FAINT HEARTS
"Pretty punk; wasn't it?"
"Regular ice wagon as far as we were concerned."
"I didn't think they had that spurt in 'em."
"And yet we seemed to be rowing pretty well. I guess it takes more than
one season to make a winning eight."
Silence followed these discouraging observations on the part of the four
inseparables as they sat in their room the evening following the beating
of the first and second shells by the Boxer Hall crew. There had been a
meeting of the coaches with the Randall rowers immediately after coming
off the water, and several plans had been talked over, involving a
shifting of the crews. But in the end it was decided to wait another day
or so.
There was no disputing the fact that Randall had expected at least the
varsity boat to keep up to, if not beat, their rival. And they had
failed. It was a bitter pill to swallow, with the time of the regatta so
close at hand.
"It sure was rotten," said Tom musingly, as he sat staring vacantly at
nothing. No one took the trouble to comment on his last remark. They had
about exhausted their stock of bitter reflections and observations.
"Something's got to be done," went on Tom. Still no one answered him.
The fussy little alarm clock ticked on, as though trying to be cheerful
in the midst of all that gloom. It was as though it said:
"Cheer--up--I'm--here--
You'll--win--next--year!"
"I wonder what we can do?" Tom mused on.
Sid shifted uneasily in one of the easy chairs. Phil duplicated in the
other. Frank turned to a more comfortable position on the old sofa,
thereby bringing forth creaks, groans and vibrations of protest from the
ancient piece. Tom was trying to get used to an old steamer chair, that
had been picked up, with other relics, at an auction held by a retiring
senior the previous June, but as the chair had lost one leg, which had
been replaced by part of a Turkish rocker, and as the foot-rest had, in
some former day, been broken off and put back upside down, Tom's effort
to be at ease was more or less of a failure.
"Something has got to be done!" went on the pitcher. Once more the
silence.
"Say, for the love of tripe!" Tom finally burst out. "Have none of you
any tongues?"
He sat up so suddenly that the steamer chair, probably rotted by too
much salt air on many voyages, collapsed, letting him down with a bump,
and raising a cloud of dust from the old rug.
"Good!" cried Phil.
"See if you can do it again," urged Sid. "Frank had his head turned, and
didn't see it all."
"Yes, do," begged the Big Californian, chuckling.
"Humph!" grunted Tom. "I thought I'd make you find your tongues
somehow--you bunch of mourners!" and he limped across the room, to lean
against the mantle, surveying the wreck of the chair.
"Hurt yourself much?" asked Phil, solicitously.
"A heap you fellows'd care," was the retort.
"Think you can row?" Sid wanted to know.
"What's the good of rowing if Boxer walks away from us like that?"
demanded Tom, fiercely. "That's what I've been putting up to you fellows
all evening, and you never opened your mouths. We're going to lose, I
can see that. What's the good of trying?"
He was so bitter--it was so unlike Tom's usually cheery self--that his
chums looked at one another in some alarm. As the pitcher went to the
bathroom to get some arnica for a slight bruise that had resulted from
the chair's collapse, Sid murmured:
"I guess Boswell has gotten on his nerves."
"How Boswell?" asked Frank.
"Ruth," Sid further enlightened him.
"Don't you believe it," broke in Phil. "Sis wouldn't have anything to do
with Bossy, while Tom was around."
"Talking about me?" suspiciously demanded the tall pitcher, entering the
room at that moment.
"Oh, nothing serious," replied Phil, coolly. "We were just wondering
what gave you the grouch."
"Grouch! Wouldn't anyone have a grouch if he'd practiced in the shell
all Summer, and rowed his heart out, only to be beaten by Boxer--and not
in a regular race, either? Wouldn't he?"
"You're no worse off than the rest of us," declared Frank, sharply. "We
feel it just as badly as you do, Tom."
"You don't act so. You've been sitting here as mum as oysters!" came
the bitter retort. It was the nearest in a long time Tom had come to a
breach with his chums.
"What was the good of talking?" asked Sid. "Talking and shooting off a
lot of hot air isn't going to make the varsity eight the head of the
river; is it?"
"No, but you might find some way of doing it if you said something,
instead of acting like Sphinxes," snapped Tom.
"I wonder if that chair can be fixed?" broke in Phil, anxious to turn
the subject, for matters were being strained to the breaking point. "You
sure did come down with an awful crash, Tom. Poor old chair! I'm glad it
wasn't one of our good ones."
"Good ones!" cried Tom, who had bid in the steamer affair at the
auction, much against the wishes of his chums. "Say, this has those
other ancient arks beaten a mile," and stooping over he began trying to
solve the twisted puzzle of the arms, legs and foot-rest that seemed to
have gotten into an inextricable tangle.
"Oh, I give it up!" he cried, after several unsuccessful efforts. "We'll
let one of the janitors play doctor," and he laughed.
"That sounds better!" exclaimed Phil.
"It would sound better if we had won to-day," went on Tom. "Why in the
name of the binomial theorem couldn't we?"
"The answer is easy," spoke Frank. "They've had more practice than we
have, they pull better, they have more power; three things that they
excel us in. What's the result? Power, practice and skill added together
equal a win."
"But isn't there any way we can get those three things?" demanded Tom
fretfully.
"Next year, maybe," assented Phil.
"We've got to get 'em this year!" cried Tom, smiting his open palm with
his clenched fist. "I won't admit we can't get 'em. We've got to beat
Boxer Hall and Fairview, and we've got to get in condition in the next
two weeks! Do you fellows hear? We've got to double up on our work!
We--we----"
"Hear! Hear!" broke in the voice of Bricktop Molloy, as he entered the
room at that moment. "What's all the row about? Tommy, me lad, you're
getting to be a regular orator, so ye are!"