The time had come for the crews to take to the river. The Boston schools row under the patronage of the Boston Athletic Association, which provides boats and coaches, arranges for the races, and furnishes prizes. Each school enters two fours, a first and second, which compete in separate races. As Westcott’s possessed a pair-oar of her own, there were places in the boats for ten men exclusive of the coxswains. Talbot narrowed down his squad to eleven, allowing an extra man for accidents and illness, and getting rid of the rest by the easy method of not inviting them to report on the river. Hardie, to his delight, received orders to bring his rowing clothes to the boat-house. He did so fully conscious that his destination was neither the first nor the second. Talbot had said nothing to this effect,—indeed, Talbot, now that the rowing season was actually to begin, abated something of his intimacy,—but there was a general agreement as to the provisional formation of the crews which was almost authoritative. Of the new men who had come out, three had shown promise of skill as oarsmen. One of them was Bursley, a quiet fellow who came in every day from a suburb a dozen miles out, tall, muscular, and teachable. Louis Tracy was another, and finally McDowell, who, though he had grown during the year, was still undersized. On the first crew were to be tried—so the report ran—Talbot, Bursley, Eaton, and Pitkin; on the second, Weld, Sumner, L. Tracy, and McDowell; Wilmot, Hardie, and Redfield would thus be left over for the pair-oar.
This forecast proved correct except in one particular. To his surprise, Roger got a trial the first day out, at two on the second. We may well call it a trial, for such it surely was to all concerned. More accurately described, it was a demonstration of incapacity. Roger’s struggles with his oar stirred his rowing companions to fierce growls, the coxswain to abuse, the loiterers on the float to gestures and grins of malicious enjoyment. Poor Number Two couldn’t get his oar in right; it twisted in his hand and pulled under, it wouldn’t come out when it ought and as it ought. Delayed by the insidious clutch of the water, he started his slide before he had freed his blade, and his knees rose and blocked the backward movement of his handle. Though he put forth extraordinary efforts to master the oar, the oar insisted on mastering him. By good luck and violent slide rushing, he managed to avoid taking Number Three in the back, but half the time he was holding or backing water, and all the time he was preventing bow from keeping stroke. Strive as he might with mind and body, his strength wrought nothing but confusion. A half-hour of this fruitless wrenching and blundering was all the crew could stand; the boat was headed in, and Roger was unceremoniously dumped upon the float.
Louis Tracy took his place—and kept it. After that, the disenchanted but still determined Roger rowed bow on the pair-oar to Wilmot’s stroke, and toiled over the unmanageable oar. It had a way of plunging under, every few strokes, and pulling the side of the boat down; then it stuck deep in the water, and Coolidge, the cox, would reprove, and the offending bow would grip his handle still tighter and vow that this particular fault shouldn’t occur again. But it did occur again, and others as heinous. He couldn’t get his oar away after he had raised it from the water; he rushed his slide instead of drawing it gradually back so as not to check the motion of the boat; he could not put into practice the apparently simple direction that the legs were to bear the burden of the work. As a result his back suffered,—and the temper of his mates, who poured out on his head reproach and sarcasm until the ineffectualness of words was made apparent, when they relapsed into a humorous pessimism that was more unflattering than abuse.
The crew of the pair-oar was under another disadvantage: very little coaching trickled through to them. Caffrey, the Westcott coach, gave his attention chiefly to the first and incidentally to the second: the pair-oar shifted for itself, or received one set of amateur directions one day and another the next. As Roger thought of it, he and Wilmot were in the position of a slow steamer trying to overtake one which was several knots faster. Only a breakdown in the leader could prevent the distance between them from growing hourly greater.
“What’s the matter with Hardie?” asked Talbot, one day, as he walked down with Wilmot to the boat-house. “He doesn’t seem to be gaining at all.”
“He’s just rotten,” answered Wilmot, despairingly. “A low-caste baboon would do better!”
“He may get it yet,” said Talbot.
“He may!” echoed Wilmot, derisively; “oh, yes, he may! But I’ll bet you a dollar to a cent that he won’t!”
A fortnight passed: Bursley was making good in the first, and Mac had been promoted to stroke on the second, but Roger’s improvement was scarcely noticeable. He was beginning to fear that rowing was something for which he was physically unfitted, as a fat man for pole vaulting. In spite of his hardened muscles he became easily tired; his poor form wore on his back and wrists and arms. Good rowing is easy rowing: Roger’s was both bad and hard. Yet in spite of all discouragement he enjoyed the practice. It was interesting to struggle for the hoped-for improvement, even though the hope proved vain, to observe the other crews on the water, to rest on the oar, a little out of the channel, and watch the Varsity eight sweep magnificently by, with the nose of the coaching launch close at the shell’s rudder, the oarsmen’s bodies bending in beautiful unison, the water boiling back from the driving blades. Roger never saw Deering’s crew without a thrill of that awe which the subaltern feels when he stands in the presence of a famous general. It represented power, skill, and determination concentrated; in it was embodied a kind of majesty before which the schoolboy oars bowed with instinctive reverence. Every crew on the river gazed at the Varsity in rapt admiration, but the Varsity recognized the presence of no one but itself.
One afternoon in early May, Coolidge turned the bow of the pair-oar upstream. For a mile Hardie’s oar played its old tricks, twisting in his hand and pulling under, tipping the boat, spoiling the stroke, filling with disgust and despair the hearts of the little crew. Near the Cottage Farm bridge they stopped to watch a college eight pass. When they started again, it occurred to Roger to see whether the rowlock would not carry his oar, and permit him to concentrate his attention on his slide and the recovery. To his surprise the oarlock did carry the oar. His wrists were relieved of an exhausting strain; his blade plunged under no longer. He found that a little easy toss of the oar at the end of the slide would bring the blade squarely into the water.