and also to have the composition of the next term's Eight as nearly as possible settled.
At the beginning of the Summer Term, time, as I have said, is rather short, and consequently it is the custom at most colleges to make the Eight come into residence about a week before the end of the vacation. The esprit de corps and energy which are shown during the practice are, perhaps, the most noticeable features of college rowing at Oxford—a circumstance to which may be attributed the fact that the crews turned out by the colleges at the top of the river are often wonderfully good, considering the material out of which they are formed. The Eights are rowed at the end of the fourth week and at the beginning of the fifth week in term, six nights in all. They start 130 ft. apart—that is to say, 30 ft. less than the Torpids. About the same number of boats row in a division in the former as in the latter, the bottom boat starting at the same place in each case; consequently the head boat in the Eights has a slightly longer course to row than the head Torpid.
The start of a boat race is always rather nervous work for the crews, but the start of a bumping
race is worse in this respect than any. A spectator who cares to walk down the bank and look at the crews waiting at their posts for the start cannot fail to notice that even the most experienced men look extremely uncomfortable.
The start is managed thus: at the starting-point of each boat a short wooden post is driven firmly into the ground. These posts are exactly 130 ft. apart, and to each is attached a thin rope 60 ft. long with a bung at the end, while by each post a punt is moored. About twenty minutes or a quarter of an hour before the appointed time, the crews start from their barges and paddle gently down to their respective starting-places, where they take up their positions alongside of the punts. Five minutes before the starting-time the first gun is fired as a sort of warning. These guns are fired punctually to the second, and by the first gun the men who are going to start the different crews set their stop-watches. The duty of these "starters" is to keep the crews informed of the exact time, by calling out, "One minute gone," "Two minutes gone," etc. The second gun goes one minute before the start, and as soon as it is fired, the waterman slowly pushes
the boat out from the side of the punt by means of a long pole pressed against stroke's rigger, the coxswain holding the bung at arm's-length in his left hand, with the cord taut so as to counteract the pressure of the pole, and "bow" and "two" paddling very gently so as to keep the boat at the very furthest extension of the rope. "Thirty seconds more," calls the starter; "fifteen," "ten," "five," "four," "three," "two," "look out"—Bang! and, except for those who are doomed to be bumped, the worst is over till the next night. Directly a bump is made both the boat which has made the bump and the boat which is bumped draw to one side, and on the next night the boat which has made the bump starts in front of its victim of the preceding evening. The Eights are the last event of the season in which the colleges compete against one another on the river, and the interest and excitement of the college in the doings of its crew generally find their final outlet, in the case of a college which has made five or six bumps or finished head of the river, in a bump supper—an entertainment of a nature peculiar to Oxford and Cambridge, which is, perhaps, better left to the imagination than described in detail.