"A navy captain down at Annapolis," answered Peggy, as she shot the launch beneath the bridge.
"Well, he did the job all right, all right, and I may as well go back and sit down. Faith, I thought we were as good as stove in when I handed over the wheel to ye, but I'm thinking I can learn a fancy touch or two myself."
"Oh, no, don't go. I don't know the river, you know, though I want to do my best just to make Daddy proud of me," answered Peggy modestly.
"Well then he should be a-yellin' like them crazy loons yonder on the observation train—that's what he should," nodded the coxswain.
Neil Stewart was not yelling, but he wasn't missing a thing, and presently Peggy ran the launch into a clear bit of water near the three- mile flag.
Bringing her around, she issued her orders, her mind too intent upon the business in hand to be conscious that all on the launch had been watching her with absorbing interest. Anchors were thrown over fore and aft in order to hold the launch steady against the current, then turning the wheel over to the admiring coxswain, Peggy wiped her hands upon her handkerchief and holding out her right one to Captain Boynton, said:
"Thank you so much for letting me try. It was perfectly glorious to feel her respond to every touch and thread her way through all that ruck."
"Thank me? Great Scott, child, you've done more for the whole outfit than you guess. Stewart, my congratulations."
Poor Peggy was overcome, but the boys and Polly were alternately running and praising her, every last one of them as proud as possible to call Peggy Stewart chum.
But out yonder the shells were already in the water and the electric spark of excitement had flashed from end to end of that long line of gayly bedecked expectant yachts and launches, as down to them floated the strains of the Yale boating song as it is never sung at any other time, and thousands of eager eyes were peering along the course watching for the first glimpse of the dots which would flash by to victory or defeat.