And now the crowd, with nearly half the race over, seeing that their representative was holding his own, rose to their feet and delivered a wild yell which echoed among the high girders of the place, and from that time they did not cease to yell at the game fight waged in the water below them. At the one hundred and fifty-yard mark, Armstrong, putting on a burst of speed, led his great rival by five or six feet. Hopkins, who had never changed his steady drive for a moment, now quickened his thresh perceptibly, and in another length of the tank had almost overhauled the Yale man who was kicking along with every pound of energy in his body. Armstrong still led, but as they approached the two hundred-yard mark, there was less than a yard separating them. "Armstrong! Armstrong! Armstrong!" yelled the crowd. But the boy who was causing all the excitement was not conscious of anything but a dull roaring in his head. The noise of the cheering came to him faintly, much more faintly than the splash, splash of Hopkins's arms just behind him, and, even as he looked out of the corner of a water-filled eye, the relentless Canadian drew up nearer and still nearer. "Sixty feet to go!" Frank heard in a dull sort of way the official's voice. Could he do it, that impossible distance? His throat was parched and his chest seemed bursting with the strain of the pumping heart. Could he live for sixty feet more? It was a thousand miles. Summoning every last ounce of will pressure, he drove ahead blindly, following mechanically the swimming lines on the pool bottom with no help from smarting eyes. Somewhere near was Hopkins, he could feel the swirl of water from his powerful arm drives, but whether Hopkins was ahead or behind he could not tell. His arms were like lead, his legs paralyzed. A great weariness settled upon him, a great and compelling burden which benumbed all the faculties of brain and body. About fifteen minutes later Frank found himself lying on a couch in the room of the 'Varsity swimming team, with several anxious faces looking down at him, among them that of Hopkins. "What's the matter?" he asked in a bewildered way. "Nothing, 'cepting you drowned yourself," said Captain Wilson, "dead as a door nail." "Did I finish?" he asked very weakly. "You certainly did, you finished the race and yourself at the same time. Two of us had to go to the bottom for you," said the Captain. "You sank like a stone." "That's where I went to sleep, then?" "I guess so, you had us scared, I tell you." "You gave me a great race, Armstrong," said Hopkins, "one of the hardest I ever had. It wasn't record time, but it was as fast as the two-twenty is generally done. I only won by a few inches, and mighty lucky to get it at that," admitted the Canadian generously. "If I made you work, I'm satisfied," said Frank weakly. "I hadn't a ghost of a chance to win, but I set out to make you work for your victory." "And you did," returned Hopkins laughing. CHAPTER XVII.