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Updated: May 4, 2025
When the moment for their competition came at last and he swung her up into her saddle, Noreen's heart beat violently and her bridle-hand shook. But when, after other couples had ridden the course, their names were called and a billiard-cue given her, the girl's nerves steadied at once and she was perfectly cool as she reined back her impatient pony at the starting-line.
Two posts, painted white and in line with each other one almost at the river's edge, the other 150 feet back marked the starting-line of a measured mile, and were eagerly watched by the men aboard the yacht. She sped toward the starting-line as a sprinter dashes for the tape; almost instantly the two posts were in line, the men with watches cried "Time!" and the race was on.
Down over the gang-planks from wharf to deck moved a procession of bare feet, yellow trousers, sun-baked faces, all that miserable flock of human beings who are born, live and die, on that shore there, knowing nothing of the world that lies beyond that blue horizon. Hunger, on the starting-line, as it were, for a race with death at the signal of opulence!
Out of the corner of his eye he caught view of the long observation-train, vibrant with animation, the rival colours commingled so that all emblem of collegiate affiliation was lost in a merger of quivering hue. A hill near the starting-line on the other side of the river was black with spectators, who indeed filled points of vantage all down the four miles of the course.
Before turning doctor he had been a farmer's boy; and he told himself that, failing in his solid determination to get up to the starting-line in his profession, he believed he could do pretty well at his older trade.
Those near the starting-line gave room. Skinner stepped quickly out from his blanket, and stamped his spikes into the soil; he raised and lowered himself on his toes to try his muscles. Speed drew his bath-robe from his shoulders and thrust it toward his trainer, who shook his head. "Give it to Covington, Bo; I won't be here when you come back." "Get on your marks!" The starter gave his order.
These, with one exception, presented no peculiarity, races, jumping, tug-of-war, and a wheelbarrow race by young women, most of whom tried to escape when they learned what was in store for them. But the crowd laid hold on them and the event came off; the first heat culminating in a helpless mix-up, not ten yards from the starting-line, which was just what the crowd wanted and expected.
Already, he said, he was out of the rut of his despondency; already the rust was knocked off his back, and the eagerness to crowd up to the starting-line was on him as fresh again as on the day when he had walked away from all competitors in the examination for a license before the state board. At midnight the others came back from the dance and broke the trend of his smoke-born dreams.
Along the beautiful line of brown, swinging bodies went a low growl, a more vicious rattle of the oarlocks. Suddenly as Jim Deacon swung forward, a moored skiff swept past his blade, the starting-line. "Weigh all." The coxswain's command was immediately followed by others designed to work the boat back to proper starting-position.
Every stall, consequently, was equally distant from the starting-line or chalked rope above mentioned. The trumpet sounded short and sharp; whereupon the starters, one for each chariot, leaped down from behind the pillars of the goal, ready to give assistance if any of the fours proved unmanageable. Again the trumpet blew, and simultaneously the gate-keepers threw the stalls open.
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