"Can't he tell you?"
"Too much row going on," said Hughie. "The whole College will be on the towpath to-night."
The Reverend Montague D'Arcy plunged his hand into the tail-pocket of his clerical frock-coat, and produced therefrom a large-pattern service revolver.
"Look here," he said. "You would be able to hear this lethal weapon on the Day of Judgment itself. Will you consent to take your time from me?"
"Rather! Thank you, sir." There was no doubting the sincerity of Hughie's gratitude.
"Well," continued the clergyman briskly, "I shall wait by the Railway Bridge, on the Barnwell side, away from the towpath. If you have made your bump before that you won't want me. Well and good. But I don't think you will have made it, and I don't advise you to try. For the first half of the course those All Saints men will match you stroke for stroke, and if you hustle your heavy man at Six he will probably lose his head. As you pass under the Railway Bridge quicken slightly—not more than two strokes a minute, though. I have six shots in this revolver. When you hear two of them, that will mean that you are getting within jumping distance and must be ready for the spurt. When you hear the remaining four in quick succession you must simply swing out and put the very last ounce of your blood and bones and bodies and souls into it. And if you catch 'em," concluded the reverend gentleman, "by gad! I'll dance the Cachuca on the bank!"
By this time they had reached the spot where their racing-shell—sixty-two feet of flimsy cedar wood—was lying waiting for them. The rest of the crew, already assembled, were standing about in the attitudes of profound dejection or forced hilarity which appear to be the only alternatives of deportment open to men who are suffering from what is expressively termed "the needle." Some were whistling, others were yawning, and all were wondering why on earth men took up rowing as a pastime.
Hughie gathered his Argonauts into a knot, and at his request the Reverend Montague D'Arcy outlined to them the plan of campaign. Then the crew embarked, and the stout clergyman assisted the grizzled College boatman—the only person present whose nerves appeared unaffected by the prevailing tension—to push their craft clear of the bank, and set them going on a half-minute dash as a preliminary to their long paddle down the course to the starting point of the race.
In accordance with a picturesque but peculiar custom they wore in their straw hats bunches of marigolds and corn-flowers—the College colours—as an intimation that they had achieved bumps during the preceding nights; and so bedecked they paddled majestically down the Long Reach, feeling extremely valorous and looking slightly ridiculous, to challenge a comparison (in which they were hopelessly outclassed from the start) with the headgear of the assembled fair in Ditton Paddock.
The method of sending off a bumping race is the refinement of cruelty.