Of the men that tried for the crew, all were sifted out, gradually, except B.J., Quiz, and Punk. The training was a severe one, under a coach who had graduated some years before from Kingston, and had come back to bring his beloved Academy first across the line, as it had gone the year he had captained the crew.
As the training went on, the man who had been elected captain of the eight worked so faithfully—or overworked so faithfully—that he was trained up to the finest point some two or three weeks before the great regatta of academies. Every day after that he lost in form, in spite of himself, and the coach had finally to make him abdicate the throne; and Punk, who had worked in his usual slow and conservative fashion, seemed the fittest man to succeed him. So Punk became captain of the crew, and found himself at the old post of stroke-oar.
On the day of the great Henley of the Interscholastic League, when all the crews had got away in their best style, after two vexatious false starts, Punk slowly, and without any impatience, urged his crew past all the others, till Kingston led them all.
From this place he could study his rivals well, and after some shifting of positions, he saw the Troy Latin School eight coming cleanly out of the parade and making swiftly after him. Suddenly a great nervousness seized him, because he remembered the time, the year before, when the Lakerim crew rowed Troy, and when his oar had broken just before the finish, so that he had been compelled to jump out into the water, and had missed the joy of riding over the line with his winning Lakerimmers. He wondered now if this oar would also play him false.
But he had selected it with experienced care, and hard as he strained it, and pathetically as it groaned, it stood him in good stead, and carried him, and the seven who rowed with him, safely into the paradise of victory.
XXVIII
Of the Lakerimmers who tried for the baseball team, four men were elevated to the glory of positions on the regular nine.
Sleepy had somehow proved that left-field was safer when he was seeming to take a nap there than it was under the guard of any of the more restless players.
Tug was a second baseman, whose cool head made him a good man at that pivot of the field; he was an able assistant to the right-field, a ready back-stop to the short-stop, and a perfect spider for taking into his web all the wild throws that came slashing from the home plate to cut off those who dared to try to steal his base.
Sawed-Off was the nearest of all the Kingstonians to resembling a telegraph-pole, so he had no real competitors for first base. He declined to play, however, unless Jumbo were given the position of short-stop; and Jumbo soon proved that he had some other rights to the position besides a powerful pull.