“I’m satisfied,” said Dick. “That’s a pretty good crew.”
He wondered more than ever what could have been the matter the day before. There had been no sign of any of the trouble that Benton and Hargreaves had spoken of. Thompson knew nothing of that, of course, and Dick saw no reason for telling him of it. He took the Harvard man down to Red Top in the launch, while the crew paddled back to quarters easily, and at the Harvard boathouse, he picked up Benton, who had been watching the Harvard trial.
“Well, what seems to be the matter?” asked Benton, who was laboring under some suppressed excitement.
“Not a thing,” said Dick. “They rowed like record breakers. I don’t see how the dickens there could have been all that trouble yesterday.”
“Well,” said Benton, “I’ve got another surprise for you. That Harvard crew was up against exactly the same sort of trouble to-day that we were yesterday. They rowed beautifully, but their boat just naturally stood still between the strokes. It was bad in the first two miles. Then, in the third, they got better, but toward the end it was simply rotten. Neilson was half wild. He couldn’t make it out at all. It’s enough to give you the willies. If they had done any bad rowing, I could understand it. But it was just the same as with us. Their rowing was simply perfect.”
The two coaches looked at each other hard, without speaking for a minute. They were both thoroughly experienced oarsmen, but the experiences of the two crews was something that nothing they had ever seen enabled them to account for.
“There’s something funny going on here,” said Dick, a worried frown between his brows. “I can’t see any light now, but I’m going to keep on looking until I do. It’s the strangest thing I ever heard of in my whole experience as an oarsman—and that extends over several years.”
CHAPTER XXVII
WHAT THE BETTING SHOWED.
The astonishing result of the public time trials of the two crews that were to meet in the great four-mile race on the Thames on Thursday soon had its effect on the supporters of the rival colleges. New London was already tilling up, and, while the students at Yale and Harvard did little betting themselves, a great deal of wagering was recorded by others less directly interested in the outcome.