This forecast proved correct except in one particular. To his surprise, Roger got a trial the first day out, at two on the second. We may well call it a trial, for such it surely was to all concerned. More accurately described, it was a demonstration of incapacity. Roger’s struggles with his oar stirred his rowing companions to fierce growls, the coxswain to abuse, the loiterers on the float to gestures and grins of malicious enjoyment. Poor Number Two couldn’t get his oar in right; it twisted in his hand and pulled under, it wouldn’t come out when it ought and as it ought. Delayed by the insidious clutch of the water, he started his slide before he had freed his blade, and his knees rose and blocked the backward movement of his handle. Though he put forth extraordinary efforts to master the oar, the oar insisted on mastering him. By good luck and violent slide rushing, he managed to avoid taking Number Three in the back, but half the time he was holding or backing water, and all the time he was preventing bow from keeping stroke. Strive as he might with mind and body, his strength wrought nothing but confusion. A half-hour of this fruitless wrenching and blundering was all the crew could stand; the boat was headed in, and Roger was unceremoniously dumped upon the float. Louis Tracy took his place—and kept it. After that, the disenchanted but still determined Roger rowed bow on the pair-oar to Wilmot’s stroke, and toiled over the unmanageable oar. It had a way of plunging under, every few strokes, and pulling the side of the boat down; then it stuck deep in the water, and Coolidge, the cox, would reprove, and the offending bow would grip his handle still tighter and vow that this particular fault shouldn’t occur again. But it did occur again, and others as heinous. He couldn’t get his oar away after he had raised it from the water; he rushed his slide instead of drawing it gradually back so as not to check the motion of the boat; he could not put into practice the apparently simple direction that the legs were to bear the burden of the work. As a result his back suffered,—and the temper of his mates, who poured out on his head reproach and sarcasm until the ineffectualness of words was made apparent, when they relapsed into a humorous pessimism that was more unflattering than abuse. The crew of the pair-oar was under another disadvantage: very little coaching trickled through to them. Caffrey, the Westcott coach, gave his attention chiefly to the first and incidentally to the second: the pair-oar shifted for itself, or received one set of amateur directions one day and another the next. As Roger thought of it, he and Wilmot were in the position of a slow steamer trying to overtake one which was several knots faster. Only a breakdown in the leader could prevent the distance between them from growing hourly greater.