"I don't believe it, Jack. You do him injustice. He has more grit and patience than that, and if he had not, he would not sacrifice the rest of the crew and the Crimson to his own madness. No, I can't make it out, but I don't believe that." At the three and a quarter mile flag the New Haven men had a fast increasing stretch of clear water behind them and were going easily. How prettily they did row! A winning crew with a safe lead always does. And now began that most pathetic spectacle, the finish of a beaten eight-oared crew. Yet there was not one of their friends looking on who would not have given anything to have been pulling with them then. Where was that faultless form, that clock-like time, that glorious sweep, that at the start had raised an exultant shout from every breast that bore the Crimson? Much of the mighty strength was still there, but pitifully divided against itself, and therefore fast waning. The new men were, every one of them, "rowing out of the boat," that is to say, swinging in a circular motion around the ends of their oars, in their desperate efforts to pull their hardest. The temptation to do this is generally irresistible to a green man when behind. It seems to him as if he can pull harder in this way, and indeed it looks so to the unknowing observer. Time and form are thrown overboard in the wild struggle to row his heart out. Only the two old veterans at 7 and 8 were still swinging over the keel, not a hair's breadth to starboard or port, coming forward steadily and back with a simultaneous heave; their backs straight, their chins in, two parallel unbroken lines from hip to crown; their oars taking the water cleanly and together, pulled clear through, and flashing back at once with a perfect feather. So evenly and smoothly did they row that, to the untaught eye on the distant train, they might have seemed to be shirking; but to those on the yacht decks along the course, the spread nostrils, clenched jaws, and swollen veins told a very different story. An old Yale stroke, when his hat came down on deck again after the Yale crew had passed, let it lie where it fell as he gazed at the struggling tail-enders, and exclaimed, "Look at those two men in the stern. By gracious, isn't that grand!" And Rivers, the third of the old guard, Rivers, who had been relied upon to brace the waist of the boat, who had before rowed that terrible fourth mile in a losing race and rowed it well; how was he finishing? Not an ounce of strength in his blade. He was still throwing his body to and fro with the others or nearly so, his head falling forward and back as he did so, and his oar moved; but that was all. He was now being carried over the line by the crew he had ruined. He alone was doing nothing; the others, though ragged, were still pulling desperately, using up the very last of their failing strength.