The quarter back ripped out a rapid signal which Bob could not hear perfectly; the ball was snapped back; there was a bewildering, lightninglike, intricate pass. Hollister gasped. It was his improved crisscross play, the last thing he had worked out before he had left the team.
The pigskin seemed to leap from one man to another like a thing endowed with life. For a minute he lost track of it, and then he caught his breath swiftly as Merriwell sprang out of the mêlée, the pigskin tucked under his arm, and raced over the turf as if he were as fresh as the moment he had first set foot on the field.
The Princeton crowd was taken by surprise. The pass had been so cleverly made that most of them thought the ball was being sent around the other end, and there was a surging rush in that direction, which left a comparatively free field for Dick.
Too late they saw their error and trailed after him.
There were but two men between him and the coveted goal. He could easily outdistance the first, who was a little to one side, but the full back would have to be dodged.
As he ran, he watched the man keenly, wondering just what trick he would have to bring into play to get away from him. The fellow stood alertly on his toes, watching, waiting, ready to spring to one side or the other, as the case might be.
Dick came on without slackening his speed, swerved suddenly to the right, whirled, darted the other way, and all in such a brief moment that to this day Princeton’s full back hasn’t the least notion of how he was fooled. He only knew that by the time he had turned Dick was a dozen feet away, speeding on toward the goal.
The next instant the full back gave a grunt of triumph and stretched himself, for the Yale man suddenly staggered, tried wildly to recover, and then fell full length to the sod.
A groan of horror went up from the stands, followed by deathlike stillness.
Then, to the amazement of the onlookers, they saw that, instead of lying where he had fallen, Merriwell spun end over end, and the next instant he was on his feet again. But he ran with an appreciable limp.