We saw the race from a sailing yacht; my
father absolutely beside himself with excitement.
Off they went! The French galleys lumbering along at a great pace,
their crews pulling a curiously short stroke, and their coxswains
yelling "En avant, mes braves!" with all the strength of their
lungs. It must have been very like the boat-race Virgil describes
in the fifth book of the Aeneid. There was the "huge Chimaera" the
"mighty Centaur" and possibly even the "dark-blue Scylla" with
their modern counterparts of Gyas, Sergestus, and Cloanthus,
bawling just as lustily as doubtless those coxswains of old
shouted; no one, however, struck on the rocks, as we are told the
unfortunate "Centaur" did. Still the little mahogany-built
Abercorn continued to forge ahead of her unwieldy French
competitors. The Frenchmen splashed and spurted nobly, but the
little Oxford-built boat increased her lead, her silken "Union
Jack" trailing in the water. All the muscles of the French fleet
came into play; the admiral's barge churned the water into
creaming foam; "mes braves" were incited to superhuman exertions;
in spite of it all, the Abercorn shot past the mark-boat, a winner
by a length and a half.
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