Bramhall passed easily into the final.  Erasmus, too, romped home in their first and second rounds.  So on the eve of the great race it was known throughout Bramhall that the house must be prepared to measure itself against Erasmus’ famous four.

Betting showed Erasmus as firm favourites, the school critics looking askance at Johnson, our weakest man.  Only the Bramhallites laid nervous half-crowns on the house, and hoped a mighty hope.  That excellent fellow, White, displayed his unfortunate features glowing with an expression that was almost beautiful.

As the day of the race led me, steadily and without pity, to the time of ordeal, I sickened so from nerves that I could scarcely swallow food; and what I did swallow I couldn’t taste.  I was glad when at five o’clock something definite could be done like going to the baths, selecting a cabin, and beginning to undress.  Four minutes were scarcely sufficient for me to undo my braces, such was the trembling of my hand.  I longed for the moments to pass, so that the time to dive in could come; every delay ruffled me; I wished the whole thing were over.  It didn’t lessen my suffering to watch the gallery filling with excited boys, and to see the crowd on the ground-floor make way for Salome himself, followed by Fillet and Radley as representatives of Bramhall, and Upton as house-master of Erasmus.  Perspiration beaded my forehead.  My heart fluttered, and I began to fear some failure in that quarter.  At one moment, when I was in extremis, I would willingly have exchanged positions with the humblest of the onlookers:  at another I caught a faint gleam of hope in the thought that the end of the world might yet come before I was asked to do anything publicly.  And I conceived of happier boys who had died young.

The baths were prepared for the event.  Across the water, thirty feet from the diving-station, a large beam was fixed, which the competitors must reach and touch, before turning round and swimming back to the starting point.  More boys were allowed to crowd into the gallery and the cabins.  Very conspicuous was the expansive white waistcoat of old Dr. Chapman, who was busy backing Erasmus when talking to the boys of Erasmus, and Bramhall when questioned by Bramhallites.  Fillet, as master of Bramhall; Upton, as master of Erasmus; and Jerry Brisket, as a neutral, were appointed judges.

White gathered the Bramhall four into his cabin and arranged with sanguine comments that we should swim in this order: 

1.  Himself—­to give us a good start.

2.  Johnson—­to lose as little as possible of the fine lead established.

3.  Ray—­to make the position absolutely certain.

4.  Cully—­to maintain the twenty-yards’ lead secured by Ray.

“See, Ray,” he said to me, after he had dismissed the others, “you swim third—­last but one.”

“Ye—­es,” I stuttered.

“Nervous?” he inquired softly.