Evening Star Newspaper, June 16, 1935, Page 90

I0 Magazine Section Coming NEXT ISSUE ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS <« *“You Can Be an Esplorer!” ' There's very little land left to discover, but the whole | world is waiting for intensive | exploration. Roy Chapman | Andrews, director of the Amer- | ican Museum of Natural His- tory and famous explorer, tells vou where and what to seek. S TR AR RSN VIRGINIA DALE ““International Express” Yol They were in love — the un- suspecting American girl and the young European plotter. And the train on which they | rode was, he knew, rushing ! toward disaster. How could he save her? A’ powerful and | dramatic story by Virginia Dale. ————d ARNOLD ZWEIG “Old Man With a Stick™ Arnold Zweig is the author of that important and success- ful war book, “The Case of Sergeant Grischa,”” and many | other short stories, essays and | novels. This is a poignant tale of what inflation did to one old i~ man’s life-savings. | TR S AR N N - HONORE MORROW *“Set Her Free!” e Honoré Morrow is the re- | nowned author of the recent | i success, ‘‘Yonder Sails the | | Mayflower” and many other | historical works. In this story ' | | | Mrs. Morrow offers her version of the unhappy marriage of | the statesman Charles Sumner. | coxswain, not saying anything, hardly moving. Entering the room, Dan looked at | the faces, blank or frankly sneering, then lay on the floor, his back to most of the others. He was very tense. In the quietness of the room, he made himself relax. It was as though he were in a dream, and the dream about to be broken. What he was going to do or how, he was not sure. But he had a chance to do a perfect thing; he sensed this at first, being not entirely sure of the thought. Perhaps when this dream he was in was broken, he would know what the thing was. Time went swiftly. Murtaugh stood in the doorway. ““Men,” he said, “I haven’t a thing to say. Cowalt is sick and that makes it tough. Do what you can.” He should slap me in the face, Dan thought, so coldly he was frightened; it would be the same thing. But the dream was broken. Murtaugh went away, and the oarsmen stood up. They were looking at him, Dan saw. Their faces made something come back to him, some- thing like hate. He was to say some- thing. He had once spoken their lan- guage. What he was going to try to do, what the thing was, was to win and vindicate Al and himself and ' Pete Haley. But you cannot say these things to your own generation; which is why youth speaks a strange lan- guage. So Dan stood before the others and swaggered a little and sneered. “Wise guys,” he said; “you’re all wise guys, aren’t you? You don't like me to stroke this crew, do you? But you've got to like it, you've got to take it. And you don’t know what I'm going to do— any of you. I don't myself. But I'll tell you one thing — I'm going to break your hearts.” That would be his catch-word, his talisman. He would break their hearts. He saw their faces change and knew that they had not understood him, that they had taken his words literally. Fear came suddenly to him, and he turned and went out of the room. Be- hind him, as they followed him onto the float, he heard their voices, low and tense, wondering what he had meant. Dan never remembered much of the long paddle upstream to the start. Before him, Grogan gave orders, already edged and charged with fury. He would show them, Dan thought. He thought more of his father now than of Al or himself, for he sud- denly saw that however much his sons Haley required nore. Not in his son’s eyes. But others, some newspaper man to make a good story, had made Peter Haley part of the string of failures. Anger grew in Dan. Some subtle change took place in his mind so that, like the rest of the crew, he came to take the literal meaning of what he had said as being his sole intention. And yet, with some other level of his mind, he knew that he would do this thing for others, as well as for himself. So that as they came up to the stake- boats, fastened in a line across the river, he had only one thought, but it meant everything. He would break their hearts — for Al, for himself, for - the old man. Grogan was jockeying the shell The shell’s stern met the stake-boat. The air was cooler, and in the sudden " stillness, the voice of the referee from his boat sounded unnaturally loud. The oarsmen in the nine shells raised their long arms and pulled the brief jerseys from their bodies. To the left the observation train steamed. It was very still, and the air about them was blue. Dan was calm. He would simply set a pace such as they had never heard of in a four-mile race, and some place along the river, he or they or all of them would col- lapse. Perhaps it would be past the “Ready all?”” The last words from the referee. No coxswain raised a hand to delay the start. A tiny cannon sounded and nine coxswains shouted an unnecessary: ‘“Row!” as seventy- two spooned blades bit into the water. Savagely Dan bent into the racing start. A full stroke, a three-quarters THIS WEEK “T’'ll Break Your Hearts” Continued from page six length stroke, ten quick half-strokes, and a gradual lengthening out into the full racing stroke. Dan moved in a bright mist. It seemed for a time that his mind was something separate and apart from his body, and was now hovering over it, watching the body bend and reach and pull in perfect form, the legs straighten out, but not before the handle of the oar passed over the bent knees. Everything in perfect form. He bent and swayed and straightened, and felt the thrill pass from the oar-handle through his arms, as the blade cut and met the water. He became aware gradually of a screaming and saw before him the face of an insane man. He watched it for a second and then recognized it for Grogan’s. *“Bring it down, you madman!” the coxswain was screaming. ‘“‘Bring it down! You're hitting about forty!” The stroke was much too high, Dan knew, for four miles. but he kept it there. He began to be aware of his sur- roundings, of the progress of the race. They were well into the second mile and far ahead of all the other crews. His boat was in the No. 5 lane and he could see all the crews, split into two groups, California leading the one inside him, Navy the outside one. Dan realized his position. From a pariah he had become suddenly a god to do with others as he willed 1In front of him, Grogan screamed and cursed for him to bring the stroke down, and behind him Dan knew seven men strained desperately to hold the mad pace he was setting, the pace they must hold. Grogan was frightened. Instead of setting the stroke for Dan to pass back to the others, Grogan took Dan’s pace and beat it out auto- matically with the tiller-grips on the gunwales, now hard as the blades caught the water, now softer as the blades left the water — a trochaic meter of action. Dan laughed again. They were past the two-mile mark, and the other crews were whole boat-lengths behind them, how many he did not know. His own breath was hard and long and his body sheeted in sweat. Behind him he heard the others’ hard breathing and their occasional half-sobbed curses. Dan wondered how long they would last, how long he himself would last. For a moment, Grogan was silent, scowling and breathless. as Dan laughed at him. In Dan now the stroke was a rhythm, and he could no more depart from its furious beat than he could leave the boat and stride on the water. He felt the little sharp pains begin to grow at the joints, where the arms met the shoulders, in the rippling belly muscles, in the crook of the arms and the back of the neck. Sweat soaked through his eyebrows, and he wished he had worn a sweat band. And all about him, he saw the evening coming swiftly down. Grogan was screaming again. “All right, you big, god-dam fool,” he was saying. ‘“You've made the pace, now see if you can carry them in.” Grogan wept like a furious little boy, but Dan could feel sorry for no one. Dan held the pace as well as he could. Far away, boat-lengths away, the other crews had started gradually to come up, Navy leading them and Columbia catching California. Slowly, they gained upon him. He felt a slight, brief coolness pass over him and knew that they had gone under the bridge raarking the three-mile mark. A roar- ing fell from it like water. He thought again that he might win. He had forgotten about it in re- membering he would break the hearts of his own crew. But now to win would be the good way to finish off. It had something to do with the perfect thing he had sensed before. With the thought that he might yet win, came the re- alization that he must hold his form, make none of those slip-ups in style or execution which a tired oarsman might make. He became at once careful and savage. It was hard to see. In the sudden spring dusk, he could not see the other crews. The pain had penetrated to every part of his body, and he heard Drawing by Fred Neher “Slgip that young fellow second from the end — he’s a magician” June 16, 1935 4 Grogan's voice, hoarse and inarticulate. Once the voice became articulate. “Ten hard ones!” it croaked. Navy must be right on top of them. All about Dan now there were shadows and within him too, the shadows had started to come. He heard, dimly, cries and the sounds of whistles, and knew that they must be between the lines of yachts near the finish. He wondered when he would break, when the others would break. He waited to feel with his body the quiver that would pass along the shell and the lose of run as somebody collapsed. Still Grogan cried hoarse orders and still his tiller-grips beat out a stroke, but whether Grogan followed him or he followed Grogan, Dan was not sure. But he, Dan, would go down into the darkness all about him trying to do this thing he had told the others he would do. Then he heard the hoarse voice croak: *“Weigh enough,”” and he knew the race was over. All about them whistles and horns sounded, guns boomed and thousands of voices roared like water — and very gently Dan Haley's body slumped forward and his head fell on his knees. He thought he had fainted. Then he realized that in some incredible fashion his body had fainted, but his mind had remained conscious and active. Behind him in the boat there was no sound, and the shell swung badly. He heard a launch nearby, and suddenly he did not want anyone to see he had fainted. Slowly, pressing on the gunwales with his hands, he raised his body and his head. Murtaugh stood in the bow of the launch and didn’t speak, but his face in the gloom said they had won. Cold was Murtaugh. “That was pretty grand,” he said. Dan didn’t say anything. He was suddenly so weary that he did not see how he sat erect. But he must do something. He turned his head and looked behind him in the boat. Seven men lay slumped over their oars. As Dan looked, two of them, Swiderski and Stony Thomas, began to move. Dan was cold, and somebody was throwing something over him and helping him to step from the shell onto the yacht. Men spoke to Dan and shook his limp hand, and Dan smelled the faint, subtle odors the girls on the yacht wore, but he did not see either the men or the girls. He stood by the rail with a dirty sweat-shirt over his shoulders and watched the rest of the crew carried or helped onto the deck of the yacht. Those about him with- drew a little, repelled by his aloofness, his indifference to them. Dan stood there and watched. The other oarsmen started to come to and Stony Thomas, from a deck chair even raised a hand in some vague gesture of salute. Presently, Dan knew, they would come to him and call him names. But for the moment he savored his own grimness, his own starkness. In a few minutes he would be of these others and for the rest of his life. But now he stood and watched, and the people on the yacht stood in a circle a little from him and looked at him. Now, out of the dim circle of faces, Murtaugh’s approached Dap. He held out a hand, and Dan took it. “I'm sorry,” Murtaugh said. He stopped, groped for a word, but couldn’t find it. “There must have been a lot of headaches,” he said. “I'm sorry, I wish I could do some- thing to make up for it.” He stood there, pathetic — a strong man fum- bling and lost. Dan felt a little sorry for him, but he knew that there was nothing Mur- taugh could do, nothing more he could say to Murtaugh except banalities which would be lies. So Dan just stood there near Mur- taugh and turned towards the circle of people. From all around him now, breaking through the other, strange faces, the bright, grave faces of the oarsmen advanced upon him, and in them he read a complete under- standing. He was one of them now, for always. He smiled in the gloom as they began the soft-voiced, rough banter they reserved unconsciously for people they liked.