“All over but the shouting!”
Not quite, oh crowd. As Connie Bennett’s hand left the paddle to press his agonized side, he felt another gently take it from him. What next happened he felt rather than saw. He heard deafening cheers interspersed with cries of “No fair!” And then derisive shouts and cat calls. He felt the right side of the canoe dip until his trembling hand which grasped the gunwale felt the cooling touch of the water.
He was conscious of a form crawling past him. He heard a voice, hoarse and tense it seemed, urging him to move forward. It all happened as in a vision. The shouting, the cries of surprise and derision, sounded far away, like echoes.
He was better now, but his heart was thumping; he had almost fainted. He saw a rowboat with an official pennant very near. He saw canoes across the course line. He saw Billy Simpson in the stern of the canoe; not sitting, not kneeling, but sort of crouching. He looked strange, different....
“You can’t do that,” the man in the rowboat said.
“Let’s finish anyway,” said Simpson; “I’ll take a handicap that will shut their mouths. After that if they want to call it off, let them do it.”
He had already grasped the paddle in a strange fashion; his left arm seemed to be wound around it and his elbow acted as a sort of brace. The other hand he held above his head, grasping his hat (the ordinary scout hat) so that all might see. The shorter reach which this one handed paddling enforced was made up by the lightning movement of his body back and forth in the canoe. For a moment the crowd laughed in derision. But as the white canoe of the Bridgeboro Troop shot forward, those who hooted paused in gaping amazement.
Now his bow was close upon his rival’s stern. Now it was abreast of the red-headed figure. Now past it, and clear of the green bow.
The red-headed scout was too proud to complain of a one-armed rival. And his troop comrades could not see him sheltered by any rule or custom in the face of such a phenomenal display.
Steadily, steadily, the white canoe glided forward. The reach of the red-headed paddler was extended. But he could not vie with that human shuttle which worked with the monotonous steadiness of machinery. He seemed disconcerted by the mere dull regularity of that relentless engine just ahead of him.