That safety had counted two on the score for the Navy.

Given breathing time, the Army now brought the ball out toward midfield, and once more the savage work began.  The Navy had gained ten yards, when the time-keeper signaled the end of the first period.

As the players trotted off the Navy was exultant, the Army depressed.  Captain Douglass was scowling.

“You fellows will have to brace!” he snapped.  “Are you going to let the little middies run over us?”

“I shall have no bad feeling, suh, if you think it well to put a fresh man in my place, suh,” replied Cadet Anstey.

“Hang it, I don’t want a man in your place!” retorted Douglass angrily.  “I want you, and every other man, Anstey, to do each better work than was done in that period.  Hang it, fellows, the middies are making sport of us.”

Among the Navy players there was not so much talk.  All were deeply contented with events so far.

“I’ve no remarks to make, fellows,” Captain Wolgast remarked.  “You are all playing real football.”

“At any rate Darry and his grinning twin are,” chuckled Jetson.  “My, but you can see the hair rise on the Army right flank when Darry and Danny leap at them!”

In the second period, which started off amid wild yelling from the onlookers, the Army fought hard and fiercely, holding back the Navy somewhat.  During the period two of the cadets were so badly hurt that the surgeons ordered them from the field.  Two fresh subs. came into the eleven, and after that the Army seemed endowed with a run of better luck.  The second period closed with no change in the score, though at the time of the timekeeper’s interference the Navy had the ball within eleven yards of the Army goal line.

“We’ve got the Navy stopped, now, I think,” murmured Douglass to his West Point men.  “All we’ve got to do now is to keep ’em stopped.”

“If they don’t break our necks, or make us stop from heart failure, suh,” replied Cadet Anstey, with a grimace.

“We’ve got the Army tired enough.  We must go after them in the third period,” announced Captain Wolgast.

But this did not happen until the third time that the Navy got the pigskin.  Then Darrin and Dalzell, warned, began to run the ball down the field.  Here a new feint was tried.  When the Navy started in motion every Army man was sure that Wolgast was going to try to put through a center charge.  It was but a ruse, however.  Darrin had the pigskin, and Dalzell was boosting him through.  The entire Navy line charged with the purpose of one man.  There came the impact, and then the Army line went down.  Darrin was charging, Dalzell and Jetson running over all who got in the way.  The halfback on that side of the field was dodged.  Dalzell and Jetson bore down on the victim at the same instant, and Dave, running to the side like a flash, had the ball over the line.

Wolgast himself made the kick to follow, and the score was now eight to nothing.