Parkhurst Boys, and Other Stories of School LifeReed, Talbot Baines
General
Parkhurst Boys, and Other Stories of School Life
Reed, Talbot Baines
Schools -- Fiction
high jump; for though both attempted the 5 foot 5 inches, neither
accomplished it, and the contest was declared to be a dead heat.
After this several unimportant races followed, which I need hardly
describe. Number 12 on the list was getting near, and I was beginning
to feel a queer, hungry sort of sensation which I didn't exactly like.
However, the mile was to be run before our turn came, and that would
give me time to recover.
For this race we had many of us looked with a curious interest, on
account of the new boy, of whom I have spoken, being one of the
competitors in it. He didn't look a likely sort of fellow to win a
race, certainly, for he was slightly bow-legged and thick-set, and what
seemed to us a much more ominous sign, was not even arrayed in flannels,
but in an ordinary white shirt and light cloth trousers. However, he
took his place very confidently at the starting-post, together with
three rivals, wearing respectively black, red, and yellow for their
colours.
The start for a mile race is not such a headlong affair as for a hundred
yards, and consequently at the word "Off!" there was comparatively
little excitement among us spectators.
Yellow went to the front almost immediately, with red and black close
behind, while the new boy seemed to confirm our unfavourable impression
by keeping considerably in the rear. The mile was divided into three
laps round the field, and at the end of the first the positions of the
four were the same as at starting. But it was soon evident yellow was
not destined to continue his lead, for before the half distance was
accomplished, red and black, who all along had been neck and neck, were
up to him and past him, and by the end of the lap the new boy had also
overtaken him.
And now we became considerably more interested in the progress of this
new boy, who, it suddenly occurred to us, seemed to be going very
easily, which was more than could be said of red, who was dropping a
little to the rear of black. A big boy near me said, "That fellow's got
the wind of a balloon," and I immediately began to think he was not far
wrong. For in this third lap, when two of the others were slacking
pace, and when the third was only holding his own, the new boy freshened
up remarkably. We could watch him crawl up gradually nearer and nearer
to red, till a shout proclaimed him to be second in the running. But
black was still well ahead, and in the short space left, as the big boy
near me said, "He could hardly collar his man."
But see! The fellow is positively beginning to tear along! He seems
fresher than when he started. "Look out. Black!" shout twenty voices.
All very well to say, "Look out!" Black is used up, and certainly
cannot respond to this tremendous spurt. Thirty yards from home the new
boy is up to his man, and before the winning-post is reached he is a
clear ten yards ahead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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