Sometimes Rex did a little prowling of his own on these midnight ventures. He roamed as far as the other camp on more than one occasion, and was always reassured by hearing the heavy breathing of the Indian lad within the tent.
"Getting just as nervous as an old maid in a haunted house," Rex told himself on one of these occasions. "If I was sleeping in a folding bed, I'd look under it after I let it down ev'ry night to see if there was a burglar underneath."
In the day time they were all so busy now, and there was so much fun and sport afoot, that Joe Bootleg and his intentions did not trouble anybody, least of all Kingdon. He thought the fellow had no chance to do anything desperate by daylight.
Rex did not allow his crowd to neglect practice on the diamond because of the added zest given to the rowing by Yansey's challenge; nor did Pence seek to dodge his usual work on the mound. He was no slacker. Once his hand and heart was given to a thing, he kept at it.
The eight-oared boat was out every pleasant day for two or three periods of practice. Ben and Pudge, of all the crew most sluggish by nature, worked as well as the others. Like Kirby, they proposed to back up Horace Pence and show the Walcott Hall chaps that there was loyalty elsewhere than in the ranks of the prep. school pupils.
Kingdon and Midkiff knew what was wrong with the rowing of the crew. Pence set a long, sweeping stroke that was easy for Rex, Midkiff and Phillips to maintain; but at times the shorter-armed Pudge, and even Kirby, clashed oars with the rower before or behind them. Often their spurts, timed by the caustic Hicks, with a watch strapped to his wrist, were spoiled by these fouls.
"Oh, get together! Get together!" the coxswain would implore. "Keep stroke! For the love of harmony, keep stroke!"
The little chap had a megaphone strapped to his face, and he could have been heard, when he was really excited, half across the sound to Manatee Head.
It was expected that Cloudman, who was the greenest of them all, would fail; but the cowboy had taken hold of the work grandly, and, being long-armed and lanky, the stroke Horace Pence set suited him very well.
The first week of August came on, bringing the day selected for the trial match between the Storm Island eight and the Blackport crew. It was a beautiful, calm, hazy day, and the conditions for the race could scarcely have been better.