Nicholls, coach of the Baliol
crew, leaned upon his megaphone, his eyes fixed upon two eight-oared
crews resting upon their oars a hundred feet away. From his hand
dangled a stop-watch. The two crews had just completed a four-mile
race against the watch.
A grim light came into the deeply set gray eyes of Jim Deacon as the
coach put the watch into his pocket. Deacon was the stroke of the
second varsity, an outfit which in aquatics bears the same relation
to a university eight as the scrub team does to a varsity football
eleven. But in the race just completed the second varsity had been
much of a factor--surprisingly, dishearteningly so. Nip and tuck it
had been, the varsity straining to drop the rival boat astern, but
unable to do so. At the finish not a quarter of a length, not fifteen
feet, had separated the two prows; a poor showing for the varsity to
have made with the great rowing classic of the season coming on
apace--a poor showing, that is, assuming the time consumed in the
four-mile trip was not especially low.
Only the coach could really know whether the time was satisfactory
or not. But Jim Deacon suspected that it was poor, his idea being
based upon knowledge he had concerning the capabilities of his own
crew; in other words, he knew it was only an average second varsity
outfit.
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