Tinne was, however, the giant of the crew. I never saw a more glorious looking fellow than this clear-skinned, handsome Cornwall lad, with his splendid clearly cut profile, frank, merry face, laughing eyes, and thoroughbred look.
It was worth a day's walk to see Tinne pull. He was a man a good deal after the style of our own Simmonds, but not so gravely reserved. He was not as tall as Simmonds, but a great deal heavier, and looked as if he could pull a man-of-war's gig in a race, with those grand shoulders and hips broad as a barrel of beer. Yet, with all his great physique, his gait was as light as a girl's, and the feather of his oar when taken from the water was artistic in itself.
HALL, THE COXSWAIN.
This huge fellow, weighing 192 pounds on the day of the race, was formidable enough to intimidate the boldest betting American of us all. Tinne, like his friend Willan, the bow oar, had been president of the Oxford University Boat Club, and had never known defeat. Willan, the Bow, looked as if the matter was mere play, while he amused himself with the oar and watched Walter Brown, who held the nose of the Harvard boat from a launch, with a keen alert look. His white Guernsey shirt was open at the neck, and it showed a wonderfully muscular but white throat. His shoulders were broad across, and his fingers grasped the oar as if they were riveted with steel nails to the frail shaft.
THE OXFORD CREW.
The most innocent looking boy I ever saw in a boat was Hall, a slight, frail, girlish looking lad, and coxswain of the Oxford crew. Weighing one hundred pounds on the day of the race, and being about seventeen years of age, he was the last person that a man would choose for a coxswain, who knew nothing of the mysteries and science of the art of rowing as practiced in England. His skin was light and almost transparent, the blue veins in his face being very prominent. His hair was very light, and his eyes blue as the sky. A handsomer lad could not be found, but he seemed delicate enough to be blown away with a breath. The face was weak, and the mouth of a curious shape, the corners being drawn down, and giving him a soft, credulous look.
Looking at him there in his dark-blue jacket of thin flannel—all the rest of the crew were in white shirts cut away at the elbows, and white drawers shortened at the ankles—he looked so innocent and lady-like, that it needed but a crinoline and silk skirt to transform him into a pretty English girl of the period.
And yet that delicate boy had a great trust, and "Little Corpus," as he was called from his college at Oxford, well deserved it all, for his knowledge of the river was unrivaled, and his steering was simply perfection. Nothing could be finer. A New York betting-man, who lost heavily, declared that he was a "young weasel" for sagacity and cool nerve.