Page:The Eight-Oared Victors.djvu/263

Rh "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