boat's stern too low down in the water, so Lord Elphinstone was
re-installed, and my father most reluctantly had to content
himself with the role of a spectator, in view of his age. The crew
dieted strictly, ran in the mornings, and went to bed early. They
were none of them in their first youth, for Sir George Higginson
was then forty; Sir David Erskine was twenty-eight; my brother-in-
law, Lord Mount Edgcumbe, thirty-four; and Lord Elphinstone
thirty-eight.

The great day of the race arrived. We met with one signal piece of
ill-luck. Our No. 3, Mr. Meysey-Clive, had gone on board the
French flagship, and was unable to get ashore again in time, so at
the very last minute a young Oxford rowing-man, the late Mr.
Philip Green, volunteered to replace him, though he was not then
in training. The French men-of-war produced huge thirty-oared
galleys, with two men at each oar. There were also smaller twenty
and twelve-oared boats, but not a single "four" but ours. The sea
was heavy and lumpy, the course was five kilometres (three miles),
and there was a fresh breeze blowing off the land. Our little
mahogany Oxford-built boat, lying very low in the water, looked
pitiably small beside the great French galleys. It wasn't even
David and Goliath, it was as though "Little Tich" stood up to
Georges Carpentier. 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