The Willoughby Captains - Reed Talbot Baines

This is one of this author's famous school stories. Like a new boy or girl at a school, you will be faced with learning the names of a great many youngsters, and to an extent, their characters. However, by the time you get half-way through the book you will be familiar enough with the principal characters.

Of course, there are numerous small dramas being acted out as the book proceeds, but the main one concerns a boat-race between two of the Houses. Along the course there is a very tight bend. The boat on the outside of the bend is slightly in the lead but will probably lose this due to the inside boat having less far to travel to the next straight.

At a most crucial moment, when maximum power is being exerted by the cox on the rudder-lines, one of them snaps, and the boat goes out of control. The cox shouts the instructions for an emergency stop, and to back water. The other boat proceeds to the end of the course. It can now be seen that the rudder-line had been deliberately half cut through, so that it would snap at that tight bend on the river.

For the rest of the book people are trying to work out who had done this deed. At one stage we think we know the answer. We become quite convinced we know the answer, in fact. But we are wrong, and we do not find out till almost the end of the book. And it is to be hoped that at that point the promised re-row takes place.

There is some confusion with names in respect of Merrison and Morrison, but I suspect that to be a printer's error. It is not of great importance, since he is (or they are) not front-line characters in the action.

The punctuation becomes very difficult in the reporting of the proceedings of the school parliament, because not only do you have the current speaker, but interspersed with it are comments by the raconteur and by the noisier of the boys. The printed book settled for a simplified version here, but we have done our best to give you a version that is more according to rule.