Mr. Lindsay looked across the field at Laughlin and marvelled; he looked at Wolcott, whose place was nearer, and admired. Laughlin was ponderous and powerful, built for strength but also for slowness; Wolcott was alert, graceful even in his clumsy clothes, his face aglow with perfect health, his every movement showing physical strength, but the strength of the horse, not of the ox.
The referee lifted his arm: “Ready, Seaton?[4] Ready, Hillbury?”
The Seaton line-up. Line from left to right: Read, Hendry, Lindsay, Bullard, Laughlin, Bent, Pope; quarter-back, Jackson; half-backs, Wendt and Buist; full-back, Milliken.
The captains cast a final look behind them and nodded. The referee’s whistle sounded. Davis, who kicked off for Hillbury, dashed at the ball and sent it flying up to the Seaton ten-yard line, speeding after it with the whole heavy Hillbury line. Buist caught the ball, dropped it, picked it up again, and twisted his way behind the backs a dozen yards down the field. Here he went down on the ball with half a dozen upon him, and the first scrimmage was on.
The shouts died on Seaton lips as the partisans waited for the first prophetic play. They could not cheer, for their hearts were in their throats, and no one regarded the cheer leaders, and the cheer leaders regarded only the lines poised for the spring. Would the Seaton attack penetrate? Would Hillbury’s strong line hold? Wolcott, resting on his knee, with eyes fixed on the ball, waited for the signal. He knew what it was to be, for the plan had already been made to send the first assault beyond him, not on Laughlin’s side, where it would be expected. At the first number of the signal he was on his finger-tips and toes. As the ball moved he shot forward, caught the heavy man opposite with full momentum just as the latter was getting under way, and forced him back upon the line half. When, an instant later, Buist came smashing into the hole with the one hundred and eighty pounds of bone and muscle known as Milliken driving behind him, Wolcott, abandoning his man, swung round to meet the back, and holding him up with the aid of Milliken and Read, swept him on yard after yard until the Hillbury men finally dragged them all to the ground together. For the fraction of a second the two elevens became two squirming heaps and a connecting link—a heap where the ball had been, a heap where it now was, and a trail of prostrate bodies marking the route of advance.