Like St. Francis of Assisi, "Of all his body he made a tongue." He counted the strokes in tones that overtopped all the roars of encouragement and apprehension arising from the now hopelessly mixed-up mob of Benedictine and All Saints men that raged alongside. Hughie Marrable quickened and quickened, and his crew responded sturdily. Faster and faster grew the stroke, and more and more pertinaciously did the nose of the Benedictine boat plough its way through the turbid waves emitted by the twitching rudder in front. Never had they travelled like this. Six was rowing like a man possessed. Four had ceased to encourage himself, and was plugging automatically with his chest open and his eyes shut. Bow may or may not have been singing: he was certainly rowing. There was a world of rolling and splashing, for the All Saints coxswain was manipulating his rudder very skilfully, and ever and again the aggressive nose of the Benedictine boat was sent staggering back by a rolling buffeting wave. But there was no stopping the Benedictines.
Suddenly Dishy gave vent to a final cataclysmic bellow.
"You're overlapping!"
They were almost at Charon's Grind. The coxswain's lank body stiffened in its little seat, and Hughie saw him lean hard over and haul on to the right-hand rudder-line.
"Last three strokes! Now, you devils! Plug! plug! pl—Aa—a—ee—ooh—ee—easy all! Oh, well rowed, well rowed, well rowed!"
There was a lurch and a bump.
"Done it!—'Bows down to wood and stone,'" gasped Bow.
The eight men let go their oars and tumbled forward on to their stretchers, and listened, with their heads and hearts bursting, to the din that raged on the bank.
It was a fine confused moment.
In the boat itself Cox was vainly endeavouring to shake hands with Stroke, who lay doubled up over his oar, with his head right down on the bottom of the boat, oblivious to everything save the blessed fact that he need not row any more. Consciousness that he had taken his crew to the Head of the River was yet to come. At the other end Bow, with his head clasped between his knees, was croaking half-hysterically to himself, "Two bars too soon, Hughie! Oh, my aunt, we've gone Head! Two bars too soon!"