yelled the crowd as only such a crowd can yell. Then clear water showed between the shells and the four-mile flag fluttered like a blur as the Yale crew rushed by it. Slower plied the blades, shoulders which had swayed backward and forward in such perfect rhythm drooped, and one or two faces, gray from exhaustion, fell forward upon heaving chests. Then the rowing ceased, the long oars trailed over the water, as Harvard's crew slid by and came to a standstill. Friends flocked to the shells to bring them alongside the floats where, nerve-force coming to the rescue of physical exhaustion, the big fellows managed to scramble to the floats and fairly hug each other as they did an elephantine dance in feet from which some stockings were sagging, and some gone altogether. But who cared whether legs were bare or covered!
The Frolic came boiling up to the float at a rate calculated to smash things to smithereens if she did not slow down at short order, everybody yelling, everybody shouting like bedlamites.
"Best ever! Best ever! The Siren started it and the Four N. did the trick!" shouted Captain Stewart, while all the others cheered and congratulated in chorus.
"Give 'em again. Give 'em again. By Jove, I'm going to get up a race of my own and all you fellows will have to come to yell for us," cried Captain Boynton, and again the Navy Yell sent a thrill through those weary bodies upon the float. Then gathering together all the "sand" left in them they gave the old Eli Yell for their friends of the Navy with more spirit than seemed possible after such a terrific ordeal as they had just undergone.
And all those months of training, all that endless grind of hard work, for a test which had lasted but a few minutes, ending in a certain victory for one shell and a certain defeat for the other, since victory surely could not possibly result for both.
"See you all at the Griswold tonight," called Captain Boynton, as the launch shoved off and got under way.
"Sure thing! Have our second wind by that time we hope," were the cheery answers.
"Take the helm again, little skipper," ordered Captain Boynton. "Your Daddy is just dying to have you but modesty forbids him to even look a hint of it."
"May I really?" asked Peggy.
"Get busy," and Peggy laughed delightedly as she took the wheel from the coxswain who handed it over with: