“Well, if you want my honest opinion,” replied Anthony, “I think it’s too classic, Jack. Seems to me what you want in those kind of songs is a lot of ‘rah, rah, hullabaloo!’ And I don’t believe ‘Hail, Columbia!’ is a good tune; seems too jerky. Course, I’m not an authority, and maybe I’m mistaken. But if I were you I’d try again; get more swing into it. I’ve always thought ‘John Brown’s Body’ was the best tune to set football songs and such things to. Of course, it’s older than the hills and has been used by every college from Maine to Mexico, but that doesn’t matter if you get some good words. I’d forget about the rhymes at first; just find some lines that’ll swing along, you know; kind of sing themselves; afterward, you can go back and tuck a rhyme in here and there. Try it.”
“I guess I will. I wasn’t just satisfied with that ‘Hail, Columbia!’ one, but I didn’t know what ailed it. I thought maybe it was because I couldn’t find a rhyme for ‘high.’ There was ‘die,’ but I’d used that in the last line, you see.”
“I see.” Anthony knocked the ashes from his pipe and stretched himself. “Guess I’ll have to go up and do some studying,” he said.
“Wait a minute,” Jack pleaded. “There’s another thing I wanted to ask about. Is it hard to learn to swim?”
“Never learned, Jack, and can’t say from experience. But from what I’ve seen I’d say it was blamed hard.”
“Never learned! But I thought – ”
“It was like this with me. When I was about knee high to a grasshopper I went in wading and saw my daddy out in a dory about fifty feet from shore. So I went out to him. They say I didn’t have much breath left when they pulled me in; I don’t remember. I guess I swam, though; if I didn’t I don’t know how I got there. Anyhow, after that I knew how all right.”
“Just imagine,” mused Jack. “I know I couldn’t do that, but I do want to learn. Do you think I could?”
“Course you could, but I guess it would take time. If you want me to help, I’ll do it.”
“Will you, really?” exclaimed the other. “Glory! that will be fine! I wanted to ask you, but didn’t quite like to; I’ve been so much of a bother to you already.”
“Oh, get out. We’ll go down to the river and find a place where it’s not too deep; I think I know of one. The water’ll be plaguy cold, though, this early. Want to wait a while longer?”
“No, I want to begin right off – before my courage fails me; you know, I’m an awful fool about water, Anthony.”
“Because you don’t understand it. Water won’t hurt you if you know what to do.”
“And you won’t mind if – if I’m a bit scary at first?”
“No, I won’t mind. If you say you want me to teach you to swim, I’ll do it if I have to throw you in the water and hold you there. Do you?”
Jack took a long breath and looked hard at Anthony’s face in the moonlight. What he saw evidently reassured him, for after a pause he said faintly:
“Y – yes!”
CHAPTER XVII
ERSKINE VS. HARVARD
The nine took its first long trip when it journeyed to Cambridge and played Harvard in a warm drizzle of rain that made the ball slippery and hard to hold, and set the players to steaming like so many tea-kettles. Erskine met her second defeat of the season that afternoon. She had an attack of the stage-fright usual to the teams of lesser colleges when confronting those of the “big four,” and it lasted until the fifth inning, when, with the score 9 to 0 in her favor, Harvard’s pitcher slumped and allowed the bases to fill for the first time during the contest.
Erskine awakened, then, to the fact that her opponents were only human beings, after all, and not supernatural personages protected by the gods, a fact which Hanson had been seeking to convince them of all day long, but without success. With bases full, one man out, and Bissell at bat, there seemed no reason why the Purple should not place a tally in her empty column. This was evidently the view that Bissell himself took, for after having two strikes and two balls called on him, he found what he wanted and drove it hard and straight between first and second. Gilberth scored, but Billings was caught out at the plate. Motter reached third and Bissell went to second. Hanson whispered to Lowe as he selected his bat. Harvard shortened field.
“Last man!” called the crimson-legged first-baseman.
“Last man!” echoed the shortstop.
Lowe’s first attempt at a bunt missed fire and the umpire called a strike on him. Then came two balls, each an enticing and deceptive drop. Lowe was the last man on the batting list, but if he wasn’t much of a hitter he at least was capable of obeying orders. He watched the balls go by in a disinterested manner that was beautiful to see. Then came another strike, and for an instant his round, freckled face expressed uneasiness. The Harvard pitcher decided to end the half, and threw straight over base. Lowe shortened his bat a trifle and found the ball, and the next moment both were going toward first base, the ball very slowly, Lowe about as rapidly as he ever moved in his life.
It was the pitcher’s ball, and the pitcher ran for it. Motter, at third, started pell-mell for home, only to stop as suddenly and dive back to the bag. But the pitcher knew better than to throw there, and as soon as Motter had turned he sped the ball to first. But he had delayed an instant too long, and the umpire dropped his hand in the direction of Lowe, who, with both feet planted firmly on the bag, was obeying Perkins’s repeated command to “Hold it, Ted!” It was a close decision, but there was no reason to judge it as unfair, and the game went on with the bases again filled and Erskine’s heavy batters up.
Joe Perkins stepped to the plate, gripped his bat, and looked over the field. Shortstop was covering second, and the infield was playing close. Out toward the corner of the Carey building the right-fielder was stepping back. Erskine’s captain had already sent two long flies into his territory, and it wouldn’t do to take risks. Joe looked with longing eyes upon a stretch of undefended territory behind first base and out of reach of right-fielder. If he could bring a low fly down there it was safe for another tally. But the pitcher had himself in hand again. He was more than usually deliberate and the first delivery didn’t lend encouragement to Joe’s hopes, for although that youth, staggering away from the base, sought to impress the umpire with the fact that the ball had gone well inside of the plate, that astute, black-capped person called “Strike!”
The three or four hundred students who, with raincoats and umbrellas, were braving the discomforting drizzle, applauded. Jack, huddled between Clover and Northup on the bench in the lee of the west stand, sighed and took his hand from the folds of his sweater to beat them anxiously on his knees. Clover wiped the rain from his cheek and turned.
“We could use a home run, couldn’t we?”
“You might as well talk about winning the game,” growled Northup, who had overheard. “That pitcher hasn’t given any one a home run yet this season, and you can bet he isn’t going to present us with one.”
“Ball!” droned the umpire.
“Well, I’ll be satisfied with a hit,” sighed Jack.
“You’re wise,” Northup answered with a grin. “There it is again,” he muttered then, as Joe, reaching for an outshoot, swung in the air and stepped back to tap the plate with his bat and look exasperated.
“Say, doesn’t that make you mad,” asked Clover, “to reach for something when you know you shouldn’t, and then get fooled? I’ll bet Cap could bite nails now!”
But Joe got over his annoyance the next instant, and gave his attention to the ball. When it had passed he sighed with relief and silently gave thanks to the little red-faced umpire. It was now two strikes and two balls. Back of first and third King and Gilberth were coaching frantically:
“Two out, Ted! Play off! Play away off!”
“Run on anything, Teddy! Two gone! Now! Now! NOW!”
“With two Teds on bases,” said Northup, “it seems as though something might happen.”
“Two? Is Lowe’s name Ted?”
“Yes, Theodore Coveney Lowe, Esquire, is the gentleman’s full – Hey!” Northup was on his feet, and a second later the bench was empty. Ten purple-stockinged maniacs danced and shrieked over the sopping turf, waving sweaters and caps. Motter and Bissell and Lowe were racing home almost in a bunch. Joe Perkins was speeding for second. He had put the ball where he wanted it, well over first-baseman’s head, and yards and yards in front of right-fielder; had placed it there as carefully as though he had walked across the diamond and dropped it exactly in the middle of the uncovered territory.
First-baseman started back for it, and the pitcher ran to cover first. But right-field was racing in, and it was that player who reached the ball first and fielded it home just too late to catch Lowe at the plate. Then the sphere flew back to second, but Joe, hearkening to the coaching, slid across the brown mud and got his fingers on a corner of the bag in plenty of time.
There followed a pause in the progress of the game while Harvard’s pitcher and her captain tried to convince the umpire that Lowe had not touched second base in his journey toward home. In that interim the little band of Erskine players and substitutes gathered together and cheered, with the rain falling into their wide-open mouths, until the Harvard stand applauded vigorously.
“Four to nine!” yelled Knox. “We can beat them yet!”
But King, with desperate purpose written eloquently over his face, went to bat and ingloriously fouled out to third-baseman, and the half was over. Erskine never came near to scoring again, although, now that the ice was broken, every man felt capable of doing wonderful things, and tried his best to accomplish them. The difficulty was with the Harvard team, and notably the Harvard pitcher; they objected. But if Erskine was not able to add further tallies to her score, she, at least, held her opponents down to two more runs, Gilberth pitching a remarkable game, and what had looked for a time like an overwhelming defeat resolved itself into a creditable showing for the Purple.
Jack didn’t get into the game for an instant, nor, in fact, did any of the substitutes. But, as he had scarcely hoped to do so, he was not greatly disappointed. After the game was over the team went back to Boston inside and outside a stage-coach, laughing, joking, cheering now and then, and, on the whole, very well pleased with themselves. Hanson didn’t see fit to dampen their enthusiasm by reminding them of the faults which had been plentifully in evidence, but reserved his cold water for the next day. They had dinner at a hotel. In the course of the meal, King called across the table to Joe:
“I say, we’ve got old Tidball to thank for this feed, haven’t we? If it hadn’t been for that speech of his we’d never have had enough money in the treasury to buy sandwiches.”
“I guess that’s so,” answered the captain.
“You fellows needn’t think, though,” cautioned Patterson, “that you’re going to get this sort of thing every trip.”
There was a groan.
“Put him out!” called Gilberth.
“Down with the manager!” cried King.
“I wish,” said Jack to Motter, who sat at his left, “that I could take some of this dinner back to Tidball. I don’t believe he ever had a real good dinner in all his life!”
“Guess you’re right,” Motter laughed. “Anyway, he doesn’t look as though he ever had!”
Patterson distributed tickets to one of the theaters, and the men were cautioned to be back at the hotel promptly at eleven in order to take the midnight train for home.
“The management doesn’t pay for these, does it?” Jack asked.
“Thunder, no!” answered Motter. “The theater gives them to us, and advertises the fact that we’re going to be there; calls it ‘Erskine night.’ We’re on show, as it were. Some of the Harvard team are going, too. You needn’t fear that Patterson’s going to buy theater seats for us; you’re lucky if you get him to pay your car-fare to the station!”
Jack’s experience of theaters was extremely limited, and he enjoyed himself thoroughly all the evening. The team occupied two big boxes at the left of the stage, while across the house the corresponding boxes were filled with members of the Harvard team. There was some cheering on the part of the Purple’s supporters, but neither Hanson nor Joe encouraged it.
“Shut that up,” begged the latter, once. “They’ll think we’re a prep. school!”
At half past eleven they got into a train at North Station and went promptly to sleep, two in a berth, and knew little of events until they were roused out in the early morning at Centerport.
CHAPTER XVIII
JACK AT SECOND
Half a mile beyond Warrener’s Grove, the wooded bluff at the end of Murdoch Street, the river makes in the shore an indentation which is known as the Cove. It is not an attractive body of water. At some time in the past there was a brick-yard there, and even yet the remains of two weather-beaten sheds and a couple of high troughs in which the clay was mixed may be seen. During a spring freshet the river went over its banks and flowed into the pits left by the excavations. Later, the water and the frost connected the stagnant pond with the river; rushes gained foothold in the clay bottom and the old quarry took on the appearance of a natural cove. Save in one or two places the depth is but slight, and, in consequence, the Cove offers warmer bathing in the spring than does the river. On the side nearest the railroad there is a stretch of gradually shallowing water that answers all the purposes of a beach. It was here, then, that Anthony and Jack, during the latter part of May, came almost every morning, and, exchanging their clothes for gymnasium trunks, played the parts of teacher and pupil.
The first time that Jack found the cold water lapping his knees he went pale with terror, and would have fled ignominiously had not Anthony seized and encouraged him. In the end, he allowed the other to persuade him to remain where he was and, after gingerly splashing himself with water, watch his teacher a few yards beyond illustrate the method of swimming. Anthony realized that he had a task before him that required a deal of diplomacy, and he carefully avoided saying or doing anything to increase Jack’s dread of the water.
After four lessons Jack had gone the length of immersing himself and, held tightly by Anthony, had essayed a few wild strokes with arms and legs. Anthony strove to teach confidence first of all, and it was not until Jack could allow him away from his side that Anthony set about the easier part of his task. As soon as Jack could struggle for a few strokes through the water Anthony taught him to float. And it was not until Jack could float in every possible position that the swimming lessons were resumed. Then progress was rapid. By the middle of June Jack could swim out to a rush-covered raft which had been anchored about a hundred feet from shore by enterprising duck-hunters. At first Anthony kept beside him; later, they had races in which Anthony left Jack half-way to the goal; in the end, Jack found courage to swim to the raft and back by himself. But, as I have said, that was not until June was half over, and before that other things had happened.
It was on the fourth of the month, a Wednesday, that Jack, for the first time, played a game through as second-baseman. Erskine’s opponents were the Dexter nine, a hard-hitting aggregation of preparatory schoolboys, and to meet them Hanson and Perkins put in a team largely composed of substitutes. This team, in batting order, was as follows:
Perkins, catcher.
King, pitcher.
Northup, right-field.
Mears, first base.
Weatherby, second base.
Smith, third base.
Clover, shortstop.
Lowe, left-field.
Riseman, center-field.
The last six, with the exception of Lowe, were substitutes, and before the game was over Lowe, too, had been replaced, Showell going in for him. Jack’s playing that afternoon raised his stock fully a hundred per cent. He was in fine fettle – he had never felt better in his life than he had since he began his morning dips in the cold waters of the Cove – and covered the second of what Anthony had called the salt-bags in a manner that opened the eyes of his companions and caused “Wally” Styles much uneasiness. His batting, too, was as good as his fielding; he had the honor of making the first hit and the first run for Erskine, and was the only man on the team that afternoon, with the exception of Perkins, who knocked out a home run in the sixth, able to hit the Dexter pitcher for more than one base. In the fifth inning his three-bagger was clean and timely, bringing in two runs and placing him where he was able to score a minute after on a passed ball.
Dexter made things extremely interesting for a while in the seventh inning, getting in two runs and filling the bases again directly afterward. It was Jack, then, who, in a measure, saved the day. With the bags all occupied, Dexter’s catcher went to bat and lined out a hot ball just to the right of King. There was one out. King got one hand on the ball, but failed to stop it. Jack, who had run forward to back him up, found the ball in the air and threw quickly and true to the plate in time to put out the runner. Then Perkins, without more than a second’s pause, returned it to Jack, who was again covering second, and Jack found the Dexter catcher two feet off base.
The game ended with the score 5 to 2, and of those five tallies two were opposite Jack’s name. The other three belonged to Perkins and Northup. Jack’s record that day included four put-outs and five assists, and held no errors. Perhaps it was the consciousness of having done a good afternoon’s work that put him in such a state of elation that composing verse alone seemed to satisfy him. When half past seven arrived and he had not appeared in Anthony’s room, Anthony went in search of him and discovered him curled up in a ball on his bed, laboring with pencil and pad and flushed cheeks.
“I’ve got it!” cried Jack.
“Got what?” asked Anthony.
“The song! Listen!” Jack squirmed about on the creaking cot until he had his back against the wall. Then he waved his pad triumphantly over his head. “It goes to the tune of ‘John Brown’s Body’; you suggested that, you know; and I didn’t have any trouble at all; and the rhymes are all right, too, I think! Now, then!” And Jack, beating time with his pencil, recited sonorously his verses:
“Robinson is wavering, her pride’s about to fall;
Robinson is wavering, she can not hit the ball;
Erskine is the winner, for her team’s the best of all;
Oh, poor old Robinson!
Glory, glory to the Purple!
Glory, glory to the Purple!
Glory, glory to the Purple!
And down with Robinson!
“Purple is the color of the stalwart and the brave;
Purple are the banners that the conq’ring heroes wave;
Purple are the violets above the lonely grave
Of poor old Robinson!
Glory, glory to the Purple!
Glory, glory to the Purple!
Glory, glory to the Purple!
And down with Robinson!”
“Fine!” cried Anthony. “That’s the sort of thing! Let’s see it.” He took the paper and, turning it to the light, began to hum, then sing the words to the old marching song, nodding his head in time to the music. Anthony had about as much melody in his voice as a raven, but Jack, watching and listening eagerly from the bed, thought he sang beautifully, and was enormously pleased with the production. When the final refrain was reached he joined his own voice, rocking back and forth in ecstasy, and the concert ended in a final triumphant burst of mel – Well, no, not melody; let us say sound.
“Do you like it?” Jack asked, as eager for praise of his lines as any poet.
“Great!” Anthony answered. “And I should think it would do for a football song, too, wouldn’t it?”
“Would it?” cried Jack. “Yes, I believe it would! That’s fine, isn’t it? Of course, I don’t want you to think I’m stuck up, Anthony, but I really think it’s better than any that the Purple has published yet. What do you say?”
“Well, I haven’t read many of ’em; should think it might be, though. Better send it in right off, so it’ll be in time for the next issue, eh?”
“Yes, I’m going to mail it to-night; as soon as I make a good copy.” Then, after a moment’s hesitation: “I say, Anthony, would you mind copying it off for me? I write such an awful fist, you know.”
So they adjourned to Anthony’s room, and Jack leaned anxiously over his friend’s shoulder while the lines were copied in the most careful of copperplate chirography, folded, sealed, and addressed. Then Jack bought a one-cent stamp from Anthony and took the letter to the post-office, marching back through the warm June evening humming “Glory to the Purple,” and in imagination leading the cheering section at the Robinson game.
After he had gone to sleep he dreamed that he had been appointed poet-laureate of Erskine College, and was being driven along Main Street in Gilberth’s automobile between serried ranks of applauding students and townfolk, his brow adorned with a golden fillet of laurel-leaves. The automobile was extremely spacious, since it held besides himself not only the faculty, but Anthony and Joe Perkins and the entire baseball team. When he acknowledged the plaudits of the multitude he had to hold his laurel wreath on with one hand, which annoyed him a great deal. In the end the president solved the problem by tying it on with a red silk handkerchief. Then, at the moment of his greatest triumph, Showell arose from somewhere and shouted in a voice that drowned the cheers: “He didn’t compose it! The writing was Anthony Tidball’s! I saw it!” Jack tried to deny the awful slander, but none would listen to him, and he awoke breathless and despairing, to find the sunlight streaming in the end window and the robins singing matins to the early day.