CHAPTER VIII. OF THE RACE-DAY--OF THE RACE--OF THE NECESSITY OF HAVING A BUTT--OF LEISURE TIME--OF AQUATIC AXIOMS. The Day of the Race.

On this tremendous day, towards which all their efforts for weeks past have been directed, the coach will find that all his crew are suffering from that peculiar nervousness to which rowing men have given the name of "the needle." It is a complaint against which no length of experience can harden a man, and the veteran of a hundred races will feel it as acutely as the boy who is engaged in his first struggle. A sort of forced cheerfulness pervades the air. Men make irrelevant remarks about their oars, their stretchers, or the notorious incapacity of their rivals, while they are reading the newspapers or discussing the politics of the day. Even a coach is seized with the universal affection, however gallantly he may strive against it, and endeavour to entertain the crew with all his best stories of triumphant victories, of defeats averted by brilliant spurts, or of the last sayings of some well-known aquatic humourist. Old oars drop in, and for a few moments divert the conversation, only to flow back with it into the one absorbing topic that occupies all men's minds. The feeling goes on increasing until at last, oh joy! the time comes for getting into the boat. With his faithful oar in his hand, and his feet fixed to the stretcher, a man regains his confidence, and when the word is given he will find that the only effect that the needle has had upon him has been to brace his energies to their highest pitch. The duty of a coach on such an occasion is clear. He must try to keep his men cheerful, and prevent them from brooding over the race that is to come. Visits from old oars should be encouraged, for it is often a relief and an amusement to a youngster to find that some solid oar of the past is even more agitated than he is himself. One thing must not be omitted, and that is the preliminary spin, which should take place about two hours before the race, and should consist of two sharp starts of ten strokes each and one hard row of a minute. This has an invaluable effect in clearing the wind. I have always felt, when I have rowed more than one race in a day, and I think my experience will be confirmed by most other oarsmen, that I have been able to row better, harder, and with less distress, in the second race than in the first. An hour and a half before the race a man will be all the better for a biscuit and a hot cup of strong meat soup, with perhaps a dash of brandy to flavour it, but this must depend upon the hour at which the race is rowed, for if you have lunched at one and have to race at half-past three you will want nothing between times to stay your stomach. The early morning sprint should be taken as usual.

The Race.

"I shall say, 'Are you ready?' once; if I receive no answer, I shall say, 'Go!'" It is the voice of the umpire addressing us from the steam-launch in which he will follow the race. He must be a man dead to all feeling, incapable of sympathy, for he actually turns to one of his fellow-passengers and makes a jesting remark, while our hearts are palpitating and our minds are strung up to face the stern actualities of the race. The other crew look very big and strong, and fit and determined. We shall have to row our hardest, and we all know it. "Get the top of your shorts properly tucked in," says our captain, "so as not to catch your thumbs; and mind, all of you, eyes in the boat, and when cox shouts for ten strokes let her have it. Come forward all."

"Touch her gently, bow" (it is the cox who speaks, and his voice sounds thin and far away and dream-like). "One more. That'll do. Easy, bow. Now we're straight."

"Are you ready?" from the umpire. Great heaven! will he never say——"Go!" he shouts. There is a swish, a leap, a strain, a rattle of oars, a sense of something moving very swiftly alongside, a turmoil of water, a confused roar from the bank: we are off!

We started splendidly. For half a minute I am a mere machine; thoughts, feelings, energies—all are concentrated into one desire to work my hardest and to keep in time. Then my mind clears, and I become conscious once more of myself and my surroundings. Have we gained? I must steal a look. By Jupiter, they're leaving us! "Eyes in the boat, four," screams the cox; "you're late!" Be hanged to cox! he's got eyes like a lynx. Yes; there's no doubt of it—I can see, without looking out of the boat, out of the corner of my eye. They're gaining still. Now their stroke is level with me; now he has disappeared, and for a few strokes I am conscious of a little demon cox bobbing and screeching alongside of me. Then he, too, draws away, and their rudder is all I can see. At last that also vanishes, and a sense of desolation descends on us. Nearly two minutes must have gone; I know that by the landmarks we have passed. Surely we ought to spurt. What can stroke be up to? Is he going to let us be beaten without an effort. Ugh! what a shower-bath that was. It's six splashing, as usual. Well, if we're beaten, we must just grin and bear it. We shall have to congratulate the other ruffians. Hateful! Somebody must get beaten. But we're not beaten yet, hang it all! Three minutes. What's this? Cox is shouting. "Now, ten hard strokes together; swing out, and use your legs!" He counts them out for us at the top of his voice. Grand! We're simply flying. That's something like it. And I'm not a bit done yet. We're none of us done. The boat's going like smoke. "Nine!" yells the cox. "Ten! Now, don't slack off, but keep her going. You're gaining, you're gaining! On to it, all of you." He is purple in the face, and foaming at the mouth. Glorious! Their rudder comes back to me; I see their cox. We are catching them. Now for it! A few strokes more and the boats are running dead level, and so they continue for half a minute. Stroke has now, however, taken the measure of his foes. We are steadying down and swinging longer, and I am conscious that the other crew are rowing a faster stroke. It is now our turn to leave them. Foot by foot we creep past them; their bows come level with me, and then slowly recede. I can see the back of their bowman. His zephyr has come out from his shorts; the back of his neck is very pale. There can't be more than two minutes left now, and I'm still fit, and my wind is all right. We are winning; I'm sure of it. No; they're spurting again, and, by Jove! they're gaining! Spurt, stroke, spurt! We mustn't get beaten on the post. But stroke, that wary old warrior, knows what he is about. Unmistakable signs prove to him that this effort is the last desperate rally of his enemies. He sees their boat lurch; their time is becoming erratic; two of them are rolling about in evident distress. His own crew he has well in hand; we are rowing as one man, and he feels that he has only to give a sign, and our restrained eagerness will blaze forth and carry us gloriously past the post. Let us wait, he seems to say, a very few seconds more, until the opposing spurt fades out to its inevitable end; so he rows on imperturbably. But isn't he running it too fine? Not he. He gives a quick word to cox, rattles his hands away, and swings as if he meant to strike his face against the kelson of the boat. "Pick her up all!" screams the cox. "Now then!" comes in a muffled gasp from the captain. We feel that our moment has come, and, with a unanimous impulse, we take up the spurt and spin the ship along. In a flash we leap ahead; we leave the other crew as if it was standing still. We are a length ahead; now we are clear; half a length of open water divides us from them. To all intents and purposes the race is over. The crowd grows thicker; the shouts from the bank become a deafening din. Enthusiasts scream futile encouragements to pursuer and pursued, and in another moment the flag is down, the cox cries, "Easy all!" and with triumph in our hearts we realize that we have won. The captain turns round to us—he is rowing No. 7—his face glowing with pleasure. "Well rowed indeed, you men!" he pants. "You all did thundering well! And as for you, stroke——" but words fail him, and all he can do is to clap his delighted stroke on the back. Then, having duly exchanged the customary "Well rowed!" and its accompanying rattle of oars in rowlocks with our gallant enemy, we paddle home to the raft, where our exultant coach and our perspiring partisans receive us with hand-shakings and embraces and fervently epitomized stories of the struggle. "I knew you had got 'em all the way!" says the coach. "Did you hear me shout when you got to the half-way point?" "Hear you shout?" we reply in a chorus of joyful assent. "Of course we did. That's why we spurted." Of course, we had heard nothing; but at this moment we almost think we did hear him plainly, and in any case we are not going to be so churlish as to detract from anybody's joy over our victory.

And so the struggle is ended, and we have won. Pleasant though it is to know that training is over, there is not one of us who does not feel a sense of sorrow as he realizes that these days of toil and hardship and self-restraint, of glorious health and vigorous effort are past. All the little worries under which we chafed, the discipline that at times was irksome, the thirst, the fatigue, the exhaustion, the recurrent disappointments—all these become part of a delightful memory. Never again, it may be, shall these eight men strike the sounding furrows together. The victory that has crowned us with honour has at the same time broken up our companionship of labour and endurance; but its splendid memory, and the friendships it knit together—these remain with us, and are a part of our lives henceforth wherever we may be.

The Necessity of Having a Butt.

Let me turn now to lighter matters, for there are lighter matters connected with rowing. And first let me insist on the necessity of having a butt in a crew. It appears strange at first sight that the system of training—that is to say, of diet, of early hours, of healthy exercise, and of perfect regularity in all things, which has so admirable an effect upon the condition of the body, should sometimes impair the powers of the mind, and absolutely shatter the temper. I have seen eight healthy, happy, even-tempered young men go into training together for three weeks. They were all the best of friends. Tom had known Dick at school, and both had been inseparable from Harry ever since they had gone up to the University. With these three the other five were closely linked by a common pursuit and by common interests. Each one of them was a man of whom his friends could say, he was the easiest man to get on with you could possibly meet. Yet mark what happened. At the end of three weeks every man in that crew was the proud possessor of seven detested foes. They ate their food in morose silence; they took no delight in the labour of the oar, and each one confided to his outside friends his lamentable opinions about the seven other members of the crew. Even now, though years have passed away, no one who rowed in that crew can look back without horror on those three terrible weeks. Why was this so? The simple answer is this, that the crew in question did not number among its members a butt. I doubt if the importance of a butt in modern boat-racing has been properly recognized. Speaking from an experience of many years, I should affirm unhesitatingly, if I did not remember what I have written in previous chapters, that in an ordinary crew, composed, as ordinary crews are, of men and not of angels, the position of butt is a far more important and responsible one than that of stroke or No. 7. If you can find a good, stout, willing butt—a butt who lends himself to nicknames, and has a temper as even as a billiard-table and as long as a tailor's bill—secure him at once and make him the nucleus of your crew. There may be difficulties, of course, if he should happen to be a heavy weight without a notion of oarsmanship, but these defects can easily be mitigated by good coaching, and in any case they cannot be allowed to count against the supreme merit of keeping the rest of the crew in good temper. Salient characteristics are apt to be a rock of offence to a training crew. To be a silent thinker does not give rise to happiness in the seven who watch you think. It is an even deadlier thing to be an eloquent gabbler or a dreary drawler. There is nothing an ordinary rowing man detests so much as windy eloquence, unless it be perhaps the miserable indolence which is known as slackness. The butt must therefore be neither silent, nor slack, nor a drawler. Nature will probably have saved him from being a thinker or an orator. He must be simply good-natured without affectation, and ready to allow tempers made stormy by rowing and training to break upon his broad back without flinching. Your true butt is always spoken of as "old" So-and-so, and, as a rule, he is a man of much sharper wits, with a far keener insight into character, than most of those who buffet or tease him. Among eminent butts may be named Mr.——, but on second thoughts I refrain.

Leisure Time.

It seems a mere platitude to say that a man who can occupy his spare moments in writing or reading is likely to be happier and more even-tempered than one who is never seen with a book or a pen in his hand. Yet it is a platitude of which not many oarsmen realize the force; and, indeed, it is not an uncommon sight to see most of the members of a crew sitting about listlessly in armchairs or talking the stale futilities of rowing shop when they might with more solid advantage be engaged, let us say, in following Mr. Stanley Weyman's or Dr. Conan Doyle's latest hero through the mazes of his exciting adventures. At Oxford or Cambridge, of course, a man has his lectures to attend, his fixed tale of work to get through. But at Putney or at Henley this is not so. There a man is thrown back on his own resources, a companionship which he does not always seem to find particularly cheerful or attractive. A billiard table, of course, is a valuable adjunct to training quarters, but this is scarcely ever found at Henley, and not always at Putney. Besides, most of us, after a short time, cease to take any pleasure whatever in a game in which we are not qualified to shine. The joy of reading the sporting reporter's account of your doings, and of proving conclusively that he knows nothing about rowing, lasts but a short time every morning. I may, therefore, offer the oarsman a piece of advice which is, sound, in spite of its copybook flavour, and that is, that he shall cultivate a habit of reading, and, if possible, of reading good literature. Many moralists might recommend this habit on the common ground that good literature tends to improve the tone of a man's mind; and even a coach who is not a moralist will find it useful in distracting the thoughts of his men. Besides, it is quite pleasant in after life to recognize a well-worn quotation in a newspaper article, and to remember, probably with complete inaccuracy, where it originated. A little attention to writing and spelling might also prove valuable. Oarsmen who had devoted themselves, say for ten minutes a day, to these simple tasks, would have been saved from perpetrating the following correspondence, which I quote verbatim et literatim from letters in my possession:—

"Dear——

"It has been reported to me that you broke training last night you were seen smoking not only a few wiffs but a whole pipe I have therefore decided to turn you out of the boat.

"Yours, etc."