Louis Tracy took his place—and kept it. After that, the disenchanted but still determined Roger rowed bow on the pair-oar to Wilmot’s stroke, and toiled over the unmanageable oar. It had a way of plunging under, every few strokes, and pulling the side of the boat down; then it stuck deep in the water, and Coolidge, the cox, would reprove, and the offending bow would grip his handle still tighter and vow that this particular fault shouldn’t occur again. But it did occur again, and others as heinous. He couldn’t get his oar away after he had raised it from the water; he rushed his slide instead of drawing it gradually back so as not to check the motion of the boat; he could not put into practice the apparently simple direction that the legs were to bear the burden of the work. As a result his back suffered,—and the temper of his mates, who poured out on his head reproach and sarcasm until the ineffectualness of words was made apparent, when they relapsed into a humorous pessimism that was more unflattering than abuse.
The crew of the pair-oar was under another disadvantage: very little coaching trickled through to them. Caffrey, the Westcott coach, gave his attention chiefly to the first and incidentally to the second: the pair-oar shifted for itself, or received one set of amateur directions one day and another the next. As Roger thought of it, he and Wilmot were in the position of a slow steamer trying to overtake one which was several knots faster. Only a breakdown in the leader could prevent the distance between them from growing hourly greater.
“What’s the matter with Hardie?” asked Talbot, one day, as he walked down with Wilmot to the boat-house. “He doesn’t seem to be gaining at all.”
“He’s just rotten,” answered Wilmot, despairingly. “A low-caste baboon would do better!”
“He may!” echoed Wilmot, derisively; “oh, yes, he may! But I’ll bet you a dollar to a cent that he won’t!”
A fortnight passed: Bursley was making good in the first, and Mac had been promoted to stroke on the second, but Roger’s improvement was scarcely noticeable. He was beginning to fear that rowing was something for which he was physically unfitted, as a fat man for pole vaulting. In spite of his hardened muscles he became easily tired; his poor form wore on his back and wrists and arms. Good rowing is easy rowing: Roger’s was both bad and hard. Yet in spite of all discouragement he enjoyed the practice. It was interesting to struggle for the hoped-for improvement, even though the hope proved vain, to observe the other crews on the water, to rest on the oar, a little out of the channel, and watch the Varsity eight sweep magnificently by, with the nose of the coaching launch close at the shell’s rudder, the oarsmen’s bodies bending in beautiful unison, the water boiling back from the driving blades. Roger never saw Deering’s crew without a thrill of that awe which the subaltern feels when he stands in the presence of a famous general. It represented power, skill, and determination concentrated; in it was embodied a kind of majesty before which the schoolboy oars bowed with instinctive reverence. Every crew on the river gazed at the Varsity in rapt admiration, but the Varsity recognized the presence of no one but itself.