Captain of the Crew

by Ralph Henry Barbour

And so on for another half mile, when the boat was again turned and brought back to the landing, where the second squad were embarking under the direction of its coxswain. “Let her run!” cried Keene, and the first squad lifted their dripping oars from the water and the shell approached the float silently, easily. “Touch her a bit, Stroke.” Dick’s oar went back into the water and he paddled gently until the boat’s head was brought nearer to the landing. “Easy, Stroke. Mind your oars, bow side!” Then the shell floated alongside, was seized by those on the float, and the oars were unlocked. “Stroke!... Bow!... Seven!... Two!... Six!... Three!... Five!... Four!” called the coxswain, and one by one the crew stepped out. Then the shell was lifted, dripping and shining from the water, and borne into the house. The second squad had meanwhile paddled into the stream, and their troubles had begun. Down the river they went, followed by the inexorable Kirk and the puffing Terrible.

Dick, weary, out of tune with himself for his sorry work, led the first squad off on a short run, down the river-path to the campus, across the golf links, still too soft for good running, and back by Academy Road toward the gymnasium, to baths and rest. And as he trotted along the voice of the coach echoed continuously in his ears: “Stroke, you’re rowing light again!” Anger at his own miserable performance in the boat and an intense loathing for it all seized upon him. Taylor could have the job, and welcome! He felt a downright hate of the fellows behind him because they had witnessed his degradation. What could they think, he asked himself, of a captain who had been cautioned four times for the same fault in a half-hour’s work? How could they—what had been Trevor’s words? Look up? Yes—how could they look up to such a captain? Hang them! What did he care what they thought of him? A pack of selfish, half-hearted idiots, they were! But in the next moment he acknowledged that he did care—a good deal. And with that the squad reached the gymnasium, and Dick pulled himself wearily up the steps. On the way across the yard later he encountered Keene.

“Hope, Kirk asked me to tell you he’d like to have you go over to his room this evening after supper if you can. I was on my way to your room.”

“All right; I’ll go. I say, Keene, what did you think of us to-day?”

One of the coxswain’s virtues was a fondness for plain, direct language unadorned with verbiage.

“Rotten!” he answered earnestly. Dick nodded, made a pathetic effort at a smile, and strode on. Keene watched him thoughtfully until he disappeared into Masters Hall, then he turned and went on his way. “He won’t last until the race,” he muttered. “Rowed like a farmer to-day, and looks now as though tired out.”

Directly after supper Dick walked to the village and found Malcolm Kirk in his room at Hutchins’s boarding-house. He was seated before an open window, his feet on the sill, puffing voluminously at a brier pipe. Upon Dick’s advent he greeted him smilingly and pushed forward an armchair.

“Sit down, Hope. It was very good of you to come over. I might have done the journeying myself and called on you, but I thought we’d have a better chance of a talk here in my diggings. Rather an off-day, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Dick relapsed into silence after this monosyllabic reply, and Kirk occupied himself with his pipe for a moment. Then he faced Dick, with a return to his usual grave aspect.