“And then you woke up!” observed Buckhart. “You’re pretty clever—let you tell it.”
Chester was not a whit abashed. He continued to boastingly assert that he knew he was able at any time. barring accident, to defeat Merriwell or any other boy in the school at candlepins.
“Dern his picter!” muttered Obediah Tubbs, nudging Dick, who was apparently unconscious of Arlington’s presence. “Don’t you hear what he is saying? By Jim, he needs a good lesson!”
Merriwell, however, felt it was an impossibility to teach Arlington a lesson he would remember, for even his experience on the yacht had had no lasting effect.
“Ken you git nine pins?” anxiously whispered the fat boy.
“I can try,” was Dick’s quiet answer, as he lifted the polished candlepin ball and stood with his eyes fixed on the pins.
“Watch him!” muttered Arlington, seeking to divert the bowler’s attention. “He knows we’re all looking at him. See him get two pins with that ball.”
It’s a sure thing that mind as well as body plays a prominent part in scientific bowling. Not only does it require brains to secure the best result, but the bowler must fix his mind on the object he desires to accomplish most, seeing in advance what success he would attain, and must, in rolling a curving ball, behold in advance the sweeping movement he wills the ball to take. It is sometimes the case that a player may secure a good string by rolling carelessly, without any particular mental effort. This is always a matter of chance. But the heady bowler who uses his brains, and seems to control the ball with his mind, is one who persistently and repeatedly accomplishes surprising results.
Arlington knew something of this, and he understood that it was often a fatal mistake for a player to let his mind be diverted in the least, at the moment when he starts to deliver the ball. This being the case, it was Chester’s object to “rattle” Dick if possible. He failed utterly.
Advancing three steps to the line, Dick sent the ball down the polished alley, striking the pins with a clattering crash, leaving but one standing on the corner.