Dana and Dudley went back to practise catching. Brown, the center, pigskin under hand, set himself for the pass, while Stover, blowing on his hands, measured his distance. Opposite, Bannerman, the Princeton fullback, was setting himself for a similar attempt.
In the stands was a sudden craning hush as the great audience waited to see with its own eyes the disparity between the rival fullbacks.
Stover, standing out, felt it all instinctively, with a little nervous tremor--the quick stir in the stands, the muttered comments, the tense turning of even the cheer leaders.
Then the ball came shooting back to him. He caught it, turned it in his hands, and drove forward his leg with all his might. At the same moment, as if maliciously calculated, the great booming punt of Bannerman brought the Princeton stands, rollicking and gleeful, to their feet in a burst of triumph.
In his own stands there was no answering shout Stover felt on his cheeks, under his eyes, two hot spots of anger. What did they know, who condemned him, of the sacrifice he had made, of the far more difficult thing he was doing? He remembered Tompkins' advice; he could not compete with Bannerman in the air. Deliberately he sent his next punt low, swift, striking the ground about thirty yards away and rolling treacherously another fifteen feet before Dudley, who had swerved out, could stop it. This time from the mass almost a groan went up.
A sudden cold contempt for them, for everything, seized possession of Stover. He hated them all. He stooped, plucked a blade of grass, and stuck it defiantly between his teeth.
"Shoot that back a little lower, Brown," he said with a sudden quick authority, and again and again he sent off his fast, low-rolling punts.
"That's the stuff, Dink," said Tompkins, with a pat on the shoulder, "but you've got to get 'em off on the instant--remember that. Here, throw this sweater over you."
He did not sit down, but walked back and forth with short steps, waiting for the interminable conference of the captains to be over. And again that same sinking, hollow feeling came over him in the suspense before the question that would be answered in the first shock of bodies.
The feeling he felt ran through the thousands gathered only to a spectacle. The cheers grew faint, lacking vitality, and the stir of feet was a nerve-racked stir. Dink gazed up at the high benches, trying to forget the interval of seconds that must be endured. It did not seem possible that he was to go out before them all. It seemed rather that in a far-off consciousness he was the same loyal little shaver who had squirmed so often on the top line of the benches, clinging to his knees, biting his lips, and looking weakly on the ground.