Page:The purple pennant (IA purplepennant00barb).pdf/326

Rh was beating very fast and he was as nearly frightened as he had been for a long time. He looked over at Soper, who had drawn the inside lane, and saw that even that more experienced runner was plainly nervous. Then the starter's voice came and Perry settled his toes in the holes, crouched and waited.

"Set!"

Some over-anxious Springdale sprinter leaped away and it had all to be gone through with again. But at last the pistol sounded and Perry, without knowing just how he had got there, found himself well down the track, his legs flying, his arms pumping up and forward and down and back, his lungs working like a pair of bellows and the cries and exhortations of the spectators in his ears. A youth with blue stripes down the seams of his fluttering trunks was a good yard in the lead and Perry, with three others, next. Someone, and Perry silently hoped it wasn't Soper, was no longer in sight. Perry put the last gasp of breath and last ounce of strength into the final twenty yards in a desperate effort to overtake that Springdale runner, but it wasn't until they were almost at the tape that he knew he had gone ahead, and then, as he threw his arms up, a third white-clad figure flashed past!

A half-minute later Perry learned that Soper had