Almost before he knew it Stover was in the car and the wheels were
moving at last irresistibly toward the field. There was no longer any
pretense in those last awful moments that had in them all the
concentrated hopes and fears of the weeks that had rushed away. The
faces of his own team-mates were only gray faces without identity. He
saw some one's lips moving incessantly, but he did not remember whose
they were. Opposite him, another man was bending over, his head hidden
in his hands. Some one else at his side was nervously locking and
unlocking his fingers, breathing short, hard breaths. He remembered only
the stillness of it all, the forgetfulness of others, the set stares,
and Charlie de Soto fidgeting on the seat and nervously humming
something irrelevant.
Caught up in this unreasoning intensity of a young nation, filled, too,
with this exaggerated passion of combat, Stover leaned back limply.
Outside, the street was choked with hilarious parties packed in rushing
carriages, blue or orange-and-black. Horns and rattles sounded like tiny
sounds in his ears, and his eyes saw only grotesque blurred shapes that
swept across them.
"I'll get 'em off--they won't block any on me--they mustn't," he said to
himself, closing his eyes.
Then, on top of the draining weakness that had him in its grip, came a
sudden feeling of nausea, and he knew suddenly what the man opposite him
with his head in his hands was fighting. He put his arms over the ledge
of the door, and rested his head on them, too weak to care that every
one saw him, gulping in the stinging air in desperation.
All at once there came a grinding jerk and the car stopped. From the
inside came Tompkins' angry, rasping voice:
"Every one up! Get out there! Quick! On the jump!"
Instinctively obedient, the vertigo left him, his mind cleared. He was
out in the midst of the bobbing mass of blue sweaters, moving as in a
nightmare through the black spectators, seeing ahead the mammoth stands,
hearing the dull, engulfing roars as one hears at night the approaching
surf.
Then they were struggling through the human barriers, and he saw
something green at the bottom of a stormy pit, and a great growing roar
of welcome smote him as of a descending gale, the hysterical cry of the
American multitude, a roar acclaiming Yale.
"All ready!" said Dana's unrecognizable voice somewhere ahead. "On the
trot, now!"
Instantly he was sweeping on to the field and up along the frantic
stands of suddenly released blue. All indecision, all weakness, went
with the first hoarse cry from his own. Something hot and alive seemed
to flow back into his veins, and with every stride the spongy turf
underneath seemed to send its strength and vitality into his legs.
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.
Some one 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 Dana and Dudley, bending over, waiting for the
signal. Three times De Soto, trying out the Princeton line, sent Dana
plunging against the right tackle, barely gaining the distance. A fourth
attempt being stopped for a loss, Stover dropped back for a kick on the
second down.
The ball came a little low, and with it the whole line seemed torn
asunder and the field filled with the rush of converging bodies. To have
kicked would have been fatal. He dropped quickly on the ball, covering
it, under the shock of his opponents.
Again he was back, waiting for the trial that was coming. He forgot that
he was a freshman--forgot everything but his own utter responsibility.
"You center men, hold that line!" he cried. "You give me a chance! Give
me time!"
Then the ball was in his hands, and, still a little hurried, he sent it
too high over the frantic leaping rush, hurled to the ground the instant
after.
The exchange had netted Princeton twenty yards. A second time Bannerman
lifted his punt, high, long, twisting and turning over itself in tricky
spirals. It was a perfect kick, giving the ends exact time to cover it.
Stover, with arms outstretched, straining upward, cool as a Yankee,
knew, from the rushing bodies he did not dare to look at, what was
coming. The ball landed in his convulsive arms, and almost exactly with
it Garry Cockerell's body shot into him and tumbled him clear off the
ground, crashing down; but the ball was locked in his arms in one of
those catches of which the marvel of the game is, not that they are not
made oftener, but that they are made at all.
"Come on now, Yale," shouted Charlie De Soto's inflaming voice. "We've
got to rip this line. Signal!"
Two masses on center, two futile straining, crushing attempts, and again
he was called on to kick. The tackles he had received had steadied him,
driving from his too imaginative mind all consideration but the direct
present need.
He began to enjoy with a fierce delight this kicking in the very teeth
of the frantic Princeton rushes, as he had stood on the beach waiting
for great breakers to form above his head before diving through.
On the fourth exchange of kicks he stood on his own goal-line. The test
had come at last. Dana, furious at being driven back without a Princeton
rush, came to him wildly.
"Dink, you've got to make it good!"
"Take that long-legged Princeton tackle when he comes through," he said
quietly. "Don't worry about me."
Luckily, they were over to the left side of the field. He chose his
opening, and, kicking low, as Tompkins had coached him, had the joy of
seeing the ball go flying over the ground and out of bounds at the
forty-yard line.
The Princeton team, springing into position, at last opened its attack.
"Now we'll see," said Stover, chafing in the backfield.
Using apparently but one formation, a circular mass, which, when
directly checked, began to revolve out toward end, always pushing ahead,
always concealing the runner, the Princeton attack surely, deliberately,
and confidently rolled down the field like a juggernaut.
From the forty-yard line to the thirty it came in two rushes, from the
thirty to the twenty in three; and then suddenly some one was tricked,
drawn in from the vital attack, and the runner, guarded by one
interferer, swept past the unprotected end and set out for a touchdown.
Stover went forward to meet them like a shot, frantic to save the
precious yards. How he did it he never quite knew, but somehow he
managed to fling himself just in front of the interferer and go down
with a death grip on one leg of the runner.
A cold sponge was being spattered over him, he was on his back fighting
hard for his breath, when he again realized where he was. He tried to
rise, remembering all at once.
"Did I stop him?"
"You bet you did."
Regan and Dudley had their arms about him, lifting him and walking him
up and down.
"Get your breath back, old boy."
"I'm all right."
"Take your time; that Princeton duck hasn't come to yet!"
He perceived in the opposite group something prone on the ground, and
the sight was like a tonic.
The ball lay inside the ten-yard line, within the sacred zone. In a
moment, no longer eliminated, but close to the breathing mass, he was
at the back of his own men, shrieking and imploring:
"Get the jump, Yale!"
"Throw them back, Yale!"
"Fight 'em back!"
"You've got to, Yale--you've got to!"
Then, again and again, the same perfected grinding surge of the complete
machine: three yards, two yards, two yards, and he was underneath the
last mass, desperately blocking off some one who held the vital ball,
hoping against hope, blind with the struggle, saying to himself:
"It isn't a touchdown! It can't be! We've stopped them! It's Yale's
ball!"
Some one was squirming down through the gradually lightening mass. A
great weight went from his back, and suddenly he saw the face of the
referee seeking the exact location of the ball.
"What is it?" he asked wildly.
"Touchdown."
Some one dragged him to his feet, and, unnoticing, he leaned against
him, gazing at the ball that lay just over the goal-line, seeing with
almost a bull-like rage the Princeton substitutes frantically capering
up and down the line, hugging one another, agitating their blankets,
turning somersaults.
"Line up, Yale," said the captain's unyielding voice, "this is only the
beginning. We'll get 'em."
But Stover knew better. The burst of anger past, his head cleared. That
Princeton team was going to score again, by the same process, playing on
his weakness, exchanging punts, hoping to block one of his until within
striking distance, and the size of the score would depend on how long he
could stand it off.
"Goal," came the referee's verdict, and with it another roar from
somewhere. He went up the field looking straight ahead, hearing, like a
sound in a memory, a song of jubilation and the brassy accompaniment of
a band.
Again the same story: ten, fifteen yards gained on every exchange of
kicks, and a slow retrogression toward their own goal. Time and again
they flung themselves against a stronger line, in a vain effort to win
back the last yards. Once, in a plunge through center, he found an
opening, and went plunging along for ten yards; but at the last the ball
was Princeton's on the thirty-five-yard line, and a second irresistible
march bore Yale back, fighting and frantic over the line for the second
score.
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 goal-posts, 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 shoe-laces.
"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.
Some one 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 punting duel was resumed until, well within Yale
territory, Cockerell looked around and gave the signal for attack.
"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 mêlée, 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, some
one 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 battle-field, 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. Every one 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!"
Every one 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 last desperate rushes
against defeat, against hope, against time, unable to believe it was
over.
"How many times did I take that ball?" he thought wearily. "Was it seven
or eight? If I'd only got free that last time--kept my feet!"
He remembered flashes of that last frenzy--the face of a Princeton
rusher who reached for him and missed, the teeth savage as a wolf's and
the strained mouth. He saw again Regan turning around to pull him
through, Regan, the brute, raging like a fury. He remembered the quick,
strange white looks that Charlie De Soto had given him, wondering each
time if he had the strength to go on. Why had they stopped them? They
had a right to that last rally!
"Eighteen to nothing. Poor Dana--I wonder what he'll do?"
He remembered, in a far-off way, tales he had heard of other captains,
disgraced by defeat, breaking down, leaving college, disappearing. He
dreaded the moment when they should break silence, when the awful thing
must be talked over, there in the gymnasium, feeling acutely all the
misery and ache Dana must be feeling.
"All right there, Stover? Let yourself go, if you want to."
The voice was Tompkins', who was looking up at him anxiously, the
gymnasium at his back.
"All right," he said gruffly, raising himself with an effort and half
slipping to the ground.
"Sure? How's Dudley?"
He realized in a curious way that others, too, had gone through the
game. Then Regan's arm was around him. He did not put it from him,
grateful for any support in his weakness. Together they went through the
crowd of ragamuffins staring open-mouthed at a defeated team.
"What's the matter with Dudley?"
"Played through all the last with a couple of broken ribs."
"Dudley?"
"Yes. Go as slow as you want, old bantam."
"If we only could have had another minute, Tom--" He stopped, unable to
go on, shaking his head.
"I know, I know."
"It was tough."
"Darned tough."
"I thought we were going to do it."
"Now, you shut up, young rooster. Don't think of it any more. You played
like a fiend. We're proud of you."
"Poor Dana!"
Upstairs a couple of rubbers took charge of him, stripping him and
rubbing him rigorously. Two or three coaches came up to him, gripping
him with silent grips, patting him on the back. The cold bite of the
shower brought back some of his vitality, and he dressed mechanically
with the squad, who had nothing to say to one another.
"Yale, I want to talk to you boys a moment."
He looked up. In the center of the room was Rivers, coach of coaches,
around whom the traditions of football had been formed. Stover looked at
him dully, wondering how he could stand there filled with such energy.
"Now, boys, the game's over. We've lost. It's our turn; we've got to
stand it. One thing I want you to remember when you go out of here.
_Yale teams take their medicine!_"
His voice rose to a nervous staccato, and the sharp, cold eye seemed to
look into every man, just as at school the Doctor used to awe them.
"Do you understand? Yale teams take their medicine! No talking, no
reasoning, no explanations, no excuses, and no criticism! The thing's
over and done. We'll have a dinner to-night, and we'll start in on next
year; and next year nothing under the sun's going to stop us! Go out;
take off your hats! A great Princeton team licked you--licked you well!
That's all. You deserved to score. You didn't. Hard luck. But those who
saw you try for it won't forget it! We're proud of that second half! No
talk, now, about what might have happened; no talk about what you're
going to do. Shut up! Remember--grin and take your medicine."
"Mr. Rivers, I'd like to say a few words."
Stover, with almost a feeling of horror, saw Dana step forward quietly,
purse his lips, look about openly, and say:
"Mr. Rivers, I understand what you mean, and what's underneath it all,
and I thank you for it. At the same time, it's up to me to take the
blame, and I'm not going to dodge it. I've been a poor captain. I
thought I knew more than you did, and I didn't. I've made one fool
blunder after another. But I did it honestly. Well, that doesn't
matter--let that go. I say this because it's right, too, I should take
my medicine, and because I don't want next year's captain to botch the
job the way I've done. And now, just a word to you men. You've done
everything I asked you to do, and kept your mouths shut, no matter what
you thought of it. You've been loyal, and you'll be loyal, and there'll
be no excuses outside. But I want you men to know that I'll remember it,
and I want to thank you. That's all."
Instantly there was a buzz of voices, and one clear note dominating
it--Regan's voice, stirred beyond thought of self:
"Boys, we're going to give that captain a cheer. Are you ready?
Hip--hip!"
Somehow the cry that went up took from Dink all the sting of defeat. He
went out, head erect, back to meet his college, no longer shrinking from
the ordeal, proud of his captain, proud of his coach, and proud of a
lesson he had learned bigger than a victory.