“Cut ’em down some,” advised the coach, after Frank’s little spurt. “About twenty-eight a minute will do now. We’ll try a ten-mile bit to-day.”
Some of the lads felt their hearts sink at this. Eight had been the limit so far, but they realized that they were in for a grilling, and they stiffened their backs to it.
“Row out your strokes,” went on the coach. “Use every ounce of strength you have, and remember that your muscular force, applied at the beginning, does ten times the work as if you put it in at the end. Keep together. Get the oars in the water at the same time, and out together.
“Feather a bit higher—the water is rough to-day and you don’t want to splash. Try to imagine you are all a part of one man rowing in a small boat. Make your oars rise and fall together. They’re a bit ragged now.”
With such good advice did the coach urge on the lads, and they responded nobly. In a short time, though the rowing had gone a bit awkwardly at first, there was a noticeable improvement.
As Mr. Lighton had said, the boat had been a bit heavy aft, and had dragged. With his weight gone, and with a lighter coxswain, and with the other changes, there was great improvement. Instead of hanging in the water the shell seemed to glide through it at a steady rate. There was no jerking progress, but a steady onward movement, the perfection of rowing.
“Get a little more into the finish of the stroke!” called the coach at one point. “You must get the beginning of the stroke with the body only, but finish with the arms and shoulders. Send your elbows past your sides. Drop your shoulders, but keep up your heads and chests.”
Thus he corrected fault after fault, until on the return from that row not a lad but felt he had made great improvement. They were all grateful for the change, even Tom, who had been shifted from the post of most honor, next to the stroke. Of course, Boswell, who, like Achilles, sulked in his room, could not be expected to be happy.
“It wasn’t a fair thing,” he declared to his chum, Elwood Pierce. “I ought to have been kept at bow, or they might have made me stroke.”
“That’s right, old chap,” agreed Elwood. “But what can you expect of such beastly rotters? It wouldn’t be that way over in Oxford.”