Trevor which I had
overheard. Farrar whistled.

"But you did not speak of that this morning," said he.

"No," I replied, feeling anything but comfortable. At times when he was
facetious as he had been this morning I was wont to lose sight of the
fact that with Farrar the manner was not the man, and to forget the
warmth of his friendship. I was again to be reminded of this.

"Well, Crocker," he said briefly, "I would willingly give up this year's
state contract to have known it."

CHAPTER XVIII

It was, accurately as I can remember, half after noon when Mr. Cooke
first caught the smoke over the point, for the sun was very high: at two
our fate had been decided. I have already tried to describe a part of
what took place in that hour and a half, although even now I cannot get
it all straight in my mind. Races, when a great deal is at stake,
are more or less chaotic: a close four miles in a college eight is
a succession of blurs with lucid but irrelevant intervals. The weary
months of hard work are forgotten, and you are quite as apt to think
of your first velocipede, or of the pie that is awaiting you in the
boathouse, as of victory and defeat. And a yacht race, with a pair of
rivals on your beam, is very much the same.

As I sat with my feet dangling over the washboard, I reflected, once or
twice, that we were engaged in a race. All I had to do was to twist my
head in order to make sure of it. I also reflected, I believe, that I
was in the position of a man who has bet all he owns, with large odds
on losing either way. But on the whole I was occupied with more trivial
matters a letter I had forgotten to write about a month's rent, a client
whose summer address I had mislaid. The sun was burning my neck behind
when a whistle aroused me to the realization that the tug was no longer
a toy boat dancing in the distance, but a stern fact but two miles away.
There could be no mistake now, for I saw the white steam of the signal
against the smoke.

I slid down and went into the cabin. The Celebrity was in the corner by
the companionway, with his head on the cushions and a book in his hand.
And forward, under the low deck beams beyond the skylight, I beheld the
crouching figure of my client. He had stripped off his coat and was busy
at some task on the floor.

"They're whistling for us to stop," I said to him.

"How near are they, old man?" he asked, without looking up. The
perspiration was streaming down his face