The classmate behind him jumped to his feet and shouted:
"There they come! Yale! Yale! Yale!"
Hastings glanced along the water level up-river. Two black dots were visible, each fluttering thread-like tentacles. Abreast of them trailed the observation train, like a huge serpent of gaudy hues. He bit his lip and trembled with sudden excitement, while Cynthia Wells stood, one hand shading her eyes, so eagerly intent that it was plain that she had forgotten the oarsman out of the shell. The sea of blue, rippling along the train, told him that Yale was leading. He shut his eyes, fearing, until it sickened him, that some accident might happen to Yale, even with what seemed to be a safe lead.
V
To those who did not know, the winners seemed to be playing with rowing as they swept toward the finish. With no apparent effort the blue-tipped blades flashed in and out, without even a feather of spray. Forward and back again rocked eight bare backs, working as if coupled on the same connecting rod. Hands slipped easily into arched and heaving chests, and shot out with lightning speed; slow, slower, swooped the shoulders squared beneath necks like fluted columns and heads poised with airy grace. As Hastings leaned far out on the bow of the launch, waving his hat in a fury of approval, the shell rushed by him not twenty feet away, and the complaining roar of the slides was music in his ears. He could feel with that agony of effort to keep in form when every muscle cried out in rebellion, and the choking fight for breath, and yet, with it all, the glory of making the swing and catch fairly lift the quivering shell. And he knew, also, the intoxication of the sight of the Harvard crew laboring astern, as seen through eyes half blinded with sweat.
Hastings was lifted out of himself until he saw his crew cease rowing and the oars trail like the wings of a tired bird. Then the defeated crew went past him. There were breaks in the swing, heads nodded on the catch, backs were bending, and bodies swaying athwartships. It was anything now to cross the line and rest.
Hastings had a new realization of what these whipped oarsmen felt, they whose high hopes were wrecked, whose labor, as long and as faithful as that of the winners, had gone for nought. After all, he did not belong with the winners, he was one of the losers, and he wished he might shake their hands. He cheered with all his voice, and Number Five of Harvard turned a drawn face to this salutation so close at hand, and in a quick glance recognized his dethroned rival, whom he had once met on the lawn at Gales Ferry. The man in the boat flashed a smile of comradeship to the man in the launch, and both felt better for the incident.
Cynthia was clapping her hands, then she tore the violets from her gown and flung them as far as she could toward the distant crew.