Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/70

50 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 boathouse, 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