Playing became an instinct with him. He no longer feared the soaring punts that came tumbling to him from the clouds. His arms closed around them like tentacles, and he was off for the meager yards he could gain before he went down with a crash. He no longer felt the shock of the desperate tackles he was called on to make, nor the stifling pressure above him when he flung himself under the serried legs of the mass.
He had but one duty—to be true to what he had promised Tompkins: not to fumble, not to miss a tackle, to get each punt off clean.
All at once, as he was setting in position, a body rushed in, seizing the ball.
“Time!”
The first half was over, and the score was: Princeton, 18; Yale, 0.
Then all at once he felt his weariness. He went slowly, grimly with the rest back to the dressing-room. A group of urchins clustering to a tree shrieked at them:
“O you Yaleses!”
He heard that, and that was all he heard. A sort of rebellion was in him. He had done all that he could do, and now they would haul him over the coals, thinking that was what he needed.
“Oh, I know what’ll be said,” he thought grimly. “We’ll be told we can win out in the second, and all that rot.”
Then he was in the hands of the rubbers, having his wet, clinging suit stripped from him, being rubbed and massaged. He did not want to look at his comrades, least of all Dana. He only wanted to get back, to have it over with.
“Yale, I want you to listen to me.”
He looked up. In the center stood Tompkins, preternaturally grave, trembling a little with nervous, uncontrollable twitches of his body.
“You’re up against a great Princeton team—the greatest I remember. You can’t win. You never had a chance to win. But, Yale, you’re going to do something to make us proud of you. You’re going to hold that score where it is! Do you hear me? All you’ve got left is your nerve and the chance to show that you can die game. That’s all you’re going to do; but, by heaven, you’re going to do that! You’re going to die game, Yale! Every mother’s son of you! And when the game’s over we’re going to be prouder of your second half than the whole blooming Princeton bunch over their first. There’s your chance. Make us rise up and yell for you. Will you, Yale?”
He passed from man to man, advising, exhorting, or storming, until he came to Stover.
“Dink,” he said, putting out his hand and changing his tone suddenly, “I haven’t a word to say to you. Play the game as you’ve been doing—only play it out.”
Stover felt a sudden rush of shame; all the fatigue left him as if by magic.
“If Charlie’ll only give me a few chances at the center. I know I could gain there,” he said eagerly.
“You’ll get a chance later on, perhaps, but you’ve quite enough to do now.”
The second view of the arena was clear to him, even to insignificant details. He thought the cheer leaders, laboring muscularly with their long megaphones, strangely out of place—especially a short, fat little fellow in a white voluminous sweater. He saw in the crowd a face or two that he recognized—Bob Story in a group of pretty girls, all superhumanly glum and cast down. Then he had shed his sweater and was out on the field, back under the goalposts, ready for the bruising second half to begin.
“All ready, Yale!”
“All ready.”
Again the whistle and the rush of bodies. Dana caught the ball, and, shifting and dodging, shaking off the first tacklers, carried it back twenty yards. Two short, jamming plunges by Dudley, through Regan, who alone was outplaying his man, yielded first down. Then an attempt at Cockerell’s end brought a loss and the inevitable kick.
Instead of a return punt, the Princeton eleven prepared to rush the ball.
“Why the deuce do they do that?” he thought, biting his fingers nervously.
Opening up their play, Princeton swept out toward Bangs’s end, forcing it back for four yards, and immediately made first down with a long, sweeping lunge at the other end.
Suddenly Stover, in the backfield, watching like a cat, started forward with a cry. Far off to one side, a Princeton back, unperceived, was bending down, pretending to be fastening one of his shoelaces.
“Look out—look out to the left!”
His cry came too late. The Princeton quarter made a long toss straight across, twenty yards, to the loitering half, who caught it and started down field clear of the line of scrimmage.
A Princeton forward tried to intercept him, but Stover flung him aside, and, without waiting, went forward at top speed to meet the man who came without flinching to his tackle. It was almost head on, and the shock, which left Stover stunned, instinctively clinging to his man, sent the ball free, where Dana pounced upon it.
“Holy Mike, what a tackle!” said Regan’s voice. “Any bones broken?”
“Of course not,” he said gruffly.
Someone insisted on sponging his face, much to his disgust.
“How’s the other fellow?” he said grimly.
“He’s a tough nut; he’s up, too!”
“He must be.”
The recovery of the ball gave them a short respite, but it served also to enrage the other line, which rose up and absolutely smothered the next plays. Again his kick seemed to graze the outstretched fingers of the Princeton forwards, and he laughed a strange laugh which he remembered long after.
This time the
