It was now within a few minutes of five o'clock. There was a sudden hum above on the river, at a place called the Crab Tree, as the Oxford crew got into their boat, and the hum became distinct and swelled into a pronounced noise, and the noise became a great solid, full cheer from a hundred thousand throats, as the bright blue blades of the Oxford Four were dipped in the water, and they came paddling down the stream in their narrow shell to take position by the Umpire's boat near the bridge. They paddled easily, and took position with a quiet look in their fair English faces that impressed every American favorably.
Then there was another hum as before, when the Harvard crew came down from the boat-house of the London Rowing Club, and a tremendous cheer as their boat came up to the Middlesex shore—in among the seedy long grass.
And now let us look for a moment at the two crews as they sit there passively awaiting the order to "go." The Harvard boat is long, narrow, and the frail cedar wood timbers that compose it are polished like a steel mirror. Its nose and bow are sharp as a lancet, and amidships it is but a few inches out of the water. So frail, and yet to carry the good or bad fortune of a mighty nation's hope.
LORING'S CONDITION.
The Harvard crew wore white flannel shirts, the sleeves cut away at the shoulders, with white drawers shortened above the ankles, and white fillets bound around their temples to save their heads from the sun's rays. To a spectator they looked magnificent—all of them bronzed as they sat well forward in the boat, their skins like a new guinea. Burnham, the coxswain, had his back to the steamer and faced the stroke, Mr. Loring. Burnham looked stout, massive, and in good condition. His broad back, rather too broad for a coxswain, gave an idea of endurance and "staying" more useful in a stroke than a "cox." His face was tanned, and his quick, restless eyes scanned the broad Thames with a short, momentary glance, and then they rested on Simmons, the hope of the American boat.
Burnham wore a Vandyke tuft at his chin, and a stiff, bristling mustache of sandy hue. He looked old enough to be father to the Oxford coxswain. Loring sat with both hands grasping the stroke-oar on the right side of the boat. His face was turned also, and his dark eyes had something nervous and flitting in them that I did not like. His body was as lean as a greyhound's—in fact, he was too lean for a long race. But the muscles and sinews stood out in bold relief, and the cords of flesh between the shoulder-blades were hard, and, Loring being slightly round in the shoulders, it gave him a look of great strength, more fictitious than real.
He wore a mustache and goatee—not quite so artistic in shape as Burnham's—and the hair was cropped close to his ears. His face, however, did not satisfy the Americans, who watched him closely. There was something that was indefinite, something unstrung, in the lines that should have been set and hardened like steel bars. He had a feverish look as he sat forward, with his long, massive arms, grasping the oars.
Simmons, the pride of the crew, sat behind Loring, his perfect physical form astounding the Englishmen by its massive and beautiful outline. The face was gravely handsome, the chin round yet firm, the shoulders grand in their proportions, and the loins like the waist of an oak trunk. His naked arms were marble for their shape and purity of skin, and the neck, proudly resting upon his shoulders, could not have disgraced the Sun God.
Take him altogether, I never saw such a perfect specimen of manhood and physical beauty as he looked that day in the Harvard boat. And yet his eyes, usually intense and piercing, and bluish gray, which always looked a man in the face, were to-day yellowish and overcast. That lion heart, which could hardly think of defeat, was torn in a struggle to maintain composure. He and Loring for four days had been gradually weakening almost to the point of exhaustion, and these two men, upon whom the race principally depended, were perfectly aware that their form was not good, and they were well aware, also, that without their strength and health the race was lost before it began.
Simmonds towered above all his companions, and he held the wrist of his oar calmly as he could, while behind him sat Lyman, a grave, austere looking young gentleman, with a well cut face, mouth, and chin, dark hair, a resolute look, and a well shaped body; of modest, but athletic look and determination.