“’Rah, ’rah, ’rah, for Yale, my boy.  Eat ’em alive as your daddy used to do.”

The men from Princeton had no intention of being devoured in this summary fashion.  They resumed their tireless, whirlwind attack like giants refreshed, and so harried their Yale foemen that they were forced to their utmost to ward off another touchdown.  This incessant battering dulled the edges of their offensive tactics, and they seemed unable to set in motion a consistent series of advances.  But the joy of Princeton was tempered by the knowledge that this, her dearest enemy, was not beaten until the last play had been signalled.

And somehow the Yale machine of muscle, brains, and power began to find itself when the afternoon shadows were slanting athwart the arena.  With the ball on Princeton’s forty-yard line the chosen sons of Eli began a heroic advance down the field.  It was as if some missing cog had been supplied.  “Straight old-fashioned football” it was, eleven minds and bodies working as one and animated by a desperate resolve, which carried the Yale team along for down after down into the heart of Princeton’s ground.

Perhaps because he was fresher than the other backs, perhaps because the captain knew his man, the ball was given to the Yale full-back for one swift and battering assault after another.  His slim figure pelted at the rush-line, was overwhelmed in an avalanche of striped arms and legs, but somehow twisted, wriggled, dragged itself ahead as if there was no stopping him.  The multitude comprehended that this despised and disgraced Freshman was working out his own salvation along with that of his comrades.  Once, when the scrimmage was untangled, he was dragged from beneath a heap of players, unable to regain his feet.  He lay on the grass a huddled heap, blood smearing his forehead.  A surgeon and the trainer doused and bandaged him, and presently he staggered to his feet and hobbled to his station, rubbing his hands across his eyes as if dazed.

When, at length, the stubbornly retreating Princeton line had been driven deep down into their end of the field, they, too, showed that they could hold fast in the last extremity.  The Yale attack crumpled against them as if it had struck a stone wall.  Young Seeley seemed to be so crippled and exhausted that he had been given a respite from the interlocked, hammering onslaught, but at the third down the panting quarter-back croaked out his signal.  His comrades managed to rip a semblance of an opening for him, he plunged through, popped clear of the line, fell to his knees, recovered his footing by a miracle of agility, and lunged onward, to be brought down within five yards of the coveted goal-posts.

He had won the right to make the last momentous charge.  Swaying in his tracks, the full-back awaited the summons.  Then he dived in behind the interference for a circuit of the right end.  Two Princeton men broke through as if they had been shot out of mortars, but the Yale full-back had turned and was ploughing straight ahead.  Pulled down, dragging the tackler who clung to his waist, he floundered to earth with most of the Princeton team piled above him.  But the ball lay beyond the fateful chalk-line, the Yale touchdown was won, and the game was tied.