"It will mean that those of you who might have lived to be seventy-one must die at seventy. Some of you who might have lived to be eighty-six must cough up your ghost at eighty-five. That's a great age. A year more or less doesn't sound like much. When the time comes, boys, you may regret. But, you will be able to say, this year I spent well, I gave for Pip, I made a loan of life for sweet Pipkin, the fairest apple that ever almost fell too early off the harvest tree. Some of you at forty-nine must cross life off at forty-eight. Some at fifty-five must lay them down to Forever's Sleep at fifty-four. Do you catch the whole thing intact now, boys? Do you add the figures? Is the arithmetic plain? A year! Who will bid three hundred and sixty-five entire days from out his own soul, to get old Pipkin back? Think, boys. Silence. Then, speak."
There was a long brooding silence of arithmetic students doing inward sums.
And the sums were very fast indeed. There was no question, though they knew that years from now they might doubt this dreadful haste. Yet what else could they do? Only swim out from shore and save the drowning boy before he sank a last time into a frightening dust.
"Me," said Tom. "I'll give a year."
"And me," said Ralph.
"I'm in," said Henry-Hank.
And, "Me!" "Me!" "Me!" said all the rest.
"Do you know what you pledge, boys? You do love Pipkin, then?"
"Yes, yes!"
"So be it, boys. Chew and eat, lads, eat and chew."
They popped the sweet bits of candy skull in their mouths.
They chewed. They ate.
"Swallow darkness, boys, give up your year."
They swallowed hard, so hard that their eyes shone bright and their ears banged and their hearts beat.
They felt something like a cage of birds let out of their chests and bodies and flying off, invisible. They saw but did not see the years they gave as gifts wing off round the world to settle somewhere in good payment for strange debts.
They heard a yell.
"Here!"
And then: "I!"
And then: "Come!"
Bang, bang, bang, the three words, and three sounds of shoes hitting stone.
And along the hall and between the rows of mummies which leaned out to stop but did not stop, between the silent shrieks and screams, hellbent, rushing, racing, flinging his feet, pumping his elbows, puffing his cheeks, shutting his eyes, snorting his nostrils, and bang bang banging the floor with his up and down, up and down feet, came--
Pipkin.
Oh how he ran!!!
"Look at him come. Come on, Pip."
"Pip, you're halfway!"
"Look at him race!" said everyone with sugar candy in their mouths, with the honorable name of Pipkin locked in their sweet teeth, with his savor in their jaws, with his fine name on their tongues, Pip, Pip, Pipkin!
"Don't stop now, Pip. Don't look back!"
"Don't fall down!"
"Here he comes, three quarters of the way!"
Pip ran the gauntlet. He was good and fine and fast and true. Between one hundred waiting mummies he ran without touching and did not look back and--won the race.