The Dozen from Lakerim Part 19

Now Sawed-Off tried a preconcerted trick signal. With ominous tone he cried:

"Now, boys--all together--heave!"

At the word "heave" the Trojans braced like oxen against the expected jerk; but none came, and they relaxed a little, feeling that they had been fooled. But Sawed-Off's men were slowly and silently counting five, and then, with a mighty heave, they yearned forward, and catching the Winthrop team unprepared, got back four inches. They tried it again, and made only about an inch. A third time Sawed-Off gave the signal, and the Trojans, recognizing it, waited a bit before bracing for the shock. But for the third time Sawed-Off had arranged that the pull should immediately follow the command. Again the Trojans were fooled, and the white went two inches into Kingston territory.

The Trojans now grew angry and panicky, and began to wrench and twist without regard for one another. The result of this was that Kingston gradually gained three inches more before Winthrop could coax his men back to reason and team-work.

The time was almost gone now, and he got his men into a series of well-concerted, steady, deadly efforts, that threatened to bring the whole Kingston four over with the snail-like white cord. But Sawed-Off pleaded with his men, and they buried their faces in the board and worked like mad. To the spectators they seemed hardly to move, but under their skins their muscles were crowding and shoving like a gang of slaves, and fairly squeezing streams of sweat out of them as if their gleaming hides were sponges.

And then, after what seemed a whole night of agony, the white cord budged no more, though the Trojans pulled themselves almost inside out; and suddenly the lever nipped the rope, and the contest was over.

The Trojans were all faint, and the head of Winthrop fell forward limply. Even Sawed-Off was so dizzy that he had to be helped across the floor by his friends. But they were glad enough to pay him this aid.

All Kingston had learned to love the st.u.r.dy giant, and the Lakerimmers were prouder of him than ever, for it was through him that the fatal balance had been pulled down to Kingston's side, so that the team could take another victory home with them to the Academy.

XXVII

As the school year rolled on toward its finish in June, times became busier and busier for the students, especially for the Lakerimmers, who felt a great responsibility upon their shoulders, the responsibility of keeping the Lakerim Athletic Club pennant flying to the fore in all the different businesses of academic life--in the cla.s.sroom, at the prize speaking, in the debating society, and, most of all, in the different athletic affairs.

It was no longer necessary, as it had been at home in Lakerim, for the same twelve men to play all the games known to humanity--to make a specialty of everything, so to speak. At Kingston, while they were still one body and soul, and kept up their union with constant powwows in one another's rooms, but most often in Tug's, they were divided variously among the athletic teams, where each one felt that his own honor was Lakerim's.

Their motto was the motto of the Three Musketeers: "All for one, and one for all."

The springtime athletics found the best of them choosing between the boat crew and the ball team. It was a hard choice for some of them who loved to be Jacks-at-all-trades, but a choice was necessary. The Kingston Academy possessed so many good fellows that not all of the Dozen found a place on the eight or the nine; still, there were enough of them successful to keep Lakerim material still strongly in evidence.

Of the men that tried for the crew, all were sifted out, gradually, except B.J., Quiz, and Punk. 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 a.s.sistant 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 all the Kingstonians to resembling a telegraph-pole, so he had no real compet.i.tors for first base. He declined to play, however, unless Jumbo were given the position of short-stop; and Jumbo soon proved that he had some other rights to the position besides a powerful pull.

Reddy and Heady had worked like beavers to be accepted as the battery, but the pitcher and catcher of the year before were so satisfactory that the Twins could get no nearer to their ambitions than the subst.i.tute-list, and there it seemed they were pretty sure to remain upon the shelf, in spite of all the practice they had kept up, even through the winter.

The Kingston ball-team had found its only rival to the championship of the Interscholastic League in the nine from the Charleston Preparatory School. The Kingstonians all plucked up hope, however, when they found themselves at the end of the season one game ahead of Charleston; or, at least, they called it one game ahead, for Charleston had played off its schedule, and Kingston had only one more nine to defeat, and that was the Brownsville School for Boys, the poorest team in the whole League, a pack of good-for-nothings with b.u.t.ter on their fingers and holes in their bats. So Kingston counted the pennant as good as won.

Down the team went to Brownsville, then, just to see how big a score they could roll up. Back they came from Brownsville so dazed they almost rode past the Kingston station. For when they had reached the ballground, one of those curious moods that attacks a team as it attacks a single person seized them and took away the whole knack that had won them so many games. The Brownsvillers, on the other hand, seemed to have been inspired by something in the air. They simply could not m.u.f.f the ball or strike out. They found and pounded the curves of the Kingston pitcher so badly that the subst.i.tute battery would have been put in had they not been left behind because it was not thought worth while to pay their fare down to Brownsville.

The upshot of the horrible afternoon was that Brownsville sent Kingston home with its feelings bruised black and blue, and its record done up in cotton. It was a good thing that Kingston had prepared no bonfire for the victory they had thought would be so easy, because if the defeated nine had been met with such a mockery they would surely have perished of mortification.

The loss of this game--think of it, the score was 14 to 2!--tied the Kingstonians with the Charlestonians, and another game was necessary to decide the contest for the pennant. That game was immediately arranged for commencement week on the Kingston grounds.

And now the Twins, who had resigned themselves to having never a chance on the nine, found themselves suddenly called upon to pitch and catch in _the_ game of the year; for the drubbing the regular pitcher had received had destroyed the confidence of the team in his ability to pitch a second time successfully against the Charlestonians.

To make matters worse, the game was to come almost in the very midst of the final examinations of the year, and the Twins became so mixed up in their efforts to cram into their heads all the knowledge in the world, and to pull out of their fingers all of the curves known to science, that one day Reddy said to Heady:

"I half believe that when I get up for oral examination I'll be so rattled that, instead of answering the question, I'll try to throw the ink-bottle on an upshoot at the professor's head."

And Heady answered, even more glumly:

"I wouldn't mind that so much; what I'm afraid of is that when you really need to use that out-curve you'll throw only a few dates at the batter. I will signal for an out-curve, and you'll stand in the box and tie yourself in a bow-knot, and throw at me something about Columbus discovering America in 1776; or you'll reel off some problem about plastering the inside of a room, leaving room for four doors and six windows."

When the day of the game arrived, however, Reddy and Heady took their positions with the proud satisfaction of knowing that they had pa.s.sed all their school-book examinations. Now they wondered what percentage they would make in their baseball examination.

Sleepy, however, went out to left-field not knowing where he stood.

He knew so little about his books, indeed, that even after the examination was over he could tell none of the fellows what answers he had made to what questions, and so they could not tell him whether or no he had failed ignominiously or pa.s.sed accidentally. This worry, however, sat very lightly on Sleepy's nerves.

The largest crowd of the year was gathered to witness the greatest game of the year, and Charleston and Kingston were tuned up to the highest pitch they could reach without breaking. The day was perfect, and in the preliminary practice the Kingstonians showed that they were determined to wipe out the disgrace of the Brownsville game, or at least to cover it up with the scalps of the Charlestonians.

At length the Charlestonians were called in by their captain, for they were first at bat. The Kingstonians dispread themselves over the field in their various positions. The umpire tossed to the nervous Reddy what seemed to be a s...o...b..ll, whose whiteness he immediately covered with dust from the box. The Charlestonian batter came to the plate and tapped it smartly three or four times. The umpire sang out:

"Play-ball!"

Reddy cast a nervous look around the field, then went into a spasm in which he seemed to be trying to "skin the cat" on an invisible turning-pole. Out of the mix-up he suddenly straightened himself. The first baseman saw a dusty white cannon-ball shoot past him, and heard the umpire's dulcet voice growl:

"Strike!"

Which pleased the Kingston audience so mightily that they broke forth into cheers and applause that upset Reddy so completely that the next ball slipped from his hand and came toward the first baseman so gently that he could hardly have missed it had he tried.

The Kingstonian cheer disappeared in a groan as everybody heard that unmistakable whack that resounds whenever the bat and the ball meet face to face. But the very sureness of the hit was its ruination, for it went soaring like a carrier-pigeon straight home to the hands of Sleepy, who, without moving from his place, reached up and took it in.

The Kingston groan was now changed back again to a cheer, and the first batter of the first half of the first inning had scored the first "out."

The Charleston third baseman now came to the bat. Three times in succession Reddy failed to get the ball over the plate, and the man evidently had made up his mind that he was to get his base on b.a.l.l.s, for at the fourth pitch he dropped his bat and started for first base, only to be called back by the umpire's voice declaring a strike. To his immense disgust, two other strikes followed it, and he went to the bench instead of to the base.

The third Charlestonian caught the first ball pitched by Reddy, and sent it bounding toward Jumbo, who ripped it off the ground and had it in the hands of his chum Sawed-Off before the Charlestonian was half-way to first base.

This retired the side, and the Kingstonians came in to bat amid a pleasant April shower of applause.