. The training was a severe one, under a
coach who had graduated some years before from Kingston, and had come
back to bring his beloved Academy first across the line, as it had
gone the year he had captained the crew.

As the training went on, the man who had been elected captain of the
eight worked so faithfully--or overworked so faithfully--that he was
trained up to the finest point some two or three weeks before the
great regatta of academies. Every day after that he lost in form, in
spite of himself, and the coach had finally to make him abdicate the
throne; and Punk, who had worked in his usual slow and conservative
fashion, seemed the fittest man to succeed him. So Punk became captain
of the crew, and found himself at the old post of stroke-oar.

On the day of the great Henley of the Interscholastic League, when all
the crews had got away in their best style, after two vexatious false
starts, Punk slowly, and without any impatience, urged his crew past
all the others, till Kingston led them all.

From this place he could study his rivals well, and after some
shifting of positions, he saw the Troy Latin School eight coming
cleanly out of the parade and making swiftly after him. Suddenly a
great nervousness seized him, because he remembered the time, the year
before, when the Lakerim crew rowed Troy, and when his oar had broken
just before the finish, so that he had been compelled to jump out into
the water, and had missed the joy of riding over the line with his
winning Lakerimmers. He wondered now if this oar would also play him
false.

But he had selected it with experienced care, and hard as he strained
it, and pathetically as it groaned, it stood him in good stead,
and carried him, and the seven who rowed with him, safely into the
paradise of victory.

XXVIII

Of the Lakerimmers who tried for the baseball team, four men were
elevated to the glory of positions on the regular nine.

Sleepy had somehow proved that left-field was safer when he was
seeming to take a nap there than it was under the guard of any of the
more restless players.

Tug was a second baseman, whose cool head made him a good man at that
pivot of the field; he was an able assistant to the right-field, a
ready back-stop to the short-stop, and a perfect spider for taking
into his web all the wild throws that came slashing from the home
plate to cut off those who dared to try to steal his base.

Sawed-Off was the nearest of al