Yet, strange to say, though the upper middlers now found conditions exactly to their liking, the line plunges, which had been successful before, suddenly failed. Every attack that penetrated the line seemed to meet three men in the secondary defence. Big Ames glanced over the heads of his two opponents and yelled: “Referee! referee! they’re playing thirteen men!”
The line, and the crescent of supporters behind it, took up the cry. The crescent contracted, and meeting the line of seniors, enclosed the players and cut off escape. The two centres knelt at the ball, gazing at each other through sweat-dimmed eyes, while the officials counted. The senior uniforms numbered twelve!
“Referee! referee! they’re playing thirteen men!” [Page 44].
Groans and taunts greeted this discovery. The senior team was reduced to the normal number, elbow room was won by the use of elbows, and the play went on. Two tackles developed such a mutual interest that they disregarded the game altogether and devoted their energies during every scrimmage exclusively to each other. Each was goaded on by a troop of ardent backers. The ring of spectators narrowed and thickened and heaved and sputtered. Ambitious volunteers sprang in behind and lent a hand in pushing or in staying the enemy’s charge. In the increasing confusion, a loud voice shouted “Game’s over!” In a twinkling began a stampede for the possession of the ball, a confused running and pushing and swarming. The football bladder burst in the mêlée; all that the outnumbering upper middlers carried away was the collapsed cover of the much-tormented ball.
In spite of the assertion of spectators of all classes that the senior-upper middler game had been the most enjoyable event of the school year, Sam was not wholly content to have his serious efforts turned into a joke. Duncan, who was manager of the senior team, likewise strongly disapproved of the course of things, and vowed that he should protest the game. Together they talked it over in the second spontaneous conversation of the year, in which Peck took great pains to deny that there had been any intention of putting twelve men into the field against eleven.
The next morning the whole school were treated to a chapel lecture on the extreme impropriety of their conduct on the field the day before, and to an exposition of the irreparable injury caused thereby to the dignity and fair fame of the institution. At the same time the game was declared null and void, and command was issued that it be replayed. The ruling as to the game the boys accepted as reasonable; the invective against their rowdyism served but to sweeten the recollection of an hour when they had actually enjoyed sport for sport’s sake.
CHAPTER VI
A BONE OF CONTENTION
The game was played again under prescribed conditions, and the upper middlers won once more, this time in consequence of practice gained in playing together, by good use of the forward pass, and through Kendrick’s splendid plunges and fast runs. In fact, Kendrick was easily the hero of the game. Late in the season as it was, the coach took him immediately on to the school eleven as a substitute back, and as luck would have it, he got his S by slipping into the unfortunate Hillbury game at the very end. Of this we shall speak later or not at all. Sam Archer too, in much less conspicuous fashion, won credit in the class match, though the senior centre got under him several times and carried him off on his back. Big Ames of baseball fame played with his usual ungainly determination, and a fellow named Mulcahy was much in evidence during the game.