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Updated: June 26, 2025
"Where's Prescott now?" jeered a dozen North Grammar boys. "Centrals, send out a launch to tow your champ! Then maybe he'll make better time." Hi swam steadily and rapidly until he had more than half covered the course. Then he ventured on a look behind him. "Prescott won't catch up all day," grinned Hi to himself. "Oh, I'm glad I insisted on this individual race!"
"Captain Martin, have you any choice?" inquired Prescott politely. "I didn't win the toss," Hi returned sulkily. "But we'll give you your choice if you have any," Dick insisted. "We'd rather go to bat," Hi observed. "Then, Mr. Umpire," continued Dick, turning to Tozier, "the Centrals choose the field." "Get to your places," nodded Ben. "Martin at bat; Percival on deck," called the score-keeper.
When instant action is needed in the city of New York, a General Alarm can in five minutes be sent by the police wires over its whole vast area of three hundred square miles. When, recently, a gas main broke in Brooklyn, sixty girls were at once called to the centrals in that part of the city to warn the ten thousand families who had been placed in danger.
"Nothing like it, either. No sheer luck could ever have broken down the cast-iron determination that our fellows had to win. You Centrals are the real ball players of the town -that's the only answer." Whooping wildly in their glee, scores of Central Grammar boys rushed at Dick Prescott, trying to get at his hand and wring it.
The order observed in the thirties was again followed out. First came a flock of local trade unions; these soon combined in city centrals or as they came to be called, trades' assemblies paralleling the trades' union of the thirties; and lastly, came an attempt to federate the several trades' assemblies into an International Industrial Assembly of North America.
Observers and centrals in the outlying sections of the city wondered briefly at the unwonted universal motionlessness and stagnation; then the racing taint in water and in air reached them, too, and they ceased wondering forever. Then through those quiet halls Costigan stalked to a certain storage room, where with all due precaution he donned his own suit of Triplanetary armor.
"Then some one hurry over and tell 'em that it's time to hustle on to the field and take their medicine," urged Hi. "We don't want to have the game called for darkness before we're half through." "The Centrals will be here on time," called back one of Old Dut's boys. "Don't you worry any about them. Dick Prescott is holding the watch over our crowd."
Certainly Hi's fielders promised well, from the little glimpse of their skill that was now had. Then one of their best batsmen took up the willow, driving a few long, swift fielders. "This will get the Centrals nervous before they start, if they see any of our work," laughed one of Hi's players. Truth to tell, the North Grammar boys did show some pretty work. Ted Teall looked on approvingly.
The talking at first was done over the telegraph lines. The earliest "centrals" reminded most persons of madhouses, for the day of the polite, soft-spoken telephone girl had not arrived. Instead, boys were rushing around with the ends of wires which they were frantically attempting to peg into the holes of the primitive switchboard and so establish "connections."
"Centrals will get me rattled with that bang-ow-ow! of theirs every time they spring it on me," thought Ted savagely. "Strike two!" Again Ted had failed to realize that the ball was coming. In his anger be wondered whether he'd rather throw his bat at the umpire or at smiling Dick Prescott. "Strike three!" called the umpire's steady voice. "Side out."
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