him. Their crew is pretty
good too. By and by Pete came along, and we went up together to the car.
And what do you think he said to me? _Pitkin and I were to change
places._
“I was so set up and so happy that I couldn’t study much, and I couldn’t
get to sleep for a long time.
“Since then I have rowed bow on the first all the time, and there is
practically no chance at all of my being put back, as the practice is
over now. To-day the pair-oar bunch was fired. They knew it was their
last time, so Wilmot and Weld got Trask for cox and came out, all three
smoking cigarettes with a great air of superiority and rowing about as
they liked. They came down to where we were practicing racing starts
with the second, above the Harvard bridge, and watched us. They were in
very good spirits and jollied the two boats, sitting in attitudes of
ease in the pair-oar in the warm sun, and occasionally rowing. They
thought they were having a fine time, but any one of them would have
given almost anything to sneak into the boat—except Trask, perhaps, who
has a heart and isn’t allowed to row. There was a lot of talk as to
whether any one would dare to call Caffrey ‘Bill,’ as it was the last
day, but no one was fresh enough to.
“The preliminary heats come on Wednesday. Our second stands a good
chance to get the championship, but the first, which is the most
important, of course, has to face much better crews. I hope we can get
into the finals, anyway. Some of the papers say Bainbridge is going to
win, and some say Newbury, which has a husky, big crew.
“All we want is to beat Newbury. They’ve won the championship at
baseball already, though they have to play us one more game. If they
beat us in the crew, they get Smithy’s cup for a year; if we beat them,
we get it. Smithy has come out again. He was at the baseball game in all
his importance, and they say he’s trying to work the officials for the
races so that Newbury can get the best course. By the time I write my
next letter it will be all over. I’d cable you about it, only it costs
so much and you’ll have sailed by that time. I am writing this on Friday
to give it a good start.
“Affectionately,
“ROGER.”
The next morning Roger slept late. He got up feeling listless and
dispirited; and though he assured himself as he dressed that he had
every reason to feel both happy and vigorous, the lethargy clung to him
so insistently that after breakfast he returned to his room and lay
down. In addition he was troubled by an occasional stitch in the left
side. Was it possible that he was going to fall ill, at this of all
times? Could it be that he too had developed a weakness of the heart
such as his father suffered from? The thought sent a shiver down his
spine. It couldn’t be so, it shouldn’t be so! He would not be cheated
out of his reward after all these weeks of hard uphill work.
Towards noon Dunn came whistling in from school, where he had been
spending his Saturday morning in enforced diligence. He pounded on
Roger’s door, opened it, and dexterously flipped a letter across to the
figure on the sofa.
“Buenos Aires,” he said curtly. Then, suddenly perceiving that Roger was
lying in an unusual state of quiet, or reading signs of discouragement
in his face, he added: “Hello! You aren’t sick, are you?”
“I guess not,” answered Roger, smiling drearily; “I felt a little
tired.”
“You’ve been overdoing, that’s all, I guess. Talbot works you too hard.
You ought to cut practice for a day or two.”
“Practice is over, anyway,” responded Roger.
“You want to take it easy until the race, then, and not think about it,”
said Dunn. “We can’t afford to have you overtrained.”
Dunn departed and Roger took up his letter. He read with keen interest
until he came to the last page, when a look of dismay swept over his
face. “Your father is greatly concerned about your rowing,” ran the
fatal passage. “We know an English gentleman here who rowed on the
Cambridge crew, and he says that oarsmen not infrequently get some form
of heart disease from the great strain put upon the heart in racing.
Your father wanted to write immediately and forbid your rowing, but I
told him that if you could play football without harm, you ought to be
able to row a mile, and prevailed on him to leave the matter in your
hands. Before you take part in any race you must see a good physician,
Dr. Long, for example, and make sure that your heart is sound. You can’t
afford to purchase the petty glory of rowing in a schoolboy race at the
price of ill-health for the rest of your life.”
Roger dropped the letter from his hands and groaned aloud. “He won’t
pass me, I’m sure. It’s all up with me if I go to a doctor. Why couldn’t
the confounded letter have got lost on the way!”
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