The little coxswain saw that it was all up with the girls’ crew if she could not save them by some strategic device.

   “Dolus an virtus quis in hoste requirat?”

she whispered to herself,—­for The Terror remembered her Virgil as she did everything else she ever studied.  As she stooped, she lifted the handkerchief at her feet, and took from it a flaming bouquet.  “Look!” she cried, and flung it just forward of the track of the Algonquin.  The captain of the University boat turned his head, and there was the lovely vision which had a moment before bewitched him.  The owner of all that loveliness must, he thought, have flung the bouquet.  It was a challenge:  how could he be such a coward as to decline accepting it.

He was sure he could win the race now, and he would sweep past the line in triumph with the great bunch of flowers at the stem of his boat, proud as Van Tromp in the British channel with the broom at his mast-head.

He turned the boat’s head a little by backing water.  He came up with the floating flowers, and near enough to reach them.  He stooped and snatched them up, with the loss perhaps of a second in all,—­no more.  He felt sure of his victory.

How can one tell the story of the finish in cold-blooded preterites?  Are we not there ourselves?  Are not our muscles straining with those of these sixteen young creatures, full of hot, fresh blood, their nerves all tingling like so many tight-strained harp-strings, all their life concentrating itself in this passionate moment of supreme effort?  No!  We are seeing, not telling about what somebody else once saw!

—­The bow of the Algonquin passes the stern of the Atalanta!

—­The bow of the Algonquin is on a level with the middle of the Atalanta!

—­Three more lengths’ rowing and the college crew will pass the girls!

—­“Hurrah for the Quins!” The Algonquin ranges up alongside of the Atalanta!

“Through with her!” shouts the captain of the Algonquin.

“Now, girls!” shrieks the captain of the Atalanta.

They near the line, every rower straining desperately, almost madly.

—­Crack goes the oar of the Atalanta’s captain, and up flash its splintered fragments, as the stem of her boat springs past the line, eighteen inches at least ahead of the Algonquin.

Hooraw for the Lantas!  Hooraw for the Girls!  Hooraw for the Institoot! shout a hundred voices.

“Hurrah for woman’s rights and female suffrage!” pipes the small voice of The Terror, and there is loud laughing and cheering all round.

She had not studied her classical dictionary and her mythology for nothing.  “I have paid off one old score,” she said.  “Set down my damask roses against the golden apples of Hippomenes!”

It was that one second lost in snatching up the bouquet which gave the race to the Atalantas.

III