For it was a great jump. That could be seen by anyone, and the officials and trackmen gathered around while a careful measurement was taken. The serene Vare was sufficiently stirred himself to crowd close to the pit.
"What is it, what is it?" snapped Harrington who could hardly await the rather deliberate speech of the man at the end of the steel tape, who was taking his time to make certain.
"Twenty-three feet, four inches!"
The cheer of the small group of men on the track itself was taken as a good omen by the Americans in the stand, and these latter at once delivered themselves of a full-grown yell, which echoed back from the brick dwellings which surround the field.
"Twenty-three feet, four inches!" came the announcement, bawled to all sides of the field through the megaphone, and again the American yells broke out.
In the storm of cheering which Frank's great jump had elicited, Vare was seen to rise to his feet and walk slowly to the start of the runway. Two of his teammates went with him, and at each of his important marks he stopped and scrutinized them carefully as if he was not sure in his own mind that they were just right. Twice he tried the full runway from the start to the take-off block, making new marks for his guidance.
And now, being quite ready, he made his first of the three tries allotted to him. On the first he cleared twenty-three feet, two inches, and on the second bettered this mark by half an inch.
"Only an inch and a half behind you, Armstrong," said McGregor, in a nervous staccato, "but I'll eat my shoes, spikes and all, if he can equal that one of yours."
"If he does," said Frank, "it's all over, I'm afraid. How I came to get that far out is more than I can understand. It's a dream, don't wake me!"
Silence settled over the crowd as Vare faced the pit for his last trial. His face was drawn and white. Now he moves forward, crouching a little, with chin out and jaws tightly clenched. The loping run develops at half distance into a sweeping rush, the Englishman hits the take-off squarely, and leaps with every ounce of energy in his body—up, up, out, out, he goes, while the spectators at the track side hold their breaths. Now he has reached the full height of his jump, and is coming down. Will his drive carry him far enough to win? He is down in the pit, topped over by the impetus of his rush, but the jump is clean, and the measurers are at work.