The crews had worked hard up to the last, watched morning and evening by anxious spectators from the bank. The trials had been carefully noted and times compared, the variations in style had been eagerly criticised, the weights of the rowers had become public property, and in short every detail likely to influence the result was a subject of almost painful interest to the eager partisans on either side.
And every hour seemed to promise a closer race. Not that Parrett’s had fallen off. On the contrary, they still remained what they had been all along, the smartest and strongest crew that Willoughby had ever put upon the river. But the schoolhouse boat had made wonderful strides. It was long since it had ceased to be the laughingstock of the hostile juniors, and it was some time since its appearance and work had begun to cause a shade of uneasiness in the minds of a few of the rival house. Fairbairn, far from Bloomfield’s match in physique or style, had yet displayed an amount of steady, determined work which had astonished most fellows, and inspired with confidence not only his partisans on the bank, but the three oarsmen at his back. By dint of patient, untiring practice he had worked his crew up to a pitch of training scarcely hoped for, and every day the schoolhouse boat had gained in style and speed.
Had the race been a fortnight or three weeks later few boys would have cared to prophesy definitely as to the result. As it was, though Parrett’s was morally bound to win, it was clear the race would be a fierce one, and hardly fought every foot.
Such was the general opinion in Willoughby that Tuesday evening after the last practice had come to an end, and when the boats were finally housed for the night only to reappear next day in racing trim.
Young Wyndham, as he sat in Riddell’s study with his books before him, could as soon have done a stroke of work as fly over the schoolhouse elms. Indeed, it was such a farce for him even to make the attempt that he shut up his books and gave up the idea.
“I say, Riddell,” he said, presently, addressing the captain, who, though excited too after his own fashion, was poring determinedly over his work.
“Well?” asked he, looking up.
“I say, do you think there’s any chance of our boat winning?”
The boy asked the question so anxiously that one might have supposed his whole happiness in life depended on the answer.
“It’s very hard to say,” said Riddell. “I think we have some chance, at any rate.”