"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.
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.
"Played through all the last with a couple of broken ribs."
"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.
"Now, you shut up, young rooster. Don't think of it any more. You played like a fiend. We're proud of you."