Then, as he crouched in his place, he forgot Merriwell, forgot everything but the fact that he was back in the line again.
“Are you all ready?” asked the referee.
There was no reply. Only here and there a foot moved uneasily as weights were thrown forward, and there was a general, almost imperceptible, tightening of nerves and muscles.
Then the whistle shrilled.
Those who watched the game that day said afterward that, in all their experience, they had never seen such an amazing rallying on the part of any team as was shown by the Yale eleven during that last quarter.
Three minutes before they had gone off the field with dragging steps and gloomy, discouraged faces. The followers of the blue, who crowded the stands, felt a wave of despair sweep over them as they thought of what might happen in that last fifteen minutes. Many of them fully expected to see Princeton make another touchdown, if not two, and they waited with perfunctory, mechanical cheers, and swiftly ebbing spirit for the beginning of the end.
But the sudden, totally unexpected appearance of Hollister seemed to work almost a miracle.
Bob responded nobly. Never had he put up such a game before. Tireless, never failing, swift as lightning, with his brain in splendid working order, he seemed to be all over the field at once. Dodging, slipping through holes in the line where one would not have thought any advance possible, blocking, cutting off opposing runners, and interfering for runners of his own team, it seemed as if all the pent-up, thwarted energy of the last few days of deprivation was being poured out now in this brief, brilliant exhibition.
His work thrilled the other men with a new hope, and stirred them to fresh endeavor, so that they were with him heart and soul; and the pigskin was rushed down the field swiftly and irresistibly, until the forty-yard line was reached.
Here the orange-and-black fellows seemed to recover, and, rallying, presented such a solid line that two downs brought barely six yards; and Yale had to resort to a drop kick, which sent the ball forward thirty yards, but gave it to Princeton.