This malign stroke of fortune they had borne and survived. But the personal element was so intermingled with _this_ event that if it did not come off, the future was dark indeed.
They kept their race-glasses fixed on the boats as the men were getting in. How handsome Eric looked, and how proud they were of him! An inch or two over six feet in height, yet not looking it from the perfect symmetry of his figure, effectively displayed by the boating costume, many a girl’s heart went out to him besides those of his adoring sisters, and many a fervent wish, not to say prayer, ascended as the Cambridge boat, wildly cheered, tore out and took her place by Putney Bridge. Then Oxford followed, amidst shouts that shook the air, rowing, for her, a quicker stroke than usual. If she can keep it up, what price Cambridge? The thought was maddening, and the girls’ faces began to look gravely anxious.
On the river’s banks a human hive seems to have settled. Black are the bridges, the lawns, the balconies, and the windows. The crowded steamers must be dangerously o’erladen; and surely the protagonists, in this grand trial of skill, strength, and endurance, will task every sinew, muscle, limb, and heart-valve to win the laurel crown of the year. The English crews fight for their College, their Alma Mater; but the Australians are for their respective Colonies, _their_ native land: to show, as they have done in other historic rivalry, that the sons of Greater Britain are on a level in this as in other respects with their relatives from the wondrous isles from which their fathers came. ‘I ride for my county,’ quoth Valentine Maher. In much the same sense as the West of Ireland member of ‘The Blazers’ rode, the colonial champions in the Cambridge boat may each have vowed, as they stretched each manly thew and sinew, to do a man’s best for the good land for which their fathers had toiled and striven and fought in the long-past years; with droughts and fires, blacks, bushrangers, and other foes of the pioneer—resulting, alas! not seldom, in total wreck and financial ruin after the work of a life’s best years.
However, these are not holiday thoughts. The present is sunlit and joyous; let us enjoy it while we may. There is a temporary cessation of the murmurous, confused, unintelligible growl of the crowds. The course is clear. The boats are off—_off_! The race has begun. So has the true excitement, the desperate struggle of the swarming crowds on the swaying steamers and the towing path.