Ferry Hill assisted Hammond to launch her three boats. Hammond expressed her thanks. Each bade the other good-bye. Hammond rowed away. Then the formal politeness of the parting was suddenly marred by one of the ambassadors who had thus far scarcely spoken. He was a thin, scrawny youth and wore glasses. When the boats were a little way off shore and headed toward home he looked defiantly across at the group on the beach and shook his fist.
"Just you wait until next year, you fresh kids!" he shouted. Schonberg told him to dry up and Jim splashed him with water, but he of the spectacles would not be stilled. "We'll show you next time," he added venomously. Ferry Hill laughed; all save Post. Post blew a kiss.
"All right, dearest!" he called back.
"Dearest" replied at some length, but his utterances were marred by Jim who promptly pulled him backward into the bottom of the boat. So Hammond, acknowledging defeat, took her departure, trailing her recovered war-craft dejectedly behind.
Ferry Hill was in raptures all day long; and a week later when school had begun once more and the camp was only a memory, Roy found himself a hero indeed. The returning students listened to the tale with wildest delight and Horace Burlen's supremacy was a thing of the past. Only the veriest handful of loyal subjects remained about his fallen throne. Ferry Hill acknowledged a new leader, and his name was Roy Porter.
Horace accepted his overthrow with apparent good grace, but that he was far from reconciled subsequent events proved. Roy took his honors coolly and modestly. A youth less well-balanced might have been badly spoiled. The younger boys followed Roy about and hung breathless on his lightest word. Quarrels and arguments were laid before him for adjustment and there were always one or more worshiping subjects at hand eager to run his errands. But Roy did his own errands and refused to be spoiled by the adulation of his friends. Horace's overthrow, however, pleased him well. He had never forgotten or forgiven that youth's insult to his crimson sweater, and revenge was sweet.
Meanwhile April passed into May and May ran swiftly toward June. Hammond came over and played the first of a series of three games on the diamond and won decisively by twelve runs to five. Neither Post nor Kirby proved effective in the pitcher's box and the playing of the other members of the team was listless and slow. Ferry Hill made as many errors as runs and secured only four hits off of Rollins, the opposing pitcher; who, by the way, proved to be the "Jim" of Roy's midnight adventure. Chub was in despair. Mr. Cobb rated the players soundly after the game and threatened all sorts of dire punishments if they didn't do better. Roy had one error to his credit, but aside from that had played a fairly good game. The second Hammond game was two weeks away and in the meanwhile every effort was made to better the team. Practice became stiffer, and stiffer substitutes were tried in almost every position. Up to the last week of May there had been little to choose between Post and Kirby, but in the game with Highland Academy on the twenty-eighth of the month, Post showed such excellent form that it was decided to save him for the next Hammond contest.
Affairs on the river were meanwhile promising far better. The first Four was rowing finely, Whitcomb at stroke, Hadden at 2, Burlen at 3 and Gallup at bow. Otto Ferris had failed to get out of the second boat, where, with Fernald, Walker and Pearse he was daily making the first row its hardest to win out in the Practice races.
On the track things were in poor shape. Hammond would not compete with Ferry Hill in track and field games and so there was but little incentive for the latter school. Still, a handful of boys went in for running, hurdling, pole-vaulting, jumping and shot-putting in preparation for the preparatory school meet.
Those boys who neither rowed, played baseball nor performed on the track—and there weren't many such—essayed golf or went fishing on the river or along one or the other of the two nearby streams. The streams were the more popular, though, for they afforded excellent sport with rod and fly, Wissick Creek especially yielding fine trout, principally for the reason that it ran for several miles through private estates and had been carefully preserved for many years. The best pools were posted and once in a great while a case of poaching came up before the Principal, but as poaching was held to be a dire offence, punishable with expulsion, the fellows as a general thing contented themselves with such portions of the stream as were open to the public. Of course, fishing on Sunday was strictly prohibited, but sometimes a boy would wander away from school for a Sunday afternoon walk with a fly-book in his pocket and an unjointed rod reposing under his clothes and making him quite stiff-kneed in one leg. Such things will happen in the best regulated schools just as long as trout will rise to a fly and boys' nature remains unchanged.