By Talbot Baines Reed
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This is one of this author's famous school stories. Like a new boy or
girl at a school, you will be faced with learning the names of a great
many youngsters, and to an extent, their characters. However, by the
time you get half-way through the book you will be familiar enough with
the principal characters.
Of course, there are numerous small dramas being acted out as the book
proceeds, but the main one concerns a boat-race between two of the
Houses. Along the course there is a very tight bend. The boat on the
outside of the bend is slightly in the lead but will probably lose this
due to the inside boat having less far to travel to the next straight.
At a most crucial moment, when maximum power is being exerted by the cox
on the rudder-lines, one of them snaps, and the boat goes out of
control. The cox shouts the instructions for an emergency stop, and to
back water. The other boat proceeds to the end of the course. It can
now be seen that the rudder-line had been deliberately half cut through,
so that it would snap at that tight bend on the river.
For the rest of the book people are trying to work out who had done this
deed. At one stage we think we know the answer. We become quite
convinced we know the answer, in fact. But we are wrong, and we do not
find out till almost the end of the book. And it is to be hoped that at
that point the promised re-row takes place.
There is some confusion with names in respect of Merrison and Morrison,
but I suspect that to be a printer's error. It is not of great
importance, since he is (or they are) not front-line characters in the
action.
The punctuation becomes very difficult in the reporting of the
proceedings of the school parliament, because not only do you have the
current speaker, but interspersed with it are comments by the raconteur
and by the noisier of the boys. The printed book settled for a
simplified version here, but we have done our best to give you a
version that is more according to rule.
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THE WILLOUGHBY CAPTAINS