Tom wasn’t much at sprinting, and so when half the distance out had been covered he was several yards behind the leaders. But the pace had been a fast one, and Tom knew that sooner or later it must slow down. And it did. As the six approached the boat, the leaders, two Trescott fellows, were swimming at ordinary speed and were making hard work of it. They turned homeward first, but after that dropped rapidly behind. A quarter of the way back Tom, still swimming the same stroke he had started with, passed them and pulled himself into third place. Twenty yards farther on he came abreast of the Wickasaw crack; while, still maintaining a good lead, sped the third Trescott entry. On the landing and along the curving shore of the cove and out on the point scantily attired youths were jumping and shouting encouragement to the swimmers. Cheers for Chicora, for Wickasaw, and for Trescott mingled. A hundred yards from the finish it seemed that Trescott had the race beyond a doubt. But Tom, twenty yards in the rear and well past the Wickasaw rival, still swam steadily, hand over hand, burying his face in the water at every stroke, and putting every ounce of strength into his work. Not quite every ounce, either, for when some eighty yards from the finish his arms began to move just a little faster but not less regularly, and the distance between first and second men slowly lessened. Chicora saw this and her cheers took on a more hopeful note. If Tom couldn’t sprint, at least he had wisely saved something for just such an emergency as this. It wasn’t so much that he increased his stroke as that he put more power into it. With fifty yards yet to cover he had cut the twenty yards in half, and he was still gaining. Trescott’s cries grew frantic, but her representative failed to respond. He had made a long, hard race, had set the pace all the way from the turn, and had used himself up in striving to beat the Wickasaw swimmer, whom he had believed to be the only dangerous opponent. And now he had nothing in reserve. The nearer he fought to the finish line the weaker grew his strokes, and Tom, swimming like a piece of machinery, moving arms and legs slowly but powerfully, came abreast of him sixty feet from the line, and without raising his dripping head from the surface or altering his stroke a mite drew steadily away from him and won by ten or twelve feet in the creditable time of seventeen minutes and nineteen and two-fifths seconds. And Chicora laughed and cheered as Dan walked into the water up to his knees and, lifting Tom bodily in his arms, brought him ashore in triumph.