[CHAPTER XVI]
THE INDOOR MEETING
Mechanics’ Hall, Boston, was filled from floor to gallery, from doors to stage. The hum of voices, the fluttering of programs, the slow bellow of the announcer as, with megaphone at mouth, he gave the result of the events, made a strange medley of sound.
From one corner of the floor to another there ran diagonally a lime-marked lane. Since half past seven white-trunked figures had rushed, half a dozen at a time, down this lane at top speed, had flung themselves panting, with outstretched arms, against the mattresses at the end, and had turned and trotted back to the dressing-rooms.
The supply had seemed inexhaustible. Heat after heat had been run in the Forty Yards Novice, heat after heat in the Forty Yards Invitation, heat after heat in the Forty Yards Handicap, and now the hurdles were in place, the pistol was cracking forth, and white-clad forms were flying breathlessly over the bars and breasting the red string at the finish.
At each report of the pistol the center gallery leaped to its feet, the hurdlers sprang into sight from below and sped away like arrows across the yellow floor. Hurdles crashed, the crowd shouted, the racers flung their arms at the tape and collapsed against the padded wall at the end of the lane, and the center gallery sank into its seats again and rustled its programs. And the announcer lifted his crimson trumpet:
“Forty-five Yards Hurdles—fourth heat won by No. 390, No. 3 second; time, 6⅖ seconds.”
There were dozens of colleges, schools, and associations represented there that night, and hundreds of competitors. There was the blue Y of Yale, the crimson H of Harvard, the red C of Cornell, the green D of Dartmouth, the purple E of Erskine, the brown R of Robinson, and many, many other insignia flaunted on heaving breasts.
Thirty-odd officials, in immaculate evening clothes, lent a note of sobriety to the colorful scene, while a blue-coated policeman, whose duty it was to guard the long table of mugs and tankards, stood out intensely against the gleam and glitter of the prizes. On the big stage, the sloping bank of watchers looked from the floor like a bed of waving somber-hued flowers. From a corner of the balcony came the strains of brazen music.