CHAPTER XXXV
THE EIGHT-OARED VICTORS
"Here they come, boys! Get ready!" yelled Bean Perkins, wildly waving his megaphone. "Here they come!"
"Oh wow!" shouted Joe Jackson. "For the love of Cæsar tell us who's ahead."
"It's hard to see from here. But I think"
"Oh, who cares what you think?" interrupted a lad. "Don't give us any false information."
"Get ready boys!" cried Bean again. "The college cheer when they get opposite the old boathouse, and then the 'Conquer or Die' song. We've got to pull 'em on!"
All was excitement. A hundred voices mingled in expressions of hopes and fears. The rival college cheers blended into one riotous conglomeration of sound. The three shells were sweeping on to victory—victory for just one!
"Oh, Madge!" cried Ruth. "I daren't look. Here, you take the field glasses, and tell me who's ahead."
Her own college colors slipped from her dress unheeded, and there was disclosed the tiny knot of Randall's maroon and yellow.
"Ruth!" expostulated Mabel, as she pointed to the traitorous hues.
"I don't care!" replied Ruth, as her hand went to where her restored brooch was at her throat.
"Who's ahead?" demanded Helen Newton, as Madge peered through the glasses.
"Fairview!"
"What?"
"She is! She is! Oh, girls, Fairview is going to win!"
"Who—who is second?" demanded Mabel.
"Randall!" came the reply.
Then there was silence. The girls looked at one another. What they thought, who shall say?
On came the three shells. The cheers increased. There was a din of horns and rattles. The band played madly—no one knew what the tune was—and cared less.
"Steady all!" cried Jerry, as he noticed a tendency to quicken. "Steady all!"
On came the Randall shell. Just a little to her rear was Boxer Hall, struggling desperately and with breaking hearts to offset the disadvantage of overtraining and over-confidence. For that is just what it amounted to. It looked hopeless for them now.
As for Fairview, she had maintained the lead she had unexpectedly gained over Randall, and the eager—almost bursting—hearts in the boat hoped that the co-educational college could row it out unto the end. But there was no disguising the fact to themselves that they were rowing against such a rival as they had never before met.
For a moment after Jerry had given the word to increase the stroke, his chums thought that he would keep them on that for a hundred yards or so, and then hit up the pace still faster. But he did not. Instead, coolly and calmly, he glanced critically at the Fairvlew shell, and kept on at the same rate.
"Hang it all, why doesn't he give the word to spurt?" thought Frank, as his broad back rose and fell to the measured rhythm. "We can do it!"
But Jerry was a wise little coxswain. Not for nothing had he spied out the course, so that he knew every foot of it, and by marks previously noted, he could tell exactly how far they were from the finish mark.
Nearer and nearer to it came the eight-oared shells. Boxer Hall was struggling hard to pull up, but for once she had met her match—two, in fact, for it was easy now to see that the race, barring accidents, lay between Randall and Fairview.
"And, oh! May we win!" prayed Tom and his chums. And they could not understand why Jerry would not put them at their limit. True, their hearts were pumping at an abnormal rate, their muscles strained as they never had before, and their breath came labored, and went out gaspingly.
And then, when Coxswain Jerry, with his eager eyes, saw a certain old gnarled tree on the river bank, and when he had noted that Fairview had added another stroke per minute, then and not until then did he give the word.
He had slid down into his seat, feeling the tiller lines as a horseman feels with the reins the mouth of his pet racer. Gently, as if the shell were some delicate machine, did Jerry guide her on the course. Now the time had come!
Up he sat, like one electrified. Through the megaphone strapped to his mouth came the words:
"Row, boys! Row as you never rowed before! Put all you can to the stroke. I call for thirty-three! Give it to 'em! Give it to 'em!"
It seemed as though the Randall shell was suddenly galvanized into action. Reaching forward over their toes, eight sturdy backs bent for the stroke. Then it came.
A pull that seemed to lift the frail shell from the water—a pull that strained on the outriggers—a pull that made the stout oars creak and bend! A stroke that sent the water swirling aft in rings, circles, whirlpools and a smother of foam! A stroke that told!
"Row! Row! " screamed Jerry.
Daring another glance, Frank, at stroke, saw the Fairview boat seemingly at a standstill. But it was not so. It was that Randall had shot up to her.
From the shores, from the boathouse, from the other craft, came a riot of sound—shouts, yells, the tooting of horns, the clatter of rattles.
There was a veritable flower garden of waving colors. The shrill voices of the girls mingled with the hoarser shouts of the men and boys. Whistles blew, and dogs barked to add to the din.
"Row! Row!" Jerry fairly screamed.
"Pick it up, boys!" pleaded the Fairview coxswain. He had not thought that his rivals had this spurt in them.
"Can't you do it? Can't you get up to them?" begged Pinky Davenport, of his Boxer lads, and there were unashamed tears in his eyes as he made his last appeal. But Boxer was "all in."
"Now boys, now!" shouted Jerry. "It's your last chance! A hundred yards more—only three hundred feet! Row! Row! We must win."
"Don't let 'em pass us!" came from the Fairview coxswain. "A few strokes—only a few more!"
The boats were even! Pandemonium had now broken loose. The band was drowned out by shouts. Ruth found herself hammering Madge on the back, and shouting—she knew not what—in her ear. Madge was crying—she did not know why.
As for the Randall lads, they were mere machines. There was no more thought left in them. They saw nothing, but each man in front of him viewed his fore-man's back—Frank could not see the face of Jackson, but he could hear his rasping voice.
"Row! Row!"
How Frank heaved! How he dug at the giving water at the end of his blade as though he would tear it from the river and fling it aloft in a rainbow arch.
And how Brlcktop Molloy took up the stroke, his honest Irish face wet with sweat—his red hair plastered down on his forehead. Back and forth he bent. After him came Holly Cross picking up the stroke masterly—then Kindlings—good old Kindlings with something of the fire of his name in his sturdy muscles—then Housenlager—all the desire for horseplay gone from him. Then Sid, who had been shifted back to Number Three almost at the last moment. Then Phil, and then Tom.
And how they rowed! Surely the ancient gods—surely even Hercules at his twelve labors—never toiled more Titanically than these eight rowers. No galley slave, chained to the oar, with the vessel on fire above him, with the shrieks of the dying in his ears, the stench of Greek fire in his nostrils, ever rowed more desperately.
"Row! Row!" screamed Jerry.
"Row! Row!" echoed Roger Barns.
The finish line was but a hundred feet away. Slowly, oh, so slowly, did the Randall boat creep up on her rival.
Now she was past! Another electric thrill went through Jerry.
"Row! Row!" he screamed, and his voice was hoarse. His hands, tense and gripped, were clasped so tightly on the tiller ropes, that afterward they had to loosen them for him. The muscles had gone dead, but he steered with the skill of a veteran.
It grew black before Tom's eyes. He felt that his lungs were bursting. Frank knew that if he dipped the oar in the water again he would not have strength to pull it out.
But, somehow he did!
And then with one last spurt, a spurt that seemed to wrench the very roots of their hearts, a pull that seemed to tear their very muscles loose, the lads in the Randall shell sent their boat over the finish line a winner—a winner by half a length—a winner! They were the eight-oared victors!
And, as they realized this—as it came to them—their eyes that saw not lighted up—their faces, seamed and lined with the contracted muscles, broke into smiles, and then Tom toppled over on his oar, and Frank fell weakly back on Molloy.
"Easy there, me lad, easy," panted Bricktop. "It's all over. You collapsed at the right minute! Oh, wow, but I'm thirsty!"
Jerry Jackson was struggling with the tiller lines wound about his nerveless hands. Ready chums loosed them, and helped him from the shell onto a boat, the crew having recovered sufficiently to put their broad blades out on the water to steady the shell.
And then, following the hush that came after the hysterical outburst which greeted the winners, came floating over the heads of the great throng:
"Aut Vincere! Aut Mori!"
But Randall had conquered, though she had nearly died.
Somehow the crew heard the cheers for themselves, for their coach and for the plucky little coxswain. Somehow they managed to cheer Fairview and Boxer Hall, and then they were hurried into the dressing rooms.
"I knew you could do it! I knew you could do it!" cried Mr. Lighton, capering about like a boy. "I knew we could make a rowing crew in one season with the material we had."
"Faith, an' ye did, me lad!" declared Bricktop, while Housenlager feebly punched Tom in the ribs, a bit of horseplay that our hero was too tired to resent.
"Someone to see Mr. Parsons!" called Wallops, the college messenger, who was helping out at the boathouse. He peered into the anteroom of the dressing apartments.
"I can't see anyone now," declared Tom. "Who is it?"
"He says his name is Farson, and"
"The jeweler!" cried Tom. "Show him in!" and he came from under a shower and grabbed up some garments. "There must be something doing!" he added to Sid and Phil, who had heard the words.
Somewhat bewildered by the athletic throng about him, the jeweler entered.
"Where are you, Mr. Parsons?" he asked.
"Here!" cried Tom. "What is it?"
"Everything! I have just received word from the police that they have arrested that pawnbroker. He has all the Boxer Hall cups, and most of the other jewelry. Nearly everything is recovered. All but that old-fashioned brooch you told me about. That he says he never had."
"And he's right," added Tom. "I recovered that. But who took the things?"
"Blasdell. The island caretaker took them out of my box when the boat landed on the island, and disposed of them. Then he hid the pawntickets in the shack, taking away the brooch he had previously hidden there.
"Blasdell has been arrested too. He has made a full confession. He and the pawnbroker have been in with a bad set, and were planning other crimes. But I will soon have nearly everything back. I thought you might be glad to know, so I came here as soon as I heard. I had to wait until after the race, though."
"We are glad to hear the news," spoke Frank. "So Mendez is not in it after all."
"No, the confessions of the others completely clear him. I must go tell the Boxer Hall boys the good news."
"And it is almost as good news to us as to them," said Tom, as he went in to finish dressing. The regatta was over. Randall, in spite of heavy odds and in spite of losing all but one race, was proclaimed champion of the Tonoka Lake League.
"But we'll do you next year!" prophesied Pinky Davenport. "I think the loss of our cups was a hoodoo to us."
"Maybe," admitted Tom. "But next year is—well, next year, and we're not greenies any more."
"I guess you never were," admitted his rival.
"And now let's go see the girls, and tell them how sorry we are that we beat them," proposed Sid.
If the girls felt badly they did not show it much.
"What I can't understand," said Phil, a little later, when he and his chums, and his sister and her chums were talking it all over at a little supper in Haddonfield, "what I can't understand is how Boswell knew Ruth had lost her pin, and wanted to give her another."
"He didn't know it—stupid!" exclaimed Ruth, with a blush. "Only Tom knew it."
"But Boswell was going to give you a pin."
"Oh, can't a fellow give a girl a pin without knowing that she has lost one or you making a fuss over it?" asked Sid.
"But—but" faltered Phil.
"He heard that I was fond of old-fashioned jewelry," explained Ruth, blushing, "and I suppose, instead of—er—well—say candy, he hunted up an old-style pin. He had bought one for his mother from Mendez, and wanted one for me. It was lucky that Blasdell did not pawn my pin with the other stuff. Instead he sold it to Mendez, who, in turn, sold it to Mr. Boswell, and Tom—well, Tom did the rest."
"And you were without grandmother's pin all that while, and never let on!" cried Phil. "Oh, you're a sly one, Sis!"
"And the colored handkerchiefs, and Boswell were useless as clues," went on Sid. "They were just false alarms. But I wonder why Mendez was so anxious to see Boswell that day we went on our little picnic?"
"Mendez explained that," said Tom. "He had had some intimation that his selling of smuggled cigars was likely to be dangerous, and, as Boswell had bought some he wanted to talk about it, and get his advice. That was all. It seems that when Boswell and the Mexican were together on the island one day Mendez cut his finger and Boswell tore off a strip of the silk handkerchief. Boswell told me that."
"And I guess that explains everything," remarked Phil. "I want some more ice-cream. We've broken training now, you know."
And so the merry little party feasted and laughed and softly sang their college songs until the girls protested that they must get back, or Miss Philock—well, various opinions were expressed about that lady.
"Stop that infernal clock!" grunted Tom, a little later, as he lay half asleep on the old sofa in the common room.
"Stop it yourself," murmured Phil, sprawled in one easy chair, while Frank occupied another. Sid had declared himself done up after the race, and had gone to bed. From his room he murmured in a sleepy voice:
"Sounds like Jerry calling—'Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!" doesn't it?"
"Cut it out!" said Phil. "I don't want to see an oar for six months again."
"It will be pigskin punts from now on," spoke Tom, as he returned from jabbing a toothpick into the clock's interior, and turned over to doze again.
"And then good old Winter!" exclaimed Frank. "I say, fellows, what's the matter with getting up some iceboat races," and he galvanized into uprightness.
"Talk about it to-morrow," sleepily murmured Sid, but the suggestion bore fruit, as you may learn by reading the next volume of this series, to be called "Rivals of the Ice; A Story of Winter Sports at College." It will tell how, after a strenuous football season, the lads formed an ice league, for skating, hockey playing, and ice-yacht racing.
Outside the college there was singing and the building of bonfires to celebrate the victory of the crew. But In their room, four of the eight-oared victors dozed dreamily on, living over again in fancy that strenuously-fought-out race which they had so labored over. And there, for a time, we will leave them.
THE END