of you. No, not you--some fellow with a strong hand. Yes, you'll do," he
went on, as Hardy stepped down the bank and took hold of the rope; "let
me have it foot by foot as I want it. Not too quick; make the most of
it--that'll do. Two and Three, just dip your oars in to give her way."
The rope paid out steadily, and the boat settled to her place. But now
the wind rose again, and the stern drifted in towards the bank.
"You _must_ back her a bit, Miller, and keep her a little further out or
our oars on stroke side will catch the bank."
"So I see; curse the wind. Back her, one stroke all. Back her, I say!"
shouted Miller.
It is no easy matter to get a crew to back her an inch just now,
particularly as there are in her two men who have never rowed a race
before, except in the torpids, and one who has never rowed a race in his
life.
However, back she comes; the starting-rope slackens in Miller's left
hand, and the stroke, unshipping his oar, pushes the stern gently out
again.
There goes the second gun! one short minute more, and we are off. Short
minute, indeed! you wouldn't say so if you were in the boat, with your
heart in your mouth and trembling all over like a man with the palsy.
Those sixty seconds before the starting-gun in your first race--why,
they are a little lifetime.
"By Jove, we are drifting in again," said Miller, in horror. The captain
looked grim but said nothing; it was too late now for him to be
unshipping again. "Here, catch hold of the long boat-hook and fend her
off."
Hardy, to whom this was addressed, seized the boat-hook, and, standing
with one foot in the water, pressed the end of the boat-hook against the
gunwale, at the full stretch of his arm, and so, by main force, kept the
stern out. There was just room for stroke oars to dip, and that was all.
The starting-rope was as taut as a harp-string; will Miller's left hand
hold out?
It is an awful moment. But the coxswain, though almost dragged backwards
off his seat, is equal to the occasion. He holds his watch in his right
hand with the tiller rope. "Eight seconds more only. Look out for the
flash. Remember, all eyes in the boat."
There it comes, at last--the flash of the starting-gun. Long before the
sound of the report can roll up the river, the whole pent-up life and
energy which has been held in leash, as it were, for the last six
minutes, is loose, and breaks away with a bound and a dash which he who
has felt it will remember for his life, but the like of which, will he
ever feel again? The starting-ropes drop from the coxswains' hands, the
oars flash into the water and gleam on the feather, the spray flies from
them, and the boats leap forward.
The crowds on the bank scatter and rush along, each keeping as near as
may be to its own boat. Some of the men on the towing-path, some on the
very edge of, often in, the water; some slightly in advance, as if they
could help to drag their boat forward; some behind, where they can see
the pulling better; but all at full speed, in wild excitement, and
shouting at the top of their voices to those on whom the honour of the
college is laid.
"Well pulled, all!" "Pick her up there, Five!" "You're gaining every
stroke!" "Time in the bows!" "Bravo, St. Ambrose!"
On they rushed by the side of the boats, jostling one another,
stumbling, struggling, and panting along.
For a quarter of a mile along the bank the glorious, maddening
hurly-burly extends, and rolls up the side of the stream.
For the first ten strokes Tom was in too great fear of making a mistake
to feel or hear or see. His whole soul was glued to the back of the man
before him, his one thought to keep time and get his strength into the
stroke. But, as the crew settled down into the well-known long sweep,
what we may call consciousness returned; and, while every muscle in his
body was straining, and his chest heaved, and his heart leaped, every
nerve seemed to be gathering new life, and his senses to wake into
unwonted acuteness. He caught the scent of wild thyme in the air, and
found room in his brain to wonder how it could have got there, as he had
never seen the plant near the river, or smelt it before. Though his eye
never wandered from the back of Diogenes, he seemed to see all things at
once. The boat behind, which seemed to be gaining;--it was all he could
do to prevent himself from quickening on the stroke as he fancied
that;--the eager face of Miller, with his compressed lips, and eyes
fixed so earnestly ahead that Tom could almost feel the glance passing
over his right shoulder; the flying banks and the shouting crowd; see
them with his bodily eyes he could not, but he knew, nevertheless, that
Grey had been upset and nearly rolled down the bank into the water in
the first hundred yards, that Jack was bounding and scrambling and
barking along by the very edge of the stream; above all, he was just as
well aware as if he had been looking at it, of a stalwart form in cap
and gown, bounding along, brandishing the long boat-hook, and always
keeping just opposite the boat; and amid all the Babel of voices, and
the dash and pulse of the stroke, and the labouring of his own
breathing, he heard Hardy's voice coming to him again and again, and
clear as if there had been no other sound in the air, "Steady, Two!
steady! well pulled! steady, steady." The voice seemed to give him
strength and keep him to his work. And what work it was! he had had many
a hard pull in the last six weeks, but never aught like this.
But it can't last forever; men's muscles are not steel, or their lungs
bulls' hide, and hearts can't go on pumping a hundred miles an hour
long, without bursting. The St. Ambrose boat is well away from the boat
behind, there is a great gap between the accompanying crowds; and now,
as they near the Gut, she hangs for a moment or two in hand, though the
roar from the bank grows louder and louder, and Tom is already aware
that the St. Ambrose crowd is melting into the one ahead of them.
"We must be close to Exeter!" The thought flashes into him, and, it
would seem, into the rest of the crew at the same moment; for, all at
once, the strain seems taken off their arms again; there is no more
drag; she springs to the stroke as she did at the start; and Miller's
face, which had darkened for a few seconds, lightens up again.
Miller's face and attitude are a study. Coiled up into the smallest
possible space, his chin almost resting on his knees, his hands close to
his sides, firmly but lightly feeling the rudder, as a good horseman
handles the mouth of a free-going hunter; if a coxswain could make a
bump by his own exertions, surely he will do it. No sudden jerks of the
St. Ambrose rudder will you see, watch as you will from the bank; the
boat never hangs through fault of his, but easily and gracefully rounds
every point. "You're gaining! you're gaining!" he now and then mutters
to the captain, who responds with a wink, keeping his breath for other
matters. Isn't he grand, the captain, as he comes forward like
lightning, stroke after stroke, his back flat, his teeth set, his whole
frame working from the hips with the regularity of a machine? As the
space still narrows, the eyes of the fiery little coxswain flash with
excitement, but he is far too good a judge to hurry the final effort
before the victory is safe in his grasp.
The two crowds are mingled now, and no mistake; and the shouts come all
in a heap over the water. "Now, St. Ambrose, six strokes more." "Now,
Exeter, you're gaining; pick her up." "Mind the Gut, Exeter." "Bravo,
St. Ambrose!" The water rushes by, still eddying from the strokes of
the boat ahead. Tom fancies now he can hear their oars and the workings
of their rudder, and the voice of their coxswain. In another moment both
boats are in the Gut, and a perfect storm of shouts reaches them from
the crowd, as it rushes madly off to the left to the footbridge, amidst
which "Oh, well steered, well steered, St. Ambrose!" is the prevailing
cry. Then Miller, motionless as a statue till now, lifts his right hand
and whirls the tassel round his head. "Give it her now, boys; six
strokes and we're into them." Old Jervis lays down that great broad back
and lashes his oar through the water with the might of a giant, the crew
catch him up in another stroke, the tight new boat answers to the spurt,
and Tom feels a little shock behind him, and then a grating sound, as
Miller shouts, "Unship oars, Bow and Three!" and the nose of the St.
Ambrose boat glides quietly up the side of the Exeter till it touches
their stroke oar.
"Take care where you're coming to." It is the coxswain of the bumped
boat who speaks.
Tom finds himself within a foot or two of him when he looks round; and,
being utterly unable to contain his joy, and yet unwilling to exhibit
it before the eyes of a gallant rival, turns away towards the shore, and
begins telegraphing to Hardy.
"Now, then, what are you at there in the bows? Cast her off, quick.
Come, look alive! Push across at once out of the way of the other
boats."
"I congratulate you, Jervis," says the Exeter stroke, as the St. Ambrose
boat shoots past him. "Do it again next race and I shan't care."
Thomas Hughes: "Tom Brown at Oxford."
HUNTING SONG
Waken, lords and ladies gay,
On the mountain dawns the day;
All the jolly chase is here
With hawk and horse and hunting-spear;
Hounds are in their couples yelling,
Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling,
Merrily, merrily mingle they,
'Waken, lords and ladies gay.'
Waken, lords and ladies gay,
The mist has left the mountain gray,
Springlets in the dawn are steaming,
Diamonds on the brake are gleaming,
And foresters have busy been
To track the buck in thicket green;
Now we come to chant our lay,
'Waken, lords and ladies gay.'
Waken, lords and ladies gay,
To the greenwood haste away;
We can show you where he lies,
Fleet of foot and tall of size;
We can show the marks he made
When 'gainst the oak his antlers frayed;
You shall see him brought to bay:
'Waken, lords and ladies gay.'
Louder, louder chant the lay,
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
Tell them youth and mirth and glee
Run a course as well as we;
Time, stern huntsman! who can baulk,
Staunch as hound and fleet as hawk;
Think of this, and rise with day,
Gentle lords and ladies gay!
Scott
It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses
the worth of a man, but what he is.
Amiel
BORDER BALLAD
March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale,
Why, my lads, dinna ye march forward in order!
March, march, Eskdale and Liddesdale,
All the Blue Bonnets are bound for the Border.
Many a banner spread
Flutters above your head,
Many a crest that is famous in story;
Mount and make ready then,
Sons of the mountain glen,
Fight for the Queen and our old Scottish glory!
Come from the hills where your hirsels[1] are grazing,
Come from the glen of the buck and the roe;
Come to the crag where the beacon is blazing,
Come with the buckler, the lance, and the bow;
Trumpets are sounding,
War-steeds are bounding,
Stand to your arms, and march in good order;
England shall many a day
Tell of the bloody fray
When the Blue Bonnets came over the Border.
Scott
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cattle
THE GREAT NORTHERN DIVER
The weird, long call, or the shrill, demoniacal laugh coming out of the
night tells of the sleepless activity of the loon. The whip-poor-will in
the adjacent shrubbery seems companionable, and there is a friendly
spirit in the short, shrill tremolo of the night-hawk from the invisible
sky. Even the plaint of the screech-owl has a tone of human sympathy.
But the dreary cadence of the loon is the voice of the inhospitable
night, repelling every thought of human association. It does not
entreat, it does not warn; yet there is a fascination in its
expressionless strength. Over the black water, under the lowering sky,
or through the bright still moonlight, the same unfeeling tone fills the
ear of night. And sometimes, when the lingering moon sheds a broad trail
of light along the still waters of the lake, the graceful swimmer will
glide across and disappear in the darkness, breaking the bright
reflection into a multitude of chasing, quivering, trailing threads of
silver. Throughout the day, where the cedars come down to meet their
shadows in the dark water, he swims ceaselessly about, sitting low, with
black, glossy neck gracefully curved and displaying its delicate white
markings. Sometimes he stretches himself wearily, flapping his wings,
and displaying his white breast and the handsome, showy markings of his
sides. Though wary and aloof, and without a trace of animation in his
loud, penetrating cries, he shows his kinship by the scrupulous care
with which he preens his handsome feathers--even lying on his back in
the water to comb out and smooth his glossy, white breast.
A hurried cry from overhead may unexpectedly reveal the presence of a
pair of loons in another element, and it is always fascinating to watch
their steady, strained, energetic flight above the tops of the pines,
generally to curve down to some more attractive expanse in the
cedar-girt lake. For the water is the loon's natural element. There is
an amusing deliberateness in his graceful, silent dive. He does not make
the hurried dip of his smaller cousin, the grebe, but more calmly curves
both neck and body, disappearing under the surface in a graceful arch.
Settling down and swimming with only head and neck exposed is an
evidence of suspicion, and is generally followed by a long dive, with a
belated reappearance in some remote part of the lake.
When the mother loon takes her two offspring out for a swim, it is a big
event in the domestic circle. The outing is announced by prolonged and
unusual repetitions of the laughing call. For half an hour the echoes of
the lake are kept alive with sounds portentous of new departures in the
loon world. Then a peculiar object is seen to emerge from the marshy bay
and cross under the shadowy cedars toward the open water. A field-glass
shows it to be the mother loon and her two offspring, the three huddled
so closely together that they are almost indistinguishable. The mother
is unceasing in her care and attention. She strokes the backs of the
young birds with her bill, playing and fussing around and close to them,
as if they could not exist without her constant attention. Now and then
she leans over and lifts a broad, black, webbed foot out of the water,
holding it up distended, as if to endorse the modern theory that the
parent loon teaches her young to swim. They cling to each other and
cling to her, as if afraid of being lost in the great expanse of water
to which they have been so recently introduced.
A short distance away the father swims about in lordly indifference,
diving occasionally and regaling himself on the unsuspecting fish. A
boat comes out from the shore, rowed by an industrious guide, with an
angler, picturesquely protected by mosquito net, sitting in the stern.
The mother loon pushes and urges her indolent pair in the direction of
safety. How slow they must seem as she hurries and encourages them! The
trio moves at a snail's pace compared with her ordinary speed, but the
young ones show no inclination to dive out of harm's way. Their
clinging, crowding tendency serves but to incommode and obstruct her.
And where is the male protector? Alas for the romance of chivalry! When
the boat comes near, he deliberately dives, and, after the usual
protracted wait, reappears in another part of the lake, away from the
danger that alarms and threatens the defenceless trio. But the mother
remains and urges the encumbering young things to speed. They do make
some headway, though slowly, toward the marshy bay from which they
recently emerged with so much loud, wild laughter. The indifference of
the fisherman and the guide does not reassure them, and they never cease
their entangled struggle till lost to sight in the winding lagoon.
S. T. Wood
TO THE CUCKOO
O blithe New-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?
While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear;
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off, and near.
Though babbling only to the Vale,
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.
Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;
The same whom in my school-boy days
I listened to; that Cry
Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.
To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen.
And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.
O blessèd Bird! the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial faery place,
That is fit home for Thee!
Wordsworth
ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's--he takes the lead
In summer luxury--he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half-lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.
Keats
THE GREAT NORTHWEST
And now let us turn our glance to this great Northwest, whither my
wandering steps are about to lead me. Fully nine hundred miles as bird
would fly, and one thousand two hundred as horse can travel, west of Red
River, an immense range of mountains eternally capped with snow rises in
rugged masses from a vast stream-scarred plain. They who first beheld
these grand guardians of the central prairies named them the Montagnes
des Rochers (Rocky Mountains),--a fitting title for such vast
accumulations of rugged magnificence. From the glaciers and ice-valleys
of this great range of mountains, innumerable streams descend into the
plains. For a time they wander, as if heedless of direction, through
groves and glades and green-spreading declivities; then, assuming
greater fixity of purpose, they gather up many a wandering rill and
start eastward upon a long journey. At length the many detached streams
resolve themselves into two great water systems. Through hundreds of
miles these two rivers pursue their parallel courses, now approaching,
now opening out from each other. Suddenly the southern river bends
towards the north, and, at a point some six hundred miles from the
mountains, pours its volume of water into the northern channel. Then the
united river rolls, in vast, majestic curves, steadily towards the
north-east, turns once more towards the south, opens out into a great
reed-covered marsh, sweeps on into a large cedar-lined lake, and
finally, rolling over a rocky ledge, casts its waters into the northern
end of the great Lake Winnipeg, fully one thousand three hundred miles
from the glacier cradle where it took its birth. This river, which has
along it every diversity of hill and vale, meadow-land and forest,
treeless plain and fertile hillside, is called by the wild tribes who
dwell along its glorious shores, the Saskatchewan or "rapid-flowing
river." But this Saskatchewan is not the only river which drains the
great central region between Red River and the Rocky Mountains. The
Assiniboine or "stony river" drains the rolling prairie-lands five
hundred miles west from Red River; and many a smaller stream, and
rushing, bubbling brook, carries into its devious channel the waters of
that vast country which lies between the American boundary line and the
pine woods of the Lower Saskatchewan.
So much for the rivers; and now for the land through which they flow.
How shall we picture it? how shall we tell the story of that great,
boundless, solitary waste of verdure? The old, old maps, which the
navigators of the sixteenth century formed from the discoveries of Cabot
and Cartier, of Verrazanno and Hudson, played strange pranks with the
geography of the New World. The coast-line, with the estuaries of large
rivers, was tolerably accurate; but the centre of America was
represented as a vast inland sea, whose shores stretched far into the
Polar North--a sea through which lay the much-coveted passage to the
long-sought treasures of the old realms of Cathay. Well, the geographers
of that period erred only in the description of ocean which they placed
in the centre of the continent; for an ocean there is--an ocean through
which men seek the treasures of Cathay even in our own times. But the
ocean is one of grass, and the shores are the crests of mountain ranges
and the dark pine forests of sub-Arctic regions. The great ocean itself
does not present such infinite variety as does this prairie-ocean of
which we speak:--in winter, a dazzling surface of purest snow; in early
summer, a vast expanse of grass and pale pink roses; in autumn, too
often a wild sea of raging fire! No ocean of water in the world can vie
with its gorgeous sunsets; no solitude can equal the loneliness of a
night-shadowed prairie: one feels the stillness, and hears the silence:
the wail of the prowling wolf makes the voice of solitude audible; the
stars look down through infinite silence upon a silence almost as
intense. This ocean has no past;--time has been nought to it, and men
have come and gone, leaving behind them no track, no vestige of their
presence. Some French writer, speaking of these prairies, has said that
the sense of this utter negation of life, this complete absence of
history, has struck him with a loneliness, oppressive and sometimes
terrible in its intensity. Perhaps so, but, for my part, the prairies
had nothing terrible in their aspect, nothing oppressive in their
loneliness. One saw here the world, as it had taken shape and form from
the hands of the Creator. Nor did the scene look less beautiful because
nature alone tilled the earth, and the unaided sun brought forth the
flowers.
October had reached its latest week; the wild geese and swans had taken
their long flight to the south, and their wailing cry no more descended
through the darkness; ice had settled upon the quiet pools and was
settling upon the quick-running streams; the horizon glowed at night
with the red light of moving prairie fires. It was the close of the
Indian Summer, and Winter was coming quickly down, from his far northern
home.
Major W. F. Butler: "The Great Lone Land."
[Illustration: PIONEERS]
RULE, BRITANNIA
When Britain first, at Heaven's command,
Arose from out the azure main,
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sung this strain:
Rule, Britannia, rule the waves!
Britons never will be slaves!
The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must in their turns to tyrants fall,
While thou shalt flourish great and free--
The dread and envy of them all.
Still more majestic shalt thou rise,
More dreadful from each foreign stroke;
As the loud blast that tears the skies
Serves but to root thy native oak.
Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame,
But work their woe and thy renown.
To thee belongs the rural reign;
Thy cities shall with commerce shine;
All thine shall be the subject main,
And every shore it circles thine.
The Muses, still with Freedom found,
Shall to thy happy coast repair;
Blest Isle, with matchless beauty crowned,
And manly hearts to guard the fair:--
Rule, Britannia, rule the waves!
Britons never will be slaves!
James Thomson
THE COMMANDMENT AND THE REWARD
My son, forget not my law;
But let thine heart keep my commandments:
For length of days, and years of life,
And peace, shall they add to thee.
Let not mercy and truth forsake thee:
Bind them about thy neck;
Write them upon the table of thine heart:
So shalt thou find favour,
And good repute in the sight of God and man.
Trust in the LORD with all thine heart,
And lean not upon thine own understanding:
In all thy ways acknowledge him,
And he shall direct thy paths.
Be not wise in thine own eyes;
Fear the LORD, and depart from evil:
Honour the LORD with thy substance,
And with the first-fruits of all thine increase:
So shall thy barns be filled with plenty,
And thy vats shall overflow with new wine.
Proverbs, III.
THE SPACIOUS FIRMAMENT