“Well, how much do you want?” he asked.
“Three hundred yards,” was the prompt reply.
“I’ll give it to you!”
“All right, put my name down,” said Tom.
The youth with the Mercury’s foot gravely wrote in the water with his finger, and the onlookers laughed. Then the contestants, of whom there were about a dozen, set off to their places. There was a good deal of good-natured argument as to the distances taken up by those receiving handicaps, but at last all were in position. Some one shouted “Go!” at the top of his lungs, and the race began. They were to swim to the sloop, pass around it, and return to the beach. Dan, who had no hope of winning, since he conceived the Mercury’s foot chap to be unusually good at the work, took things leisurely enough. But Tom, quite unawed by the crack, set off as though he meant to win the race. As a result he was the first to reach the sloop, having passed three competitors on the way out to it, and turned toward home still swimming strongly.
The sea was quite smooth, and what tide there was was setting toward shore. Some eighty or a hundred yards back from the sloop he passed the crack swimming almost under water with long deliberate strokes of his powerful arms. He smiled across at Tom in a brief moment when his head was out of water, and that smile, at once amused and confident, gave Tom a foretaste of defeat. Still, he was, perhaps, two hundred yards ahead of the other, and if he could only keep his present speed up for the rest of the distance he thought he might win. Tom wasn’t a sprinter, but in a half mile or even a quarter he was no mean antagonist. In spite of his rotundity of build he was strong of muscle and, moreover, had learned the science of making every ounce of effort tell. Presently Dan passed, fighting hard with another contestant. Then, back of them, came the tag end of the procession. But Tom was paying strict attention to business now and had no time for watching others. Only once, while still halfway between sloop and finish, did he let up for a moment and strive to see his principal rival, and then he saw enough to set him frantically at work again. For the crack had rounded the sloop and was hot on Tom’s trail and scarcely a hundred yards in the rear. Tom struck out again with long, even strokes, swimming hand over hand and pushing the water back from him with every bit of strength in his body.
Among the breakers and just beyond them the spectators were watching eagerly. Some few swam out to speed the winner over the line. Two men and a young lady in a rowboat, which had mysteriously appeared on the scene, shouted encouragingly to Tom.
“Go it, kid!” cried one of the men. “You can beat him! You’re holding him!”
“Kid, eh?” thought Tom disgustedly. “I’ll show them!”
And now, with a little more than a hundred yards to go, Tom eased his stroke a bit, for his muscles were aching terribly and his breath threatened every instant to fail him and leave him rolling helplessly about out there like a plump porpoise. And behind him, perhaps forty or fifty yards back, the crack was coming along hard and fast, still swimming with practically the same stroke he had started with.