The shell leaped in response: he could feel the strong drive—"thirteen—fourteen—fifteen—sixteen—" he had reached, and then Rhett laughed.
Finch turned; the other boat was angling off leftward toward West Memphis. He knew why, easily enough. The practice spins had taken him through those river currents and it was a little easier going over there, though not enough to compensate for the extra distance to the bridge. But the big stroke did not think so:
"Whoo-ee," he panted through his effort, "they're done givin' up and goin' home by train."
The gasping laugh of happy elephants ran down the boat and Finch could feel the tension relax, the run fell off.
"No!" he cried. "They're over there to get better water and they're finding it. Eyes in the boat and hit it up! Come on, now, one—two—three-—"
Half the boat obeyed. But Pritchard in the bow was half a beat too slow in his response and the two astern of him caught the rhythm from his slide instead of from Rhett at stroke. There was a massive thump as an oar-handle came into collision with somebody's back, and a yell of, "You son-of-a-bitch!"
"No Flahda red-neck kin call me that!" came the response and someone shipped his oar, half-stood in the tooth-pick-thin shell and turned in the effort to swing.
For an instant Finch's vision was full of toppling bodies, nailing brown limbs and tall splashes opening up and out like yellow flowers in the turgid water. Then the Big Muddy hit him in the face, and the world Was a coffeebrown cavern of infinite extent with a roof of rippling glass and dim bunches of grape-like bubbles gyrating upward.
He broke surface and spouted, looked around, treading water. The shell was ten feet away, swamped, but still right side up.
Between him and it the disputants were engaged in an earnest but ineffective effort to throttle each other, in which Finch devoutly hoped both would succeed, while he turned on his-side and struck out for the distant shore. His error; the swirl of his motion drew the attention of Magnolia the cat, who announced her presence by landing on his shoulder with all ten fore-claws thoroughly extended. With a bubbling yell of agony, he grabbed, but barely touched a handful of fur as the frightened cat clutched for the greater security of his scalp.
His head lacerated, blood, water and tears mingling in a veil before his eyes, Finch hove over and down in the most prodigious porpoise dive he had ever managed. When he came up, lungs protesting, he saw eight heads turned toward him, eight laughing faces, and heard somewhere behind, a voice that shouted: "Better take a lift. You'll git there sooner."
The referees' boat. He had forgotten it, and though at the moment, he felt no desire to have anything to do with the human species, he submitted to being hauled aboard and wrapped in a blanket. He looked around, more than a little grim over a fresh whooping outburst of laughter and quite prepared to award someone a punch on the nose and take to the water again; then perceived that he was not the object of attention, nor was it the spectator-boat which was pulling the last of the dejected crew of the Pegasus Literary Society from the water.
Everyone was pointing past toward the other shore, and as he followed the fingers, Finch saw the St. Louis Rotarians had also come to grief. The white bow of their shell was on the beach; some of its occupants were Struggling to the shore, where two of them had already gained footing and were swapping punches in a magnificent fight.
At least there was this much gain—that the Colonel could hardly hold him responsible for the loss of any bets placed on the race. All the same he felt a severe chill, and not from immersion, as the boat pulled into the dock where Colonel Richard Fitzhugh Lee stood in the midst of a semicircle, Sonia beside him in a flowery dress, and the uniformed bodyguard forming the semicircle.
He was handed to the dock with an accompaniment of ribald remarks from the referees' boat, and it pulled away. The semicircle remained grimly in position and completely silent, penning him in with his back to the river. After a long moment, the Colonel intoned unctuously: "As this is a purely business conference, I reckon the ladies had better withdraw. Sonia, my deah ..."
The semicircle parted to let her through. She laid a hand on the Colonel's arm, and for a moment Finch thought she was going to speak, but she only shook her head and walked away, foot dragging and dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.
"Suh," said the Colonel, "an intelligent justice is the beacon-light of southern liberty. I await with interest, suh, anything you have to say in defense of conduct that would disgrace a pole-cat."
Said Finch: "Nothing except that I made a mistake thinking I could control that bunch of apes."
The Colonel said: "You do not tell me anything of novelty or value."
"You think so because your sense of novelty is so highly developed that it has warped your sense of values. My real mistake was' letting you hand me a ready-made bunch of strong-arm men instead of choosing for myself a crew who could work together. Another time—"
With a brief thrill of exultation, Finch perceived he had been right on the major premise. The Colonel would never do anything else while he saw a chance for an argument. His face had relaxed from a good imitation of one that might be visible in a nightmare into a mere stern interest. But there was a mistake in the detail of that last unfortunate phrase. The face went grim again, Lee's hand went to the breast of his coat and came away with a pistol.
"There will be no other time for a scalawag who has had his fingers in my pocket."
"The big mistake was yours, though," Finch cried desperately. "You made two of them; but I suppose I can't stop you if you want to break your tools because you don't know how to use them." He looked away across the green hills and rolling river and wondered if there was any way the carnelian cube could save him.
The barrel of the pistol was allowed to droop through a few degrees. "And what use, boy, does your wisdom suggest for a broken tool beside throwing on the scrap-heap. You shall go befo' the great white throne, and proclaim that you are a deceiver, a rascal."
"I said two mistakes. Anytime you use a jeweller's saw to cut a steel girder, something is going to break. When you asked me what I could do, you jumped on me over this rowing business and didn't give me a chance to say I could restore the prestige of the Pegasus in a field where it stands pretty low right now."
The pistol came up again. "Are yo' insinuating that the reputation of the noblest band God ever made—"
"I'm not insinuating; I'm saying it right out. What have I to lose, telling the truth? You call it the Pegasus Literary Society, but how much literature do you produce? Do you suppose the only reason you have trouble selling your books in Birmingham is because of the Arcadians? Not at all; it's because everybody refuses to read the terrible books you offer them. People have to eat, and they'll even eat at Basil MacPherson's if they have to; but they don't have to read anything they don't like."
"Colonel Lee, suh," said Basil Stewart, "that dad-burned scamp is more'n half right. I call to mind the trouble we had over in Knoxville, but I thought it was just on account of them black Republicans in the schools there."
The Colonel's head swivelled round. "Yo' just shet your mouth and let me handle this. He hasn't told me yet how he's going to do anything about it. If he handles books the way he does rowers—"
"Handles them!" exclaimed Finch. "I'm not offering to be a literary agent. That's the profitable end of the business, and I thought you'd want that for yourself. I'm a poet, and I can write better poems than anyone has produced in Memphis for fifty years."