I bowed my face in my hands and prayed ... both to Christ and to Apollo ... in deadly seriousness ... perhaps all the gods really were....
The gun cracked. Off I leapt, in the lead ... in the first lap the field fell behind.
"Steady, Gregory, steady!" advised Dunn, in a low voice, as I flashed into the second....
I thought I had distanced everybody ... but it chilled me to hear the soft swish, swish of another runner ... glancing rapidly behind, I saw a swarthy lad, a fellow with a mop of wiry, black hair, whom we called "The Hick" (for he had never been anywhere but on a farm)—going stride for stride, right in my steps, just avoiding my heels....
Run as I might, I couldn't shake him off....
Every time I swept by, the crowd would set up a shout ... but now they were encouraging "The hick" more than me. This made me furious, hurt my egotism. My lungs were burning with effort ... I threw out into a longer stride. I glanced back again. Still the chap was lumbering along ... but easily, so easily ... almost without an effort....
"Good God, am I going to be beaten?" I sensed a terrific sprinting-power in the following, chunky body of my antagonist.
There were only two more laps ... the rest of the field were a lap and a half behind, fighting for third place amongst themselves ... jeered at by the instinctive cruelty of the onlookers....
My ears perceived a cessation of the following swish, the tread. Simultaneously I heard a great shout go up. I dared not look back, however, to see what was happening—I threw myself forward at that shout, fearing the worst, and ran myself blind....