SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE VOL. XXXVIII JULY, 1905 NO. 1 "T A VICTORY UNFORESEEN By Ralph D. Paine ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. C. LEYENDECKER HAT'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 homestretch like the sweep of a hawk. Squatted on the boat-house 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 homely old farm-house. 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 bull-dog 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 wellworn log-book in which was recorded year Copyright, 1905, by Charles Scribner's Sons. All rights reserved. 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 yourselves after the race than 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, lowroofed farm-house, 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 boat-house, 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 twelvefoot sweep, striving always to be a little ahead of Number Six, whose instant of catch was signalled 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. "Sl-o-w down on your y-o-u-r slides," yelled the bobbing coxswain. "You're beh-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: had been too preoccupied to think of looking for mail down-stairs, and was started 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: DEAR OLD JACK: I am so happy to be almost at the scene of your victories, past and to come. And I think I have never seen you row. How foolish and inconsiderate of father to drag me abroad so early two seasons on end. But I am bringing all the heapedup enthusiasm of three years-think of that! I suppose you are as calm as blanc mange, while I am jabbering rowing at everybody in sight, and am getting really awfully clever about strokes and Your class-mate, Dickie Munson, is on board, and has catches (are they so very catching?). been coaching me up on the technical mysteries, and spinning many jolly yarns about you. Í hear you are to be elected captain of next year's crew, the very grandest honor at Yale. May I offer congratulations in advance? I do so want to see you, and will be one of the worshipping admirers of your prowess! Of course you will be busy until after the race, and then you are to Don't forget that I will have an eye on you all the come down to the Diana as soon as ever you can. way down the course. Yours as ever, CYNTHIA. Hastings tucked this letter in an inside pocket with reverent care, and without speaking, sought next what his mother would say: MY DEAREST BOY: I have decided to come North by sea, and will sail on the Mohican to-morrow. The fare is con"Well, how did it go with a new Number siderably less than by rail, and as you have inFive?" '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 sisted upon paying the expenses of my wonderful due at New York late in the afternoon of the trip, I want to save you all I can. The ship is twenty-seventh, the day before the race, and I plan to take the earliest train to New London, to reach there that night, if possible. I have the address of the boarding-house in which you have have to worry at all about having me met, as, of reserved the nice room for me, and you will not course, you will not be able to come down from the Quarters. It will be hard to bear, this being so near you on that last night unable even to kiss you good-night and God bless you. After the race you can come to my room, and we will go to New Haven on the special train with the crew. |