Frank Merriwell's Return to Yale Part 16

At this word the four young men stood up and looked at Merriwell to await his next command.

They were in the gymnasium at Yale. A corner of the main exercise hall had been set apart for them and screened so that their work could not be seen or interrupted by other students.

Four short pieces of wood had been nailed to the floor at intervals of about five feet. At each of these blocks or cleats a student stood with his hand upon a rope that was tied to a post a few feet distant from the nearest cleat.

These four were stripped to the thinnest of athletic costumes, but Frank, who stood by directing their work, was in his usual street clothes.

He was training the four to represent the college in a tug of war that was to be one feature of some intercollegiate games to take place early in the following month.

The contests were to consist of all kinds of indoor exercises, as the season for outdoor sports had come to an end.

There was to be leaping, wrestling, trapeze and horizontal bar work, maneuvers on the giant swings, fencing and so on.

The entries for these events were not limited to any one cla.s.s; freshmen could contest as well as seniors, and as a matter of fact many ambitious fellows in the freshman cla.s.s were in training for the big event.

Every day the wrestlers got together in the gymnasium and varied their work at the machines by wrestling with each other.

The leapers, too, made daily efforts to jump a little higher or a little farther than they had the day before, while those who made specialties of tricks upon the bar and trapeze spent hours every day in perfecting themselves in their feats.

The students talked of little else when they met on the campus, or in one another's rooms of an evening.

Four colleges were to be represented in the meet, namely: Yale, Harvard, Cornell and Princeton. The contests were to take place on neutral ground, and for this purpose the big Seventh Regiment Armory in New York City had been engaged.

The college year had hardly begun before arrangements for this athletic meeting were under way.

As is usual in such matters, where the whole college is concerned, the management was given to a committee of upper cla.s.smen.

There were three on this committee, Jack Rowland, and Bed Hill from the senior cla.s.s, and Frank from the junior.

It was not Frank's intention to take any active part in the contests, although he was well known throughout the college as a first-cla.s.s, all-round athlete.

It seemed to him better that the contests against the other colleges should be made by those who were specialists in one line or another. He talked this matter over with his particular friends shortly after the term began.

"It won't seem quite right to see you out of it," protested Rattleton, "for when we had our sporting trip across the continent you were always coming in at the last minute to pull victory out of defeat, no matter whether we were jumping, running, playing ball or horse racing."

"That's another story," Frank replied. "When we were sporting it across the continent there were only nine of us, and we were not all Yale students at that. Here there are several hundred healthy men to choose from.

"I don't think there's much doubt that out of all the students now in college there is some one who could beat me at any one thing I might undertake to do, from wrestling to trapeze work."

"But," said Diamond, "if you should go into training for any one event, I think you'd come out on top."

"And that's what I don't care to do!" retorted Merriwell. "I'd rather be an all-round man than be able to do just one thing; I shouldn't know which to choose if I were to start in training."

"But we may lose a cup in some branch of sport if you don't go in."

"Oh, no, I think not. Besides that, there's going to be one event in which I can take a kind of share, and where perhaps I can be as useful to Yale as if I were contesting."

"What's that?"

"The tug of war."

"Is there going to be a tug of war?"

"Yes, siree!"

"Who's going to be on the team?"

"Will it be on cleats or on the level floor?"

"Will it be on the ground?"

These and many other questions of a similar kind were asked so rapidly that Frank had no chance for a reply. At length he explained that the team had not been chosen, and that anybody might be a candidate.

"The managing committee," he said, "has asked me to take charge of the training, and we're going to have trials in a corner of the gymnasium every afternoon. As soon as the team is made up, we shall get down to daily practice."

It was perfectly natural that the tug of war should arouse more interest throughout the college than any of the other events.

Of course it was important that one or another student should be in training to meet the best wrestler or jumper from the other colleges, but the tug of war was an event in which the whole college was represented.

There is never anything like a team event to arouse the enthusiasm of students.

A tug of war team consists of but four men, to be sure, but at that they are supposed to be, and generally are, the strongest men in the college, and so students of all cla.s.ses looked to them for holding up the glory of the college.

There was another thing that made the tug of war team especially interesting at this time. For two or three years Princeton had been very successful in the tug of war, whether pulling against other colleges of against outside athletic organizations.

It had happened that three very strong men in a certain cla.s.s had gone onto the team in their freshman year and had stayed there ever since.

That was greatly to the advantage of the Princeton team, for with three men on it who were perfectly used to each other, and who had had a great deal of experience, the team was not only powerful, but it made every other team afraid of it.

There is a great deal more in this than those who are not athletes imagine. A team that has the reputation of always winning is apt to strike terror to the hearts of its opponents and rattle them so that they cannot do their best.

Princeton naturally was very proud of its tug of war team and perfectly confident of carrying off the prize for that event. This was understood not only at Yale, but at Harvard and Cornell, and at each of these three colleges there was a determination to "down" Princeton if possible.

So it happened that when the managing committee at Yale announced that they would examine candidates for the tug of war team, there was so much interest in it that a perfect mob of students gathered at the gymnasium eager for a place upon the rope.

Rowland and Hill, the senior members of the committee, were inclined to dismiss the whole crowd and then quietly pick out four men according to their own judgment, but Merriwell opposed this policy.

"There may be perfect giants concealed in that crowd," he said, "and if there's only one, we want to discover him. Give them all a trial."

"But it would take weeks," exclaimed Hill, "to arrange those men in teams and make them pull against each other until we could sift out the best four!"

"I don't think we need to have them pull against each other to find out what they're worth," Frank responded.

"What other way is there?" asked Rowland.

"I have an idea that I can sift that crowd in a week."

"Well, then, you'd better try it."