The Eight-Oared Victors/Chapter 28
CHAPTER XXVIII
FAINT HEARTS
"Pretty punk; wasn't it?"
"Regular ice wagon as far as we were concerned."
"I didn't think they had that spurt in 'em."
"And yet we seemed to be rowing pretty well. I guess it takes more than one season to make a winning eight."
Silence followed these discouraging observations on the part of the four inseparables as they sat in their room the evening following the beating of the first and second shells by the Boxer Hall crew. There had been a meeting of the coaches with the Randall rowers immediately after coming off the water, and several plans had been talked over, involving a shifting of the crews. But in the end it was decided to wait another day or so.
There was no disputing the fact that Randall had expected at least the varsity boat to keep up to, if not beat, their rival. And they had failed. It was a bitter pill to swallow, with the time of the regatta so close at hand.
"It sure was rotten," said Tom musingly, as he sat staring vacantly at nothing. No one took the trouble to comment on his last remark. They had about exhausted their stock of bitter reflections and observations.
"Something's got to be done," went on Tom. Still no one answered him. The fussy little alarm dock ticked on, as though trying to be cheerful in the midst of all that gloom. It was as though it said:
"Cheer—up—I'm—here—
You'll—win—next—year!"
"I wonder what we can do?" Tom mused on.
Sid shifted uneasily in one of the easy chairs. Phil duplicated in the other. Frank turned to a more comfortable position on the old sofa, thereby bringing forth creaks, groans and vibrations of protest from the ancient piece. Tom was trying to get used to an old steamer chair, that had been picked up, with other relics, at an auction held by a retiring senior the previous June, but as the chair had lost one leg, which had been replaced by part of a Turkish rocker, and as the foot-rest had, in some former day, been broken off and put back upside down, Tom's effort to be at ease was more or less of a failure.
"Something has got to be done!" went on the pitcher. Once more the silence.
"Say, for the love of tripe!" Tom finally burst out. "Have none of you any tongues?"
He sat up so suddenly that the steamer chair, probably rotted by too much salt air on many voyages, collapsed, letting him down with a bump, and raising a cloud of dust from the old rug.
"Good!" cried Phil.
"See if you can do it again," urged Sid. "Frank had his head turned, and didn't see it all."
"Yes, do," begged the Big Californian, chuckling.
"Humph!" grunted Tom. "I thought I'd make you find your tongues somehow—you bunch of mourners!" and he limped across the room, to lean against the mantle, surveying the wreck of the chair.
"Hurt yourself much?" asked Phil, solicitously.
"A heap you fellows'd care," was the retort.
"Think you can row?" Sid wanted to know.
"What's the good of rowing if Boxer walks away from us like that?" demanded Tom, fiercely. "That's what I've been putting up to you fellows all evening, and you never opened your mouths. We're going to lose, I can see that. What's the good of trying?"
He was so bitter—it was so unlike Tom's usually cheery self—that his chums looked at one another in some alarm. As the pitcher went to the bathroom to get some arnica for a slight bruise that had resulted from the chair's collapse, Sid murmured:
"I guess Boswell has gotten on his nerves."
"How Boswell?" asked Frank.
"Ruth," Sid further enlightened him.
"Don't you believe it," broke in Phil. "Sis wouldn't have anything to do with Bossy, while Tom was around."
"Talking about me?" suspiciously demanded the tall pitcher, entering the room at that moment.
"Oh, nothing serious," replied Phil, coolly. "We were just wondering what gave you the grouch."
"Grouch! Wouldn't anyone have a grouch if he'd practiced in the shell all Summer, and rowed his heart out, only to be beaten by Boxer—and not in a regular race, either? Wouldn't he?"
"You're no worse off than the rest of us," declared Frank, sharply. "We feel it just as badly as you do, Tom."
"You don't act so. You've been sitting here as mum as oysters!" came the bitter retort. It was the nearest in a long time Tom had come to a breach with his chums.
"What was the good of talking?" asked Sid. "Talking and shooting off a lot of hot air isn't going to make the varsity eight the head of the river; is it?"
"No, but you might find some way of doing it if you said something, instead of acting like Sphinxes," snapped Tom.
"I wonder if that chair can be fixed?" broke in Phil, anxious to turn the subject, for matters were being strained to the breaking point. "You sure did come down with an awful crash, Tom. Poor old chair! I'm glad it wasn't one of our good ones."
"Good ones!" cried Tom, who had bid in the steamer affair at the auction, much against the wishes of his chums. "Say, this has those other ancient arks beaten a mile," and stooping over he began trying to solve the twisted puzzle of the arms, legs and foot-rest that seemed to have gotten Into an inextricable tangle.
"Oh, I give it up!" he cried, after several unsuccessful efforts. "We'll let one of the janitors play doctor," and he laughed.
"That sounds better!" exclaimed Phil.
"It would sound better if we had won to-day," went on Tom. "Why in the name of the binomial theorem couldn't we?"
"The answer is easy," spoke Frank. "They've had more practice than we have, they pull better, they have more power; three things that they excel us in. What's the result? Power, practice and skill added together equal a win."
"But isn't there any way we can get those three things?" demanded Tom fretfully.
"Next year, maybe," assented Phil.
"We've got to get 'em this year!" cried Tom, smiting his open palm with his clenched fist. "I won't admit we can't get 'em. We've got to beat Boxer Hall and Fairview, and we've got to get in condition in the next two weeks! Do you fellows hear? We've got to double up on our work! We— we"
"Hear! Hear!" broke in the voice of Bricktop Molloy, as he entered the room at that moment. "What's all the row about? Tommy, me lad, you're getting to be a regular orator, so ye are!"