The Yale team had also heard some words of football wisdom in their dressing room.  Previous encounters with Princeton had taught them that the Tiger could also rally.  They came on the field prepared to fight harder than ever.  McBride and Brown were exhorting their men to do their utmost.

Princeton was out-rushing Yale but not out-kicking them.  Yale knew that as well as we did.

It was a Yale fumble that gave us the chance we were waiting for.  Bill Roper, who had taken Lew Palmer’s place at left end, had his eyes open.  He fell on the ball.  Through his vigilance, Princeton got the chance to score.  Now was our chance.

Time was passing quickly.  We all knew that something extraordinary would have to be done to win the day.  It remained for Arthur Poe to crystallize this idea into action.  It seemed an inspiration.

“We’ve got to kick,” he said to me, “and I would like to try a goal from the field.  We haven’t got much time.”

Nobody appreciated the situation more than I did.  I knew we would have to take a chance and there was no one I would have selected for the job quicker than Arthur Poe.  How we needed a touchdown or a goal from the field!

Poe, Pell and myself were the three members of the original team left.  How the substitutes rallied with us and gave the perfect defence that made Poe’s feat possible is a matter of history.  As I looked around from my position to see that the defensive formation was right, I recall how small Arthur Poe looked there in the fullback position.  Here was a man doing something we had never rehearsed as a team.  But safe and sure the pass went from Horace Bannard and as Biffy Lea remarked after the game, “when Arthur kicked the ball, it seemed to stay up in the air about twenty minutes.”

Some people have said that I turned a somersault and landed on my ear, and collapsed.  Anyhow, it all came our way at the end, the ball sailed over the cross bar.  The score then was 11 to 10, and the Princeton stand let out a roar of triumph that could be heard way down in New Jersey.

There were but thirty-six seconds left for play.  Yale made a splendid supreme effort to score further.  But it was futile.

Crowds had left the field before Poe made his great goal kick.  They had accepted a Yale victory as inevitable.  Some say that bets were paid on the strength of this conviction.  The Yale News, which went to press five minutes before the game ended, got out an edition stating that Yale had won.  They had to change that story.

During the seconds preceding Poe’s kick for a goal I had a queer obsession.  It was a serious matter to me then.  I can recall it now with amusement.  “Big” was a prefix not of my own selection.  I had never appreciated its justification, however, until that moment.

Horace Bannard was playing center.  I had my left hand clasped under the elastic in his trouser leg, ready to form a barrier against the Yale forwards.  Brown, Hale and McBride tried to break through to block the kick.  I thought of a million things but most of all I was afraid of a blocked kick.  To be frank, I was afraid I would block it—­that Poe couldn’t clear me, that he would kick the ball into me.