CHAPTER XXIV

THE TROUBLE WITH THE CREW.

Dick reached New London, and was at Gale’s Ferry, the Yale rowing quarters, before the assistant coaches who had been left in charge of the crew had smoked their final pipes for the night. The oarsmen were all in bed, early hours being the strict rule for them. But, on the porch of the cottage in which the coaches lived, Dick found Hargreaves and Benton, his two graduate helpers, deep in talk.

“By Jove, I’m glad to see you, Mr. Merriwell!” cried Benton. “We heard that motor boat puffing up the river, but I hardly thought you’d get here before to-morrow. See any signs of mourning as you passed Red Top?”

They all laughed. Red Top was the name of the little cluster of cottages and boathouses half a mile or so below, where the Harvard oarsmen had for years made their quarters.

“No,” said Dick, with a smile. “I suppose they don’t feel very cheerful. Still, they’ve got a chance to come back at us. If they win here, they’ll be willing to let us have the baseball title to ourselves, I guess, without feeling very bad about it.”

Benton pointed to a smoldering fire not far away.

“We had a little bonfire here ourselves when we heard the news,” he said. “Gee! I’d like to have seen that game. That ninth inning must have been enough to give you heart failure.”

“I haven’t got over it yet,” admitted Dick Merriwell, as he settled comfortably back in his chair. “I suppose you haven’t heard many details.”

“Just the bare score by innings,” said Hargreaves. “I called up a couple of chaps at the club in New York, but they were so hoarse from yelling that they couldn’t make me understand. They tried to describe it to me, but all I could hear was that we won by a triple play in the ninth inning, when the bases were full, with none out.”

“Well, that was the gist of it all,” said Dick. “It could be told in a lot more words—but that’s what’s important.”

However, they would not be satisfied until he had described the whole game for them, telling how Jim Phillips, the newly elected captain of the varsity baseball team, had managed, although worn out and almost exhausted, to save the day for Yale when a Harvard victory seemed absolutely certain.

“Now,” he said, when he had finished, “tell me about the crew. I’m anxious to hear about that. I should have been here last week, but the baseball championship seemed mighty important, and I knew the crew was in good hands as long as you two were on the job.”

The two assistants seemed much pleased by the compliment. They were young graduates, both captains of Yale crews in their time, and thoroughly versed in the Yale stroke and the Yale system of rowing, as Bob Cook and John Kennedy had, in different ways, developed it. Dick Merriwell, himself a fine and powerful oarsman, was also an expert in technical watermanship. He had studied the rigging of a shell for an eight-oared sweep race under the greatest masters: Courtney, of Cornell; Rice, of Columbia, and men of similar stamp; and he had evolved for this year’s Yale crew a stroke rather different from that of any of its predecessors.

He had felt willing to do this because he had tried the stroke out the year before with the freshman crew, with good results, and some of the members of that same freshman crew were on this year’s varsity. Murchison, the stroke, who captained the crew, was a veteran, and so was Flagg at number seven, the seat immediately behind that of the stroke, and the second man in the boat in importance.

In an eight-oared shell, such as the varsity races of to-day are rowed in, each man handles a single oar, and four are on one side of the boat, four on the other. Stroke sets the pace for the men who swing on the same side of the boat directly, and, in a way, for all eight rowers. But the men on the other side must take the beat from number seven, who must, therefore, be able to follow stroke with the utmost exactness, for the speed of a shell depends altogether upon the unison of the oarsmen. They must row in time, or the boat will drag and check badly.

Going at racing speed, a boat should cover its own length, of about sixty feet, in something like four seconds. A single break may make that time five seconds more, so it is easy to see how important it is for every man to row in time.

There was some hesitation, as Dick Merriwell could see, in the answer of Benton and Hargreaves to his question about the condition of the crew. Each seemed to hang back to let the other answer, and Dick was immediately much concerned.

“Is there anything wrong?” he said. “If so, you should have let me know.”

“Nothing exactly wrong,” said Benton finally. “But we’re a little puzzled, and there’s no use denying that. We had a time trial last Wednesday, as you know. We took them downstream, from quarters here to the railroad bridge, using the flags for the course. Four of us caught them in twenty minutes twenty-one seconds, which was remarkable time. The tide was good, of course, but it was very hot. I never saw a Yale crew work better. The best we’ve heard of Harvard, under conditions that, if anything were better, was twenty-one minutes flat for the course—also downstream. Murchison was right up to top form—the whole crew worked like a machine. But here’s the sequel.”

Hargreaves broke in excitedly.

“Yes,” he said, “here’s the sequel! The Harvard people had a day off this afternoon, to get returns on the game. I thought, and Benton agreed with me, that it was better not to let the fellows get their minds on the baseball game too much. So we took the freshmen and the varsity out and gave them a two-mile brush, at full speed, racing start and all racing conditions, to the navy yard—the same course the freshmen will row next week. And—the freshmen finished three lengths ahead.”

“What?” exclaimed the universal coach, in amazement. “What was the time?”

“Ten minutes fifty-nine seconds,” said Benton gloomily. “And the varsity made the two miles in their trial row last Wednesday in ten thirty-three. Now, how are you going to account for that?”

“That time’s all right for the freshmen,” said Dick slowly. “They’ll take a lot of beating if they do as well as that against Harvard. But I don’t understand the varsity. Of course, it’s not a two-mile crew—but they ought to have done as well as in their time trial. How were the water conditions?”

“Not more than twenty seconds slower for the whole course,” said Hargreaves. “I rowed over the course in a pair oar with Murchison later, to see how it was.”

“Anything wrong?” asked Dick. “Any one man off his form?”

“No,” said Benton. “They rowed just as well as they did before. Form all right—stroke absolutely correct. Simply didn’t have the speed and the steam that the freshmen put in. They worked hard. The boat seemed to hang more than it did—that was enough to account for the slower time. What I can’t account for is the check. There was almost no run at all between strokes. It’s got us guessing. That was why we were so glad to see you heave in sight when you did to-night.”

Dick looked at his watch.

“Time to turn in,” he said. “I’m not strong for Sunday rowing, but we’ll have to have them out to-morrow and see what’s wrong. It certainly sounds like a Chinese puzzle, to hear you describe it. But I guess there’ll be some way to explain it when we get right down to cases.”