Once they were past the navy yard, and halfway through the race, Jim called sharply to the mechanic who was behind him.
“Take the wheel, now,” he said. “Keep her as I tell you. I don’t know what I may have to do, but I want to be ready for anything that comes along.”
Barrows’ last chance to interfere with the race would soon be at hand, as Jim well knew. Two of the places marked on the map had been passed, but the third remained, and Jim felt that there matters would be decided. He was willing to see Harvard win fairly, though it would disappoint him. But he was not going, if there was any way in which he could prevent it, to allow a crooked scheme to destroy Yale’s chances.
Now the red buildings of Red Top showed close before him, and the yachts were growing more numerous as the finish line approached. He kept his eyes wide open, and at last he saw what he was looking for. In front of him, but nearer the course than he was himself, was a small boat, an ordinary launch, such as can be cheaply hired at any seashore resort. And in the launch, shading his eyes as he stood up and peered eagerly down the course, was Barrows.
“Get as close as you can to that launch,” Jim commanded. And the hydroplane, going very slowly now, crept up. The racing boats were still a quarter of a mile away. Jim could not be sure, but it looked as if Yale still led—as if Harvard had not yet begun her final attempt to cut down that tiny lead.
Jim, studying Barrows closely, saw him looking in surprise and anger at the crews that were approaching. Then the gambler’s face lighted up, and Jim, following his gaze, saw the third of the Marina’s motor boats, containing Svenson, behind him. He had missed her as he came up the river.
Svenson bent down and threw his switch. But, of course, there was no effect on the Yale crew. Barrows threw up his hands with a gesture of anger, then dropped swiftly below the gunwale of his launch. Jim could not see what he was doing, but he stood up in his own frail craft, tense and poised for anything that might be needful.
And then, just as the two shells were abreast of him, Barrows lifted something over the side of the craft and dropped it into the water.
Like a flash, at Jim’s sharp order, the hydroplane shot forward twenty yards, then stopped, as Jim dived over and came upon the thing that Barrows had launched toward the Yale crew. Under the water, he turned its course, and a moment later saw it strike, harmlessly, against the side of the launch whence it had started. It was a miniature torpedo, containing no explosive, and run and steered by clockwork. Jim had seen them before, used in shipyards as models. He knew how to stop the mechanism, and in a moment he had it in the hydroplane, and was tearing up to the finish to see the result of the race.
It was a magnificent drive that Harvard made. But Yale met every attempt to rob her of her hard-won lead, and, in time that was a new record for the course, Yale shot over the line a winner, less than two seconds before the second gun boomed for the Harvard crew, beaten, but game to the end, after one of the greatest races ever rowed.