"That's enough for to-night. Turn around and go home. You are a
disgrace to Yale, all of you, and you're the worst of a bad lot, Number
Five."
The Head Coach roared his convictions through a megaphone from the bow
of the panting launch, and the coxswain caught up the words and flung
them in piping echoes at the heads of the eight sullen oarsmen facing
him. The grind of the slides and the tearing swash of blades abruptly
ceased as the slim shell trailed with dying headway to the skitter of
the resting oars. Backs burned dull red by the sun of long June days
drooped in relaxation that was not all weariness. John Hastings, at
Number Five, remembered when to slip along the shore; heading homeward
in the twilight after pulling four miles over the New London course,
was the keenest joy he had ever known. Now, with the Harvard race
less than a week away, the daily toil was a nightmare of ineffective
striving. The pulsating shell hesitated between strokes, it rolled
without visible cause, and seemed sentiently to realize that the crew
was rowing as eight men, not as one.
The boat circled wide and the men swept it listlessly toward the lights
of the Quarters at Gales Ferry. They had just undergone the severest
ordeal in all athletic training in their race against the stop watch,
yet if the work had been good they would have finished vibrant as steel
springs, spurting in this welcome home stretch like the sweep of a
hawk. Squatted on the boathouse float a little later, dousing pails of
water over his sweating shoulders, Hastings heard the Stroke growl to
Number Seven:
"What's the matter with you loafers back there?"
"I'm not behind," retorted Seven, with hair-trigger irritability. "The
trouble is in the middle of the boat. Hastings is too heavy to row in
form this year, and he seems to have gone to pieces in the last month.
That's where the worst break in the swing comes. Did you hear the Old
Man threaten to take him out of the boat and get him a job as a farm
hand?"
The Culprit wearily picked himself up and dressed in a dark corner of
the boathouse, shunning conversation. After the training-table supper,
the Head Coach and his younger staff of graduate experts, who had
flocked back to help stem the adverse tide, summoned the crew into the
parlor of the lonely old farmhouse. The Nestor of Yale rowing, who
for twenty years had taught Yale crews how to win, leaned against the
battered piano and looked at the ruddy and wholesome young faces around
him. It might have been a council about to weigh matters of life and
death, so grave was the troubled aspect of the waiting group, so stern
the set of their leader's bulldog jaw.
To-night he had something of their nervous uncertainty, and it showed
in the way his strong fingers played with the fringe of the faded piano
cover. Picking up the well-worn log-book in which was recorded year by
year the daily work of Yale crews from January to July, he turned the
leaves until a text was found. Then, slamming the book on the piano
with a vigor that made the aged wires complain, he said:
"The work has been discouraging ever since you came to New London,
but to-day it was so bad that it made me sick. I never saw faster
conditions on this course, and yet you clawed your way up river in
twenty-two minutes and ten seconds. That is nearly a quarter of a mile
slower than last year's crew. Do you know what this means? You are
strong enough; you have had plenty of coaching, and I intend to work
the very souls out of you to-morrow. If there is no improvement--well,
you had better jump overboard and drown yourself after the race than to
go back to New Haven. No man's place is safe in this crew, even if the
race is only four days off. This means you, Number Five."
There were no songs around the piano, as was the custom in happier
evenings, nor did the Head Coach pound the tinkling yellow keys and
lead the chorus of "Jolly Boating Weather," as he had done so many
nights of so many years when the work had been satisfactory. At nine
o'clock the Captain called out gruffly:
"All out for the walk, fellows."
The squad filed through the gate into the darkness of the country lane
for the end of the day's routine, with John Hastings trailing in rear
of the procession. He had become fond of this nightly ramble, feeling
on terms of intimacy with every stone wall, low-roofed farmhouse and
fragrant orchard, and courting the smell of the lush June country side
as the rarest of sleeping potions. But to-night he strode with head
down, turning over and over in his mind the haunting list of his sins
as an oarsman. Always with him of late, they had been driven home anew
by the events of recent hours. He looked up at the quiet sea of little
stars, and his self-reproach unconsciously changed to the form of a
prayer:
"O Lord, help me to get my power on, and to keep my slide under me. I
never worked half so hard, but I know I am heavier and slower than I
used to be. Help me to stay on the crew. I don't ask it for my sake,
but--but Mother's coming to the race, and this is my third year on the
crew, and she never saw a race, and if I'm kicked off now it will break
her heart. It means so much to her, and I am all she has. And--and
there's Cynthia Wells--she's coming, too. Oh, it means everything to
me, everything."
Such a man was he in the glory of his superbly conditioned strength,
such a boy in the narrow limits of his life's horizon, bounded in
this crisis by the Quarters, the boathouse, the crew, and the shining
stretch of river!
The next morning sparkled with a cool breeze from the Sound, and its
salty tang was a tonic after the sultry days that had tugged at the
weights of all the men, except Hastings, until they were almost gaunt.
When the crew was boated for the forenoon practice, the exhortations
of the Head Coach were even hopeful. But after he had sent them on
the first stretch at full speed, even the _blasé_ old engineer of
the launch could see that things were going wrong in the same old
way. The emotions of the Head Coach were too large for words and with
sinister patience he made them row another spurt. Before he could begin
to speak, Hastings knew that there was still a break in the swing at
Number Five, and the confirmation came in almost a tone of entreaty
from the launch:
"You are still behind, Number Five, while the rest of the crew is
swinging better. Try, for Heaven's sake, to get your shoulders on it,
and swing them up to the perpendicular as if the devil were after you.
Do you want seven other men to pull your hundred and ninety pounds of
beef and muscle like so much freight in the boat? I have told you these
things a thousand times, and you must hang on to them this time, or I
can't risk bothering with you any more. All ready, coxswain, steer for
that red barn across the river."
"Forward all. G-e-t ready. R-o-w-w!" shrieked the coxswain.
Within the first thirty strokes Hastings felt that he was rowing in
no better form than before, although never had he been so grimly
determined to row better. Stung to the soul by the taunt of the coach,
he threw his splendid shoulders against the twelve-foot sweep, striving
always to be a little ahead of Number Six, whose instant of catch was
signaled by the tell-tale tightening of the crease in the back of his
neck. The Captain called:
"Give her ten good ones, and look out for the stroke. It's going up."
"O-n-e, T-w-o, Thr-e-e, F-o-u-r, F-i-v-e," gasped the eight, in husky
chorus to the cadence of the catch.
"Slo-w down on your y-o-u-r slides," yelled the bobbing coxswain.
"You're be-h-i-n-d, Number Five."
Hastings could have throttled the coxswain for this. He had heard it so
often that it cut him on the raw. The Head Coach picked up the damnable
refrain:
"You are behind, Number Five."
Recalling how once, to fill an idle half hour, he had enumerated
sixty-four faults possible in rowing a single stroke, Hastings was
sure that in this spurt he was committing all these and several as yet
unrecorded. The futility of his flurried effort became maddening.
Where was his strength going?
The verdict befell as the launch steamed alongside, and a substitute
perched on the cabin roof jumped to the deck at the beckoning of the
Head Coach, who said, with a ring of sincere regret:
"I am afraid I'll have to try a change at Number Five, to see whether
we can patch up that break. Get in there, Matthews. Better get out and
take a rest, Hastings."
The cast-off crawled aboard the launch and went aft to the cock-pit
under the awnings, where he could be alone. Holding himself bravely
under the sympathetic eyes of his comrades, he watched the substitute
grip the oar, still warm from his own calloused hands. Nor did he yet
realize what had befallen him, and felt vague relief that the struggle
was done. At dinner he was cheerful and flippant and the other oarsmen
admired his "sand."
The reality began to overtake him when he went to his room under the
eaves, and anxiously asked the Stroke:
"Well, how did you go it with a new Number Five?"
"A little better," replied his room-mate, with evident reluctance. "The
Old Man says he is going to keep Matthews in your seat for the race.
It's a hard thing to talk about, Jack. You know how broken up we all
feel about it, don't you? We know you tried your level best, and your
extra weight this year made you slow, and you couldn't help that. Heard
from your folks lately?"
Hastings was reminded of things he had feared to let rush into the
foreground. He had been too preoccupied to think of looking for mail
downstairs, and was starting for the door, when the Stroke halted him
with:
"Oh, I forgot to tell you I brought up a couple of letters for you.
There they are, on the bureau."
Hastings recognized his mother's handwriting on one envelope, that of
Cynthia Wells on the other. He appeared to hesitate which of them to
open first, and in this hour of trial, his choice was swayed by an
impulse as old as the world:
The letter which he preferred was dated on board the yacht _Diana_, off
New Haven, and he read slowly to himself: