They are ready to start. With many a cheery word for them you wish them Godspeed, at the same time feeling a perfect hatred, for the time being, for your opponents. Gee! if you could only go along with them to cheer them on the course!
They have started, rowing easily to the starting point. Oh! will they never get there? And yet you have warned them about taking it easy to the starting mark. At last they are there, are turning round; the pistol is fired and they are off. "Come on, come on!" you yell, long before they can hear you. They seem to be working with might and main, but what is that? The other team seems to be getting ahead. No; it cannot be. It should not be. In your wild excitement you fall off the rock you are standing on, pulling into the water a couple of onlookers with you. What does a wetting amount to, anyway?
You dare not look when you get back on the rock again, yet, like some horrible monster that fascinates you, you turn around, to see your beloved Blues a boat's length behind. If praying would help them, they can know that you prayed; if weeping for them would have been of any use to save the day, you had done that, too; what was left but the deepest despair.
The Reds won, and my whole nature felt steeped in the deepest blue.
The villain came up to me to claim his wager, with a grin all over his face, making you think of a huge Cheshire cat.
So ended the boat race I had set my heart upon.
"But what is the use of repining,
Where there's a will there's a way;
To-morrow our team may be winning,
Although your team beat us to-day."
—Old Ballad.