From the other end of the field, through the somber crowd, an orange-and-black group was trickling, flowing into a band and sweeping out on the field, while the Princeton stands were surging to their feet, adding the mounting fury of their welcome to the deafening uproar that suddenly bound the arena in the gripping hollow of a whirlwind.
“Line up, you blue devils,” came Charlie de Soto’s raucous cry. “On your toes. Get your teeth into it. Hard, now. Ha‑a‑ard!”
He was in action immediately, thinking only of the signals, sweeping down the field, now to the right, now to the left, stumbling in his eagerness.
“Enough,” said the captain’s voice, at last. “Get under your sweaters, fellows. Brown and Stover, start up some punts.”
Dana and Dudley went back to practise catching. Brown, the center, pigskin under hand, set himself for the pass, while Stover, blowing on his hands, measured his distance. Opposite, Bannerman, the Princeton fullback, was setting himself for a similar attempt.
In the stands was a sudden craning hush as the great audience waited to see with its own eyes the disparity between the rival fullbacks.
Stover, standing out, felt it all instinctively, with a little nervous tremor—the quick stir in the stands, the muttered comments, the tense turning of even the cheer leaders.
Then the ball came shooting back to him. He caught it, turned it in his hands, and drove forward his leg with all his might. At the same moment, as if maliciously calculated, the great booming punt of Bannerman brought the Princeton stands, rollicking and gleeful, to their feet in a burst of triumph.
In his own stands there was no answering shout Stover felt on his cheeks, under his eyes, two hot spots of anger. What did they know, who condemned him, of the sacrifice he had made, of the far more difficult thing he was doing? He remembered Tompkins’ advice; he could not compete with Bannerman in the air. Deliberately he sent his next punt low, swift, striking the ground about thirty yards away and rolling treacherously another fifteen feet before Dudley, who had swerved out, could stop it. This time from the mass almost a groan went up.
A sudden cold contempt for them, for everything, seized possession of Stover. He hated them all. He stooped, plucked a blade of grass, and stuck it defiantly between his teeth.
“Shoot that back a little lower, Brown,” he said with a sudden quick authority, and again and again he sent off his fast, low-rolling punts.
“That’s the stuff, Dink,” said Tompkins, with a pat on the shoulder, “but you’ve got to get ’em off on the instant—remember that. Here, throw this sweater over you.”
“All right.”
He did not sit down, but walked back and forth with short steps, waiting for the interminable conference of the captains to be over. And again that same sinking, hollow feeling came over him in the suspense before the question that would be answered in the first shock of bodies.
The feeling he felt ran through the thousands gathered only to a spectacle. The cheers grew faint, lacking vitality, and the stir of feet was a nerve-racked stir. Dink gazed up at the high benches, trying to forget the interval of seconds that must be endured. It did not seem possible that he was to go out before them all. It seemed rather that in a far-off consciousness he was the same loyal little shaver who had squirmed so often on the top line of the benches, clinging to his knees, biting his lips, and looking weakly on the ground.
“All ready—get out, boys!”
Dana came running back. Yale had won the toss and had chosen to kick off.
Someone pulled his sweater from him, struck him a stinging slap between the shoulders, and propelled him on the field.
“Yale this way!”
They formed in a circle, heads down, arms locked over one another’s shoulders, disputing the same air; and Dana, the captain, who believed in a victory, spoke:
“Now, fellows, one word. It’s up to us. Do you understand what that means? It’s up to us to win, the way Yale has won in the past—and win we’re going to, no matter how long it takes or what’s against us. Now, get mad, every one of you. Run ’em right off their feet. That’s all.”
The shoulders under Stover’s left him. He went hazily to the place, a little behind the rest, where he knew he should go, waiting while Brown poised the football, waiting while the orange-and-black jerseys indistinctly scattered before him to their formation, waiting for the whistle for which he had waited all his life to release him.
And for a third time his legs seemed to crumble, and the whole blurred scheme of stands and field to reel away from him, and his heart to be lying before him on the ground where he could lean over and pick it up.
Then like a pistol shot the whistle went throbbing through his brain. He sprang forward as if out of the shell of himself, keen, alert, filled with a savage longing.
Down the field a Princeton halfback had caught the ball and was squirming back. Then a sudden upheaval, and a mass was spread on the ground.
“Guess he gained about fifteen on that,” he said to himself. “They’ll kick right off.”
Dana came running back to support him. Out of the sky like a monstrous bird something round, yellow, and squirming came floating toward him. He was forced to run back, misjudged it a little, reached out, half fumbled it, and recovered it with a plunging dive just as Cockerell landed upon him.
“Get you next time, Dink,” said the voice of his old school captain in his ear.
Stover, struggling to his feet, looked him coolly in the eye.
“No, you won’t, Garry, and you know it. The next time I’m going back ten yards.”
“Well, boy, we’ll see.”
They shook hands with a grim smile, while the field straggled up. He was lined up, flanked by
