“I’m all right,” persisted the captain; “I can play;” and he started back to his place. Wolcott grasped his arm.
“Dave!” he cried in despair, “you aren’t fit to play. Go off and let us finish the game. You aren’t yourself at all. Do what I say, please!”
But Laughlin snatched his arm away and turned toward the line.
Wolcott threw himself before him. “Answer me one question, and I won’t say another word. Where are you going to college, Harvard or Yale? Just answer me that.”
With stupid eyes Laughlin gazed into his friend’s face. “Harvard or Yale? Harvard or Yale?” he repeated. “It’s one or the other, but I don’t seem to know which—” Then straightening up, he shouted: “We’re wasting time! Set ’em going there! Get into the game!”
But Wolcott’s test question had shown convincingly Laughlin’s incapacity. The coach was allowed to come on the field, and together they labored with the bewildered but stubborn fellow, who, like the famous Spartan captain, refused to retreat while the enemy was still before him.
Only when Poole and Ware were called in, and their personal appeal was added to the pleas of Wolcott and the coach, did the dazed captain give way, and allow his friends to lead him from the field. Wolcott, who had sometimes played on the right side, went over into Laughlin’s place, Butler succeeded Wolcott, and Conley replaced Bent.
“Lindsay will act as captain,” said the coach, as he left the field.
“Hold ’em, fellows, you can do it! Keep watch of that ball!” The new captain took naturally to his duties.
The Hillbury quarter tried the new guard, but Butler was fresh and strong, and determined to prove his value; he charged hard and quick, and the attack was thrown back as a sea wave from a cliff. Joslin was sent at Pope’s end; but Conley went through and shattered the interference, and Pope downed the sprinter before he had reached the line. Then the Hillbury full-back retired for a try at goal, and the Seaton guard on one side and tackle on the other sifted through the line and plunged upon him. The ball went wide; Durand, getting it safely, touched it behind the goal-line, and the team went back to the twenty-five-yard line. A sigh of relief, like the whisper of the wind, soughed audibly along the Seaton benches, as the ball was punted far up the field, and the play started once more in less dangerous territory.