Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/93

Rh yards from the observation train hanging on the edge of the bank.

At last the mother could look for Number Five. She counted with an eager and quivering finger. No, she must have made a mistake—that was not John at Number Five. They must have shifted him to another seat at the last moment.

She flung away all method and searched the stern young faces from stroke to bow, from bow to stroke and back again, with yearning agony of intensity. She made bold to ask that the gentleman next her lend her his field-glasses for a moment, and focused them on the shell, seeking in vain. The color had fled from her cheeks, and she sat back, white and silent, beyond speech. Around her raved the cheers of thousands, but the rocketing "rahs" for Yale sounded in her ears like some barbaric funeral chant. She had become old and weak far beyond her years.

Her distress was unnoticed, and through a haze she saw the long shells leap from their leashes with incredible suddenness in tearing cascades of foam. To the mourning mother the race was no more