Now, a member of the Navy team slipped over to that side of the diamond to coach Dan on his home-running.  In addition to pitching, Dick had to watch first and third bases, in which situation Dave Darrin, with great impudence and coolness, stole second in between two throws.

On the faces of the Army fans, by this time, anxiety was written in large letters.  They had heard much about the Navy battery, but not of its base-running qualities.

It was little Hutchins now again at the bat.  His last time there he had been struck out without trouble.

“But, it never does to be too positive that a fellow is a duffer,” mused Prescott grimly, as he gripped the leather.

Just when little Hutchins seemed on the point of going to pieces he misjudged one of Dick’s puts so completely that he struck it, by accident, a fearful crack.  A cloud of dust marked the limits of the diamond, while the air was filled with yells and howls.  When the dust cleared and the howls had subsided it was found that Dalzell had loped in across the home plate, Darrin had come along more swiftly and was in, while Hutchins touched the second base an instant after the ball had nestled in Greg Holmes’s Army mitt.

It mattered little that Earl, who came next to bat, struck out.  The Navy had pulled in two runs—–­the only runs scored so far!

In the other half the Army nine secured nothing.

In the fifth neither team scored.  In the sixth the Navy scored one more run.  In the sixth Lanton, of the Army, got home with a single run.

Thus, at the beginning of the seventh, the score stood at three to one with the grin on the Naval face.

During the seventh inning nothing was scored.  Now, the sailor boys came to bat for the first half of the eighth, with a din of Navy yells on the air.  West Point’s men came back with a sturdy assortment of good old Military Academy yells, but the life was gone out.  The Army was proud of such men as Durville, Prescott, Holmes, but admitted silently that Darrin and Dalzell appeared to belong to a slightly better class of ball.

“It’s our fault, too,” muttered the Army coach, Lieutenant Lawrence, to a couple of brother officers.  “Darrin and Dalzell have been training with the Navy nine for two years, while Prescott and Holmes came in late this season.  Even if they wouldn’t play last year, these two men of ours should have reported for the very first day’s work last February.”

“Prescott couldn’t do it,” remarked Lieutenant Denton, who had just joined the group.

“Why not, Denton?” asked Lieutenant Lawrence.

“He was in Coventry.”

“Pshaw!”

“Didn’t you know that?” asked Denton.

“Not a word of it, though Durville once hinted to me that there was some sort of reason why Prescott couldn’t come in.”

“There was—–­the Coventry,” Denton replied.  “But that trouble blew over when the first classmen found themselves wrong in something of which Jordan had accused Prescott.”