WHAT THE BETTING SHOWED.
The astonishing result of the public time trials of the two crews that
were to meet in the great four-mile race on the Thames on Thursday soon
had its effect on the supporters of the rival colleges. New London was
already tilling up, and, while the students at Yale and Harvard did
little betting themselves, a great deal of wagering was recorded by
others less directly interested in the outcome.
Trains from New York brought up graduates, who were anxious to back the
crew of their own college, but, with all conditions pointing to a
Harvard defeat by a crushing margin, even the most loyal Harvard men
were chary of betting. They were willing to back their own crew, but to
bet after such an exhibition of slow running as the Harvard crew had
given, looked like throwing money away. Yale men, on the other hand,
were naturally eager to bet, and they offered odds with the utmost
liberality, feeling that they were justified in giving any sort of
inducements.
On Sunday afternoon a number of visitors appeared both at Red Top and
Gale’s Ferry. There was to be no work for the oarsmen, and parties were
made up from both camps for sails on the sound; invitations enough to
take care of twice as many men as were present, having come from the
graduates, whose yachts were at anchor in the harbor.
At Gale’s Ferry, Dick Merriwell, still puzzled by what he and Benton had
seen, was delighted at the arrival of Jim Phillips and big Bill Brady.
Jim looked as if he had been resting for a month; and Dick, who had
feared that the pitcher might suffer some bad effects from the terrible
experience he had undergone while he was locked in the freight car, was
much relieved.
“I’ve been feeding him up, Mr. Merriwell,” said Brady, with a grin. “His
appetite is all right—I can testify to that. We’re gentlemen of leisure
now—come up for a loaf, and we want to watch these oarsmen do the work.”
“All through work for the season, Bill?” asked Dick, with a smile. “How
about you, Jim?”
“Oh, I’ll take a hand if there’s a good game in sight, any time,” said
Jim. “But it’s a relief to have the strain of that championship over.
I’ll admit that.”
“How about the weights, Brady?” asked Dick. “Have you ever thrown the
hammer?”
“Gee!” said Brady, looking alarmed, “I thought I could make people
forget that. Yes, I used to throw the twelve-pound hammer a little when
I was in school. But I’ve never tried the sixteen-pound thing.”
“Well,” said Dick, looking a little maliciously at the big catcher,
“they’re very anxious for weight throwers on the team for the Olympic
games. In fact, the committee’s in rather a hole for men for several
events. Some of the big men can’t manage to get away, and some of those
who were counted on find that they have gone off a good deal since that
last meet in London. So it looks as if a good many of us who hadn’t
thought much about it will have a chance to go to Sweden after all.”
“Count me out of that,” said Brady positively. “I’m going up to my dad’s
cottage on the Maine coast and just loaf all summer. The responsibility
of helping to look after Jim Phillips all spring has worn me to a
frazzle. I’m losing weight; I can’t sleep; and, in fact, I’m just being
wasted away to a shadow.”
Every one laughed except Woeful Watson, who had appeared, and now stood,
looking sadly at Brady.
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Brady, with assumed fierceness, and
staring savagely at his classmate.
“You are thinner, and that’s a fact,” said Watson seriously. “You want
to look out, Bill. It’s the big, husky chaps like you that find it
hardest to recover if they manage to get sick in some fashion. I’m just
warning you for your own good.”
“Stung!” cried Jack Tempest, who had come up with them from New Haven.
Jack had won the intercollegiate championship in both the sprints, and
the ten points he had thus gathered had done much toward making it
possible for Yale to round out a great athletic year by winning the meet
in which colleges from all over the United States take part. Also, he
was picked in advance as a sure selection for the American Olympic team,
since no sprinter was in sight who had a chance to beat him in either
the hundred-yard or the two-hundred-and-twenty-yard dashes.
“You’re stung, Bill,” said Tempest, again. “Old Watson here has called
the turn on you. We’ll have to start feeding you up on cod-liver oil,
eh, fellows?”
There is strength in numbers. Bill Brady was a match, and more than a
match, for any man in Yale in a single-handed combat, but the combined
efforts of a dozen of the men who were gathered around him on the float
soon subdued him, and, to the vociferous delight of all present, the big
catcher was forced to swallow a great spoonful of the cod-liver oil
which some one found in the training quarters. It was a medicine Bill
had particularly hated since his childhood, and he emerged, choking and
gasping for breath, when his captors finally decided the joke had gone
far enough.
“I’ll get even with some of you fellows for that,” he promised, when he
had rinsed his mouth out with fresh water and felt a little better. But
he could appreciate a joke, even when he was its victim, and he dearly
loved to play them on others.
“I met a Harvard man in town,” said Tempest presently, “and we had a
little argument about the crews. He seems to think they’ve got a chance,
even after that trial this morning, but he wouldn’t bet until I gave him
three to one. At that I understand that the professionals were offering
as much as that, and, in some large bets, five to one. That was at the
Iroquois House. That’s where they’re all gathered. I’ve got a fine room
there with Harry Maxwell. Only eight dollars a day—regular rates, too.
That’s not so bad, though. If you waited until Wednesday night, you’d be
lucky to get a chance to sleep in the billiard room, on top of a pool
table.”
“I reserved a room for Brady and myself three weeks ago,” said Jim
Phillips, “and there weren’t many left, even then. I think that’s pretty
reckless betting, Jack. Three to one, on a boat race, is plain
foolishness. There’s too many things that might happen.”
“If you ask me,” said Woeful Watson, “those Harvard fellows were just
rowing under a pull this morning, with the idea of sending the odds up a
bit. They’ve done better than that, and they’ll do it again in the race.
I’ve heard of things like that before. My idea is that we’ll be pretty
lucky to beat them at all.”
Dick Merriwell was doing a lot of thinking just then, and had no part in
the conversation. But he heard Watson’s prophecy, as well as the howl of
derision that greeted it from the others, and he was struck by the
possibility that the class pessimist might be right. He found it almost
impossible to take the things he had seen with his own eyes seriously,
for he knew that eight men, rowing as those Harvard men had done, should
have been nearly two minutes faster over the course than they had
actually been. It was not possible to deceive Dick, or any other man who
knew as much about rowing as he did, about the pace that certain efforts
should give.
He wandered off to see Benton, and found that his aid agreed fully with
him.
“I don’t see how there can be anything in the idea that they were
holding back,” said Benton. “We could see the way they were rowing, and
you know as well as I, Mr. Merriwell, or, probably, a good deal better,
that they were doing everything in the best possible way. That’s the
best Harvard crew I ever saw on the river here. It’s been better coached
and has learned more about rowing than any Harvard crew I’ve ever seen.
They hardly ever expect to win that race with Cornell that they row on
Decoration Day, because they’re never coached for a two-mile race, and
their condition for practice don’t touch those that Courtney has up at
Ithaca. But I saw the race this year. The Charles was rotten that
day—for them, but it might have been made to order for Cornell. And
still Harvard won only by about half a length. There’s something funny
going on, and I’d like to know what it is.”
“I’d think less of it except for what you told me about our own crew’s
work on Saturday,” said Dick. “No one much knows about that, and I’m
just as glad. It gives us a chance to investigate quietly, if that seems
to be necessary. Neilson invited me to go out with him again to-morrow
morning, and see what his fellows do, and I guess I’ll take him up this
time. I’ll leave the practice to you. If there’s anything queer afoot,
I’ll stake my word on it that Neilson hasn’t anything to do with it, nor
any one else officially connected with the Harvard crew. They’re good
sportsmen, and I think they’d rather lose the race than sanction
anything that wasn’t absolutely square.”
“I agree with you there,” said Benton. “Neilson’s all right, and I
happen to know that he doesn’t believe at all in betting on college
sports. I think it’s something that ought to be stopped, myself—among
the students, at least. Of course, there’s no way of controlling alumni
and outsiders. You can ask them not to bet, but if the anti-gambling
laws of three States won’t stop them, I guess it would be pretty hard
for us to do it.”
“Betting will spoil any sport that it gets a hold on,” said Dick. “It’s
ruined horse racing, so that now they have to quit the racing when they
can’t bet, and it would have ruined professional baseball if the leagues
hadn’t united to make it impossible for the betting to be done in the
baseball parks. I’m very much afraid that there’s something crooked
afoot here, but I can’t make out yet what they’re driving at. However,
we’ll find, I think, that betting’s at the bottom of it, if anything of
the sort is going on.”
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