Part 8

The result of the second set convinced the umpire and referee that it was time to take a hand in the game themselves, and the decisions at once became so unfair that Grace hobbled over to that end of the court to see after things. But his presence had no effect on the perceptions of the Hilltown umpire. So he hobbled back to Thatcher and asked him what they had better do about it. Thatcher said he was powerless, and Grace regretted bitterly that he had not brought a crowd with him to see fair play, for the boys were getting rattled at being robbed of so many of their hard-won points. To make matters worse, the crowd took Thatcher in hand, and disputed every decision he gave against Hilltown. Thatcher’s blood rose at this, and forgetting that the usual procedure would not be recognized by a Hilltown crowd, he turned on the spectators and told them that he would have the next man who interfered or questioned his decisions expelled from the grounds.

His warning was received with ripples of laughter and ironical cheers.

“Who’s going to put us out?” asked the Hilltown youths, derisively. But Thatcher had spoken in a rather loud voice, and his words and the answer to them had reached the ears of four straight-limbed young men who were at that moment making their way across the grounds. They broke into a run when they heard Thatcher’s angry voice, and, shoving their way through the big crowd with an abruptness learned only in practice against a rush line on a foot-ball field, stood forth on the court in all the glory of orange and black blazers.

“The Four B’s!” exclaimed Grace, with a gasp of relief.

“What seems to be the matter, Thatcher?” asked Black, quietly. “Whom do you want put out?”

“Who are you?” demanded Mr. Clay, running up in much excitement. “Get off this court. You’ll be put out yourselves if you attempt to interfere.”

Several of the Hilltown young men ran to Mr. Clay’s assistance, while one of the Slades leaped over the net and seized Mr. Clay by the shoulder.

“Don’t be a fool, Clay!” he whispered. “I know those men. Two of them play on the foot-ball team, and if they felt like it they could turn the whole town out of the grounds. Leave them alone.”

Mr. Clay left them alone.

“Go on, Thatcher,” said Black, with a nod, “if any of these gentlemen object to any decision, we will discuss it with them. That’s what we’re here for.” Two of the Big Four seated themselves at the feet of the Hilltown umpire, and looked wistfully up at him whenever he made a close decision. It was remarkable how his eyesight was improved by their presence.

The Malvern boys beamed with confidence again. The second set went to them, 6-4. Grace was so delighted that he excitedly stamped his bad foot on the turf, and then howled with pain.

The last set was “for blood,”--as one of the four collegians said.

The Slades overcame their first surprise, and settled down to fight for every point. The Malvernites gave them all the fight they wanted. One by one the games fell now on one side, now on the other side of the net. And when it came five games all, the disgust and disappointment of the crowd showed itself in shouts and cheers for their champions and hoots for their young opponents.

But all the cheering and hooting could not change the result.

“Set and game! Malvern wins!” shouted Thatcher, and then, forgetting his late judicial impartiality, threw his arms around Merton’s neck and yelled.

The silence of the Hilltown people was so impressive that the wild yell of the college contingent sounded like a whole battery of skyrockets instead of only four, and Grace sat down on the court and pounded the ground with his crutches.

“That’s enough for me,” he cried; “I don’t care for the singles. I know when I’ve had enough! I’d have two sprained ankles to do it over again!”

Then the Slades announced that the singles would begin immediately after luncheon.

The Malvern contingent went to the hotel to find something to eat, and Blair slipped away to telegraph to Malvern.

Five minutes later the operator at that place jumped as if he had received a shock from his own battery, and ran out into the street shouting, “Malvern’s won the doubles, three straight sets!”

Judge Prior’s coachman, who was waiting at the station for an express package, turned his horse and galloped back up Malvern’s only street, shouting out:

“We’ve won. Master John and Mr. Merton’s won the tennis match.”

And then the people set to work to prepare a demonstration.

The Hilltown people thought they had never seen young men so disagreeable as were the Big Four after luncheon. They seated themselves like sentinels at the four corners of the court, and whenever any one ventured to jeer at Malvern’s representative they would burst into such an enthusiasm of cheering as to drown the jeers and deafen the spectators.

There was no one in the singles but Slade and Merton, the Pineville representative having decided to drop out. Merton was nervous, and Slade was determined to win. Both played as they had never played before, but Slade’s service, which was his strong point, was nothing after the one to which Grace had accustomed Merton. And in spite of Slade’s most strenuous efforts the games kept coming slowly and slightly in Merton’s favor.

They were two sets all and were beginning the final set, when Barnes arose and disappeared in the crowd. But those of the quartette who were left made noise enough to keep Merton playing his best. It became a more and more bitter fight as the end drew near. Grace was so excited that not even his sprained ankle could keep him quiet, and Thatcher had great difficulty in restraining a desire to shout. At last Merton got “’vantage,” with only one point to win, but he missed the next ball and back went the score to “deuce” again. Three times this happened, and three times the college men half rose from the ground expecting to cheer, and then sank back again. “If he does that again,” said Grace, “I’ll have nervous prostration!” But he didn’t do it again. He smashed the next ball back into Slade’s court far out of his way, and then pulled down his sleeves as unconcernedly as if he had been playing a practice game.

The next moment Prior and the others had lifted him up on their shoulders, and were tramping around the field with him shouting, “What’s the matter with Malvern?” and “We _are_ the people!” and many other such highly ridiculous and picturesque cries of victory.

And then there came a shout from the entrance to the grounds, and up the carriageway rode Barnes mounted on top of an old-fashioned, yellow-bodied stage-coach that he had found in some Hilltown livery-stable and decorated from top to bottom with the Malvern colors. He had four horses in hand, and he was waving his whip and shouting as if a pack of wolves or Indians were in close pursuit.

The boys clambered up on top of the coach and began blowing the horns and affixing the new brooms that Barnes had thoughtfully furnished for them. They were in such a hurry to start that they forgot the prizes; and if Grace had not reminded the boys, they would have gone home content without the tokens of victory.

The faces of Mr. Percy Clay and the other contributors to the silver cups when they saw the prizes handed up to that “Malvern gang,” as they now called them, were most pitiful.

“Fancy our giving two hundred dollars extra for those cups, and then having them go to Malvern!” groaned Mr. Clay.

The boys took the prizes without remark, and had the courtesy not to open the boxes in which the cups reposed on blue velvet until they were out of sight of the men who had lost them with such bad grace.

But when once they were on the road, with the wind whistling around their hats and the trees meeting over their heads and the sun smiling its congratulations as it sank for the night, they examined the cups, and Grace said he had never seen any handsomer.

It really seemed as if the ten miles was covered in as many minutes, and though dogs ran out and barked at them, and the people in the fields stared at them as if they thought they were crazy, and although Barnes insisted on driving over every stone he could find and almost upsetting them, they kept up their spirits and shouted and sang the whole way.

The engineer of the train that had taken them up saw the coach on his return trip bounding through the shady high road where it ran parallel with his track, and told the operator at Malvern that “those boys were coming back on top of a circus band-wagon.”

And the people of Malvern were ready to receive them, though they were still ignorant of the second victory. The young people lined the high road for a distance beyond the town, and the boys saw them from afar, seated on the fence-rails and in carts and wagons. The other members of the club saw the stage, also, for one of the boys had been up in a tree on the lookout for the last half-hour. And they waved the club colors and all the flags they had been able to get at such short notice; but it was not until three of the Big Four stood up on top of the coach at the risk of breaking their necks, and held up the cups and waved them around their heads until they flashed like mirrors, that the club really cheered. And when they saw that there were THREE cups they set up such a hurrah that the cows in the next field tore madly off in a stampede. That night everybody in town came to Dr. Merton’s with the village band and thronged the big lawn; and Merton made a speech in which he spoke very highly of Prior, and of the Big Four who had helped to save the day, and of Thatcher, but most of all of Grace.

Then Grace had to speak leaning on his crutches; and the band played and the college boys sang and everybody handled the prizes and admired them even to the champions’ satisfaction.

The next day Grace bade his new friends good by and went back to college, where his absence was attributed to his sprained ankle. He thought of the people of Malvern very often, of the twilight evenings spent on Dr. Merton’s lawn listening to the college boys’ singing, and talking to the girls of the Malvern Tennis Club, and of the glorious victory of his pupils and the friendliness and kindness of his hosts.

He knew he would never forget them, but he hardly thought they would long remember him.

But, two weeks later, the expressman brought a big box with a smaller black one inside of it; and within, resting on its blue velvet bed, was a facsimile of the prize-cup of the tri-club tournament. And it was marked, “To Charles Coleridge Grace. From the people of Malvern.”

And when Grace exhibits the many prizes he has won, they say that it is this cup which he did _not_ win that he handles most tenderly and shows with the greatest pride.

THE JUMP AT COREY’S SLIP.

The jump from Corey’s slip was never made but by two of the Brick Dust Gang, and though, as it turned out, they were not sorry they had taken it, they served as a warning to all the others of the gang against trying to emulate their daring.

Corey’s slip, as everybody knows, is part of Corey’s brick-yard, on the East side, near the Twenty-sixth street wharf, and the Brick Dust Gang are so called because they have a hidden meeting-place among the high piles of bricks which none of the other boys, nor the police, nor even the employees of the brick-yard have been able to find. It is known to exist, though, and the gang meet there to smoke and play the accordion and gamble for cigarette pictures, and to pursue such other sinful and demoralizing practices of East side youth as they elect.

The Brick Dust Gang must not be confounded with the Rag Gang of “The Bay,” near Thirty-third street, for, while the Rag Gang are thieves and toughs, the Brick Dust Gang are too young to be very wicked, and their “folks” are too respectable to let them go very far astray. The gang got along very well during the winter months, and the hole in the bricks was filled every afternoon after the public schools had closed, with from a dozen to twenty of them.

Buck Mooney was the leader, and no one disputed his claim, for he was a born leader in some respects, just as was his father, who could throw the votes of the Luke J. Mooney Star Social Club wherever they would do himself and the party the most good. But his son Buck was quick-tempered and stronger than he knew, and he had a way of knocking the younger and less pugilistic members of his crowd around which was injudicious; for by this he hurt his own popularity as well as their heads.

He was no bully though, and there was no one who could lead him in any show of physical prowess recognized and practised by the gang. So all through the winter he was easily the leader, and no one stood against him. His fall came in the spring. The coming of the spring meant more to the Brick Dust Gang than to almost any other crowd along the river front, for their knowledge of the brick-yard and its wharf enabled them to bathe in the river quite hidden from the police at any hour of the day, and this means a great deal to those who have felt the stifling heat of the tenements along the East River.

They bathed and swam and dived from the first of May until the autumn came and gave the water such a sharpness that they left it numbed and with chattering teeth, and they began at five in the morning and kept it up late into the night. They lived in the water, and were rather more at home in it than they were on the streets. The workmen in the brick-yard never interfered with them, because the boys helped them in piling the bricks and in unloading the scows and loading the carts; and the police could never catch them, for the reason that the boys always kept a part of the gang posted as sentinels in the yard.

Mooney and Tommy Grant were easily the best swimmers in the crowd. Tommy was four years younger than the leader, and small and consumptive-looking; but he was absurdly strong for his size, and his body was as hard and muscular as a jockey’s. The trouble began between the two at the swimming-match at Harlem for all comers, where they both entered for the one-mile race with a turn. The Harlem boys were not in it from the first, and the two down-town boys led all the others by a hundred yards. “The little fellow,” as Tommy was called by the crowds on the shore, was the popular favorite; and the crowd was delighted when he came plunging in ahead, swimming so much under water that only one bare shoulder and revolving arm told where he was.

Buck Mooney, the leader of the gang, was a bad second and a bad loser as well. He swore a great deal when his backers pulled him out of the water, and gave every reason for Tommy’s success, except that Tommy could swim faster than he could.

When Tommy appeared around the streets the next day with the big gold medal on his coat, and with the words “Champion of the East River” blazoned on it, Mooney felt worse than ever, and grew so ugly over it that some of the gang soon turned against him, and his hold over them disappeared. Little Tommy took his place without any formal election, and Mooney sulked and said unpleasant things about him behind his back.

They never came to blows, but they both grew to hate each other cordially,--principally through the stories their friends told of each to the other, as friends, true friends, are found to do, in all classes of society. So the breach grew very great and the gang was divided and lost its influence. One faction would refuse to act as sentinel for the other, and each claimed the meeting-place. On the whole, it was very unpleasant, and most unsatisfactory to those who loved peace.

It was evident that something must be done; either the gang must separate into two crowds or reunite again under one leader. It was a foolish, dare-devil young Irish boy that suggested how this last and much-desired result could be accomplished. There was a big derrick at the end of the wharf to lift the buckets of coal from the scows, when the place was used for a coal-yard.

Some of the more daring boys had jumped from the middle bar of this derrick, in emulation of Steve Brodie, whose jump from the Brooklyn Bridge and subsequent elevation to the proprietorship of a saloon had stirred up every boy in the East side. It was a dangerous thing to do, because there was an outer row of posts beyond the slip, and whoever jumped had to jump out far enough to strike the water beyond them. For, if he should not jump far enough--

What the Irish boy proposed was that some one should try to dive--not jump--from the very top of the derrick. The derrick was fifty feet above the water, and the outer line of posts was eight feet from the slip and fifteen feet from the line of the derrick. It looked like just what it was--an impossibility--for any one but the coolest and most practised diver.

“If a lad should do it,” objected one of the gang, “and ’ud hit them piles, there’d be no getting at him quick e’cept from the top of the derrick. He’d sink afore any one could get around the piles to him from the slip.”

“There’d be no need to hurry,” said another, grimly. “He’d keep till the police boat picked him up.”

“Well, the morgue’s handy,” commented another, flippantly, with a nod of his head toward Bellevue Hospital, back of them.

As ill luck would have it, Mooney came up just then, and they told him what they were discussing.

“I’ll bet Tommy Grant wouldn’t be afeard to try it,” said one of the youngest.

That was enough for Mr. Mooney. He said with a sneer that Tommy _would_ be afraid, and of course Tommy was told of this at once, and Tommy, after a careful survey of the jump, said it was suicide. And then Mooney called him a coward, and said he’d do it, and he’d show him who was fit to lead the gang.

The elder boys told him not to be a fool, Tommy among the number; but he said they were cry-babies, and told them to keep quiet about it and to meet at the wharf at seven that evening.

The tide was low then, and the piles showed high above the water. At high tide they were covered, and besides there were very few people about at that hour.

At seven o’clock twenty of them gathered at the end of the wharf. They were badly scared and wished they were well out of it, but there was no stopping Mooney. The more they begged him not to do it, the more he laughed at them. He climbed the ladder to the top of the derrick alone, and stripped off every thread but his swimming tights and the scapular around his neck. The big posts rose out of the water in front of the slip--black, slimy-looking, and as pitiless as rocks.

Van Bibber and some of his friends in their steam yacht lying at anchor off the New York Yacht Club’s wharf saw the boy mounting the ladder and shouted to the other boys to stop him. The other boys would have liked to do what the gentlemen suggested, but it was too late. But Tommy ran half-way up the ladder, begging his rival to come down. Mooney swore at him to go back, and Tommy hung there half-way up and fearful to do more lest he should rattle the ex-leader of the gang.

The gentlemen on the yacht told two of the crew to jump into the rowboat and pick the young fool up, and the sailors ran to cast off the skiff.

Then they saw Mooney outlined against the dark background of the tenements, as motionless as a marble statue on a high pedestal.

He raised his arms slowly over his head until the finger tips met and interlaced, then he bent his knees and his body swung forward. There was a brief, breathless silence as he dived out and down, and then a yell from the yacht and a gasping cry from the boys, as they saw him throw out his hands wildly to save himself, and saw that he had misjudged the distance and would strike the posts. Some of the youngest boys turned sick and sank whimpering to their knees, and six of the older ones dived like one man into the water to pull him out. He had struck the posts with his arm, had turned, striking them again, and then sank without a cry into the river.

The sailors in the rowboat had just started toward the spot and the club men were cursing them for their slowness. The six boys in the water were shut off from Mooney by the posts, and slipped back after they had tried vainly to climb over them.

“He’s killed. He’ll be drowned. Ah, he’s sunk for good,” the boys wailed and cried in chorus.

Young Tommy from his post half-way up the ladder, saw that before the boat could reach his rival, or the boys could get around the piles to him, he would be drowned, and so he ran up the rest of the ladder, poised for just a second, and then took the second and last jump that was ever taken from Corey’s slip. He cleared the posts by an inch or two, turned in the water before he had gone half-way into it, and dived to where he saw the white body settling towards the bottom.

The sailors in the rowboat reached him in time to pull him out and carry him to the yacht with the bruised and unconscious body of his rival in his arms. Then the gentlemen sent Mooney over to the hospital, and wanted to make up a purse for Tommy, but he said it was “all right” and “hadn’t done nothin’ anyhow.” It took several weeks for Mooney’s leg and arm to knit, and he limped for months afterward.

The gentlemen on the yacht wanted to compromise by giving Tommy a medal, but he said he’d had enough trouble over the last medal, and asked why they did not give it to Mooney, for he had taken the jump in cold blood; “an’ I,” said Tommy, “just did it because I was in a hurry to get down.”

So Van Bibber and the other yachtsmen gave Mooney a very fine medal, which told that he was the “Champion Diver of the East River.” And now there are two leaders to the gang, though each protests that the other is the only one.

THE VAN BIBBER BASEBALL CLUB.

Young Van Bibber decided that he ought to take some people to the circus. He had long outgrown the age when the circus only pleased, but some of the men had said it was the thing to do just as it was the thing to go incognito to see Carmencita dance; and so he purchased a big box in the very centre of the lowest tier and wrote to Mrs. Dick Wassails that it was at her service and that she could fill it with whom she pleased. He added that he would expect them to take supper with him later.

He owed Mrs. Dick, as everybody called her, a great deal for many social favors, and he thought to make things even in this way; but Mrs. Dick was engaged for that evening, and said she was so sorry and begged to be excused. So young Van Bibber sent off a note to the Gramercys, with whom he wished to become more intimate, and whom he wished to put under an obligation. But they were just going abroad and were in the midst of preparations and they also begged to be excused.

It was getting very near the night now, and Van Bibber ran over in his mind the names of all of those people to whom he owed something or who might some day do something for him. He tried the Van Warps, because they owned a yacht, but they were going to a wedding; and he tried the Van Blunts, on account of their house at Lenox, and found that their great uncle had just died and that they were going to the funeral. Then he asked the men in the club, but the one who gave such good dinners thought it would be too much of a bore; and another, whose sister Van Bibber wanted to know better, said he was afraid he would catch cold, and others, all of whom had been civil to him in one way or another, began to make excuses. So young Van Bibber stood on the steps of the club and kicked viciously at the mat. He decided that his friends were a very poor lot. “One would think I was trying to borrow money from them,” soliloquized Van Bibber.

“Where to?” asked the driver of the hansom.