ave to go
down till just before the races; but he thought he might rely on
the Captain to keep them up to their work in the interval.

So Miller, the coxswain, took to drawing the bow up to the ear at
once. At the very beginning of the term, five or six weeks before
the races, the St. Ambrose boat was to be seen every other day at
Abingdon; and early dinners, limitation of liquids and tobacco,
and abstinence from late supper parties, pastry, ice, and all
manner of trash, likely in Miller's opinion to injure nerve or
wind, were hanging over the crew, and already, in fact, to some
extent enforced. The Captain shrugged his shoulders, submitted to
it all himself and worked away with all imperturbable temper;
merely hinting to Miller, in private, that he was going too fast,
and that it would be impossible to keep it up. Diogenes highly
approved; he would have become the willing slave of any tyranny
which should insist that every adult male subject should pull
twenty miles, and never imbibe more than a quart of liquid, in
the twenty-four hours. Tom was inclined to like it, as it helped
him to realize the proud fact that he was actually in the boat.
The rest of the crew were in all stages of mutiny and were only
kept from breaking out by their fondness for the Captain and the
knowledge that Miller was going in a few days. As it was, Blake
was the only one who openly rebelled. Once or twice he stayed
away. Miller swore and grumbled, the Captain shook his head, and
the crew in general rejoiced.

It is to one of these occasions to which we must now turn. If the
usual casual voyager of novels had been standing on Sandford
lock, at about four, on the afternoon of April -th, 184-, he
might have beheld the St. Ambrose eight-oar coming with a steady
swing up the last reach. If such voyager were in the least
conversant with the glorious mystery of rowing, he would have
felt his heart warm at the magnificent sweep and life of the
stroke, and would, on the whole, have been pleased with the
performance of the crew generally, considered as a college crew
in the early stages of training. They came "hard all" up to the
pool below the lock, the coxswain standing in the stern with a
tiller-rope in each hand, and then shipped oars; the lock-gates
opened, and the boat entered, and in another minute or two was
moored to the bank above the lock, and the crew strolled into the
little inn which stands by the lock, and, after stopping in the
bar