A fortnight later another letter packed full of the inevitable rowing gush started on the long journey to Buenos Aires.

“Dear Mother:

“I have so much to tell you about the crew this time and such a wonderful story of luck that I must answer your questions right off at the beginning or I shall surely forget to. You must let me know what boat you’re coming on in June so that I can meet you at the dock. It must seem funny to get two summers in the same year. If summer vacations went with them, I should like that myself. It is all right about the Comptons. I called there a long time ago. I did not want to go, but as you wanted me to, I went, and had a very decent time after all. They asked me to dinner a few days afterward. I had to accept because I couldn’t very well get out of it. They gave me a swell feed, and there were two girls there whom I had met at dancing school. Joe Compton is a conceited little mutt. I will make my party call when the rowing is over, as it will be after another week. I think I shall get recommendations for 16 points, though the English isn’t certain yet. You must not expect me to pass them all off. Nobody does that but the sharks, and you know I am not a shark. Jason Dunn, the boy you ask about who turned over a new leaf, keeps it turned all right, but as far as studies are concerned, it is still blank. You don’t need to ask me to help him, I couldn’t prevent it if I wanted to, as he studies in my room almost every night. I don’t dislike him as I used to. I will order the new suit, but I think the old one would do, and I could spend the money more profitably on something else. The boys here don’t care much about outside clothes, though they’re terribly keen about having fresh socks and shirts every day, and they run wild on neckties. My laundry bill is a whopper. Now for the real news.

“I rowed on the second a whole week. Of course we did not get a great deal of Caffrey, but Mike is pretty good, and Pete Talbot would tell me after the practice some special fault he had seen in me, and then I worked with all my might to straighten it out. I kept on getting accustomed to use my legs and run the leg motion into the body and arms (that doesn’t sound right, but it is the best I can do to explain it), and I found the work a lot easier. You see if you row with a fixed seat, the whole strain is on the back and arms, and the pull is with strength alone. On the sliding seat, you row against your stretcher (that’s the foot-board) and the legs furnish most of the power. The skill comes in in blending everything together in one easy, natural motion, and getting back to take your next stroke without checking the boat by the return of your slide. I could feel all along that I was gaining, though I was slow on the recover, and bungled my oar still. The fellows all seemed to think I was going to make good in the second, and I was delighted, for our second is about the best second on the river, and Mac sets a perfectly wonderful stroke.

“One day near the end of the week Caffrey went out with us. He watched me all the time, but he didn’t say anything to me in particular except to get away on my slide hard at the start and slow down at the finish, and to keep the top edge of my blade just below the surface of the water, and not feather under. I knew all this before, but rowing directions are awfully hard to apply. You have to watch the back of the man in front of you for your stroke, and yet start at the very instant he does. That means that you must feel when he is going to start and start with him. That’s an example of what they expect of you in a boat; other things are a good deal harder.

“On Friday the first went to Suffolk to race the Suffolk School. They have a little course out there of about a quarter of a mile, and they practice for just this short distance with an awfully quick stroke. Of course they always beat the crews that come to row them because the visitors are not used to rowing that way. It is like putting a half-miler to run a hundred yards with a sprinter. Well, our crew pulled an awfully snappy race and came within a quarter of a length of winning. They would have won, too, Rust said (the cox), if Pitkin had not got rattled with the fast stroke and caught a crab and lost a good half-length. He was all in, too, at the finish, while Pete and Jim Eaton and Bursley felt as if they were just beginning to row. The Suffolk fellows always row themselves out. Rust told me all about it. Of course I did not go. The crew had to leave at 12 o’clock to get the train, and they don’t let you cut recitations here to see races. They think they are terribly generous to let the crew off.

“Monday was our day on the river. We don’t row every day, because there are not boats enough to go round, and only two coaches for eight schools. Caffrey coached us for a while from a launch that belongs to one of the boys, and then sent both crews up to the starting-place of the regular mile course and told us to race down to the boat-house. The first gave us a length start. Caffrey had said that we must think of our form all the time and pull for all that we were worth every instant the oar was in the water. It was the hardest work I ever did in my life, but I gave all my attention to my form and my oar, and I didn’t notice how tired I was till we got nearly to the Harvard bridge. For a while I occasionally got a glimpse of the first behind us, and that kept me encouraged, but about halfway down they passed us, and then I just had to pull blind, and I did my best. I knew I could stand it if the rest could. A little above the bridge, Mike called for a spurt, and Mac hit it up three or four strokes faster. I saw Sumner’s head begin to wabble, and I knew that he was getting to the end of his rope, and I began to worry about what I should do if he gave out. But Jack is good stuff, and he held out to the finish. By and by Mike cried out, ‘Ten strokes more! Make ’em hard now!’ and I found I had plenty of strength left after all. It is strange that though you seem to be pulling yourself out, there is always something left over!

“When Mike called ‘Let her run!’ I was so tickled to think that I had kept my form all the way and rowed a good race that I sat up and grinned. That grin was worth a lot to me as you will see. Pitkin slumped down in the boat as soon as he stopped rowing. Caffrey had been alongside of us all the time watching every man. Afterwards he had a talk with Pete. I heard him say, ‘Pitkin’s face was all screwed up the last quarter, he was rowing weak; the other fellow just went white, and at the end he sat up and laughed.’ They saw me look up at that so they moved away. I guessed they were speaking of me, and I felt good, I can tell you, to think I had done well and proved my right to be in the second boat instead of the pair-oar.

“Pete asked me to wait for him (he’s an awfully slow dresser), so I hung round on the float and watched some of the other boats. Caffrey had gone out with Waterville High who were waiting for him. Their crew is pretty good too. By and by Pete came along, and we went up together to the car. And what do you think he said to me? Pitkin and I were to change places.

“I was so set up and so happy that I couldn’t study much, and I couldn’t get to sleep for a long time.

“Since then I have rowed bow on the first all the time, and there is practically no chance at all of my being put back, as the practice is over now. To-day the pair-oar bunch was fired. They knew it was their last time, so Wilmot and Weld got Trask for cox and came out, all three smoking cigarettes with a great air of superiority and rowing about as they liked. They came down to where we were practicing racing starts with the second, above the Harvard bridge, and watched us. They were in very good spirits and jollied the two boats, sitting in attitudes of ease in the pair-oar in the warm sun, and occasionally rowing. They thought they were having a fine time, but any one of them would have given almost anything to sneak into the boat—except Trask, perhaps, who has a heart and isn’t allowed to row. There was a lot of talk as to whether any one would dare to call Caffrey ‘Bill,’ as it was the last day, but no one was fresh enough to.

“The preliminary heats come on Wednesday. Our second stands a good chance to get the championship, but the first, which is the most important, of course, has to face much better crews. I hope we can get into the finals, anyway. Some of the papers say Bainbridge is going to win, and some say Newbury, which has a husky, big crew.

“All we want is to beat Newbury. They’ve won the championship at baseball already, though they have to play us one more game. If they beat us in the crew, they get Smithy’s cup for a year; if we beat them, we get it. Smithy has come out again. He was at the baseball game in all his importance, and they say he’s trying to work the officials for the races so that Newbury can get the best course. By the time I write my next letter it will be all over. I’d cable you about it, only it costs so much and you’ll have sailed by that time. I am writing this on Friday to give it a good start.

“Affectionately,

“Roger.”

The next morning Roger slept late. He got up feeling listless and dispirited; and though he assured himself as he dressed that he had every reason to feel both happy and vigorous, the lethargy clung to him so insistently that after breakfast he returned to his room and lay down. In addition he was troubled by an occasional stitch in the left side. Was it possible that he was going to fall ill, at this of all times? Could it be that he too had developed a weakness of the heart such as his father suffered from? The thought sent a shiver down his spine. It couldn’t be so, it shouldn’t be so! He would not be cheated out of his reward after all these weeks of hard uphill work.

Towards noon Dunn came whistling in from school, where he had been spending his Saturday morning in enforced diligence. He pounded on Roger’s door, opened it, and dexterously flipped a letter across to the figure on the sofa.

“Buenos Aires,” he said curtly. Then, suddenly perceiving that Roger was lying in an unusual state of quiet, or reading signs of discouragement in his face, he added: “Hello! You aren’t sick, are you?”

“I guess not,” answered Roger, smiling drearily; “I felt a little tired.”

“You’ve been overdoing, that’s all, I guess. Talbot works you too hard. You ought to cut practice for a day or two.”

“Practice is over, anyway,” responded Roger.

“You want to take it easy until the race, then, and not think about it,” said Dunn. “We can’t afford to have you overtrained.”

Dunn departed and Roger took up his letter. He read with keen interest until he came to the last page, when a look of dismay swept over his face. “Your father is greatly concerned about your rowing,” ran the fatal passage. “We know an English gentleman here who rowed on the Cambridge crew, and he says that oarsmen not infrequently get some form of heart disease from the great strain put upon the heart in racing. Your father wanted to write immediately and forbid your rowing, but I told him that if you could play football without harm, you ought to be able to row a mile, and prevailed on him to leave the matter in your hands. Before you take part in any race you must see a good physician, Dr. Long, for example, and make sure that your heart is sound. You can’t afford to purchase the petty glory of rowing in a schoolboy race at the price of ill-health for the rest of your life.”

Roger dropped the letter from his hands and groaned aloud. “He won’t pass me, I’m sure. It’s all up with me if I go to a doctor. Why couldn’t the confounded letter have got lost on the way!”