They now stood watching the approaching crews with powerful glasses, their terse comments enlightening their friends as to what was taking place beyond their unaided range of vision.  Peggy and Polly were fairly dancing up and down in their eagerness.

On came the shells growing every second more defined in outline, although from their distance from the Frolic their progress seemed slow, only the flashing of the blades in and out of the water indicating that the men were not out for a pleasure pull, and the blue ripples astern telling that sixteen twelve-foot sweeps were pushing that water behind them for all they were worth.

Thus far Harvard was in the lead by half a length, and holding her own as she drew near the three-mile flag, where the Frolic swung and tugged at her anchors.  But it must be admitted that the sympathies and hopes of all in the Frolic centered in the Yale shell; a Yale coach had drilled and scolded and “cussed” and petted the Navy boys to victory only a few weeks before, and Ralph, if no one else, felt that all his future rested in the ability of that Yale coach “to knock some rowing sense into his block.”

“Daddy Neil!  Daddy Neil, yell at them!  Yell!” screamed Peggy, breaking away from Polly to run to her father’s side and literally shake him, as the crews drew nearer and nearer.

“I am yelling, honey.  Can’t you hear me?”

“I mean yell something that will make those Yale men put—­put oh, something into their stroke which will overhaul the red blades.”

“Ginger?  You mean ginger?  To make ’em pull like the very—­ahem.  Like the very dickens?  Hi!  Shortie, whoop up the Siren—­there are only about a dozen of us here but give it hard.  Give it for all you’re worth when the Yale crew crosses our bow.  You girls know it and so do the older women, and the crew can make a try at it.  Now be ready.  Whoop it up!”

Shortie sprang into position as cheer-leader pro-tem and if wild gyrations and a deep voice lent inspiration certainly nothing more was needed, for as the shells came rushing on

“Hoo—­oo—­oo—­oo—­oooo! 
 Hoo—­oo—­oo—­oo—­oooo! 
 Hoo—­oo—­oo—­oo—­oooo! 
 Hoo—­oo—­oo—­oo—­oooo! 
 Navy!  Navy!  Navy! 
 Yale!  Yale!  Yale!”

was wailed out over the water, and as upon many another occasion back yonder on the old Severn it had acted as a match to gunpowder to a losing cause with the Navy boys, so it now startled the men in the Yale boat, for they had many friends in the Navy School and had heard that yell too often when they were in the lead in some sport not to know the full significance of it.  It meant to the losing people:  “Get after the other fellows and beat them in spite of all the imps of the lower regions!”

The Yale men had no time to acknowledge the cheer; all their thoughts and energies must center upon the O-n-e, T-w-o, T-h-r-e-e, F-o-u-r, F-i-v-e, etc. of the coxswain and his “Stroke!  Stroke!  Stroke!” But that yell had done what Peggy hoped and secretly prayed it would: