“Now, Yale, stop it, stop it!” Dink said, talking to himself.
But there was no stopping that attack. Powerless, not daring to approach, he saw the blue line bend back again and again, and the steady, machine-like rolling up of the orange and black. Over the twenty-five-yard line it came, and on past the twenty.
“Oh, Yale, will you let ’em score again?” De Soto was shrieking.
“You’re on your ten-yard line, Yale.”
“Hold them!”
“Hold them!”
Two yards at a time, they were rolled back with a mathematical, unfeeling precision.
“Third down; two yards to go!”
“Yale, stop it!”
“Yale!”
And stop it they did, by a bare six inches. Behind the goal-line, Charlie De Soto came up, as he stood measuring his distance for a kick.
“How are you, Dink? Want a bit of a rest—sponge-off?”
“Rest be hanged!” he said fiercely. “Come on with that ball.”
Suddenly, instead of kicking low and off to the right, he sent the ball straight down the field with every ounce of strength he could put in it. The punt, the best he had made, catching the back by surprise, went over his head, rolling up the field before he could recover it. A great roar went up from the Yale stands, fired by the spirit of resistance.
Thereafter it had all a grim sameness, except, in a strange way, it seemed to him that nothing that had gone before counted—that everything they were fighting for was to keep their goal-line inviolate. Nothing new seemed to happen. When he went fiercely into a melee, finding his man somehow, or felt the rush of bodies about him as he managed each time to get clear his punt, he had the same feeling:
“Why, I’ve done this before.”
A dozen times they stopped the Princeton advance, sometimes far away and sometimes near, once within the five-yard line. Every moment, now, someone cried wearily:
“What’s the time?”
The gray of November twilights, the haze that settles over the struggles of the gridiron like the smoke of a battlefield, began to close in. And then a sudden fumble, a blocked kick, and by a swift turn of luck it was Yale’s ball for the first time in Princeton’s territory. One or two subs came rushing in eagerly from the side lines. Everyone was talking at once:
“What’s the time?”
“Five minutes more.”
“Get together, Yale!”
“Show ’em how!”
“Ram it through them!”
“Here’s our chance!”
Stover, beside himself, ran up to De Soto and flung his arms about his neck, whispering in his ear:
“Give me a chance—you must give me a chance! Send me through Regan!”
He got his signal, and went into the breach with every nerve set, fighting his way behind the great bulk of Regan for a good eight yards. A second time he was called on, and broke the line for another first down.
Regan was transformed. All his calm had gone. He loomed in the line like a Colossus, flinging out his arms, shouting:
“We’re rotten, are we? Carry it right down the field, boys!”
Everyone caught the infection. De Soto, with his hand to his mouth, was shouting hoarsely, through the bedlam of cheers, his gleeful slogan:
“We don’t want to live forever, boys! What do we care? We’ve got to face Yale after this. Never mind your necks. We’ve got the doctors! A little more murder, now! Shove that ball down that field, Yale! Send them back on stretchers! Nineteen—eight—six—four—Ha‑a‑ard!”
Again and again Stover was called on, and again and again, with his whole team behind him or Regan’s great arm about him, struggling to keep his feet, crawling on his knees, fighting for every last inch, he carried the ball down the field twenty, thirty yards on.
He forgot where he was, standing there with blazing eyes and colorless face. He forgot that he was only the freshman, as he had that night in the wrestling bout. He gave orders, shouted advice, spurred them on. He felt no weariness; nothing could tire him. His chance had come at last. He went into the line each time blubbering, laughing with the fierce joy of it, shouting to himself:
“I’m the weak spot, am I? I’ll show them!”
And the certainty of it all overwhelmed him. Nothing could stop him now. He knew it. He was going to score. He was going to cross that line only fifteen yards away.
“Give me that ball again!” he cried to De Soto.
Then something seemed to go wrong. De Soto and Dudley were shrieking out something, protesting wildly.
“What’s wrong?” he cried.
“They’re calling time on us!”
“No, no, it’s not possible! It’s not time!”
He turned hysterically, beseechingly, catching hold of the referee’s arm, not knowing what he did.
“Mr. Referee, it isn’t time. Mr. Referee—”
“Game’s over,” said Captain Dana’s still voice. “Get together, Yale. Cheer for Princeton now. Make it a good one!”
But no one heard them in the uproar that suddenly went up. Nature could not hold out; the disappointment had been too severe. Stover stood with his arms on Regan’s shoulders, and together they bowed their heads and went choking through the crowd. Others rushed around him—he thought he heard Tompkins saying something. He seemed lost in the crowd that stared at him, struggling to hold back his grief. Only one figure stood out distinctly—the figure of a white-haired man, who took off his hat to him as he went through the barrier, and shouted something unintelligible—a strangely excited white-haired man.
All the way back to the gymnasium, through the jubilant street, Dink sat staring out unseeing, his eyes blurred, a great lump in his throat, possessed by a fatigue such as he had never known before. No one spoke. Through his own brain ceaselessly the score, strangely jumbled, went its tiring way:
“Eighteen to nothing—to nothing! Eighteen to six—it should have been eighteen to six. Eighteen to nothing. It’s awful—awful! If I only could punt!”
His ideal, his dream of a Yale team, had always been of victory, not like this, to go down powerless, swept aside, routed—to such a defeat!
Then he shut his eyes, fighting over again those
