Nevertheless Frank and the other managers felt that Mellor had made so good a showing that nobody would suspect that he had disobeyed regulations and unfitted himself for making the contest.
As might be expected, there was a big chorus of shouting when the Yale and Harvard teams came out for their trial in the tug of war.
Matters had been running rather evenly between the four colleges; each had gained at least one first place, and there was no reason for the friends of any college to be discouraged about the general result.
The Harvard men seemed to be as fresh after their victory over Cornell as if they had not exerted themselves.
They appeared to have about the same weight as the Yale crew, and were made up in much the same way; a particularly heavy man as anchor, and three lighter but evidently very muscular fellows upon the rope.
It had been decided that the fall should be at a pistol shot.
As there are several ways of conducting a tug of war, it will be well to explain that in intercollegiate games, when held indoors, the contestants always brace themselves upon cleats.
The rope which they hold lies loose upon the floor between the two teams. At a point midway between the two sets of cleats there is a chalk mark on the floor.
A ribbon is tied around the rope at the point where it crosses this mark.
When the men have fallen it is their object to pull the rope away from their opponents, and so bring that ribbon further and further toward their cleats.
In a closely contested match it sometimes happens that the position of the ribbon will not vary more than two or three inches during the entire tug.
The time is taken, and at the end of four minutes the victory is awarded to whichever team has the ribbon upon its side of the chalk mark.
In this pull with Harvard, Frank's training proved to be of the greatest value. He had laid the greatest stress upon the fall.
When the pistol shot came the Yale team dropped like one man to the general eye.
It seemed as if the Harvard team dropped at exactly the same instant, but when the excited spectators looked at the ribbon on the rope, they saw that it was fully six inches upon the Yale side of the chalk mark.
After the fall there was a silent moment of hard tugging upon each part, but the ribbon did not budge.