“If we can keep it up,” said Frank, “we may change the complexion of things.”
All Boston seemed football crazy, for the time, at least. Blue and crimson were the colors everywhere. At noon people began turning toward Soldiers’ Field, that colossal rectangle where the battle was to take place. The work of the ticket-takers began as the spectators came dribbling in. It was a tiny rivulet at first, then a brook, then a stream, then a river, then a rushing, roaring flood.
Inside the seats of the stadium gradually became covered with all sorts of wraps and all colors of ribbons. There were pretty girls in crimson sweaters, and just as pretty ones wearing Yale blue. There were men with flags and with their colors pinned to their coats. By one-thirty it seemed that the great stand was filled, but there was not the slightest decrease in the steady flow of people rolling inward from the four corners of the field.
The college men poured in and gathered in compact masses, Yale on the east and Harvard on the west. They were exuberant and overflowing with life, and they were armed with megaphones.
It was near two o’clock, when, of a sudden, the Harvard men sent up a long, roaring yell, that sounded like the call of a lion to battle. In an instant, from the opposite side of the arena, the Yale bloodhounds began to bay. The dull tramping of the oncoming host could be heard no longer. In the midst of the uproar came the lilt of far-away songs. The pulsing beat of a drum was borne to the ear. The megaphones blared and roared and lapsed to silence at times. In those brief intervals the strong wind could be heard playing amid the sea of waving pennons with a sound like the humming bow-strings on a battle-field of old. The blood throbbed and leaped in the veins, and the excitement and expectancy of the hour was intoxicating.
In front of this vast and heaving concourse was the level field of battle, marked with white lines, like the ribs of a skeleton.
It was exactly five minutes past two when the roaring suddenly broke forth with fury it had not hitherto attained, and onto the field suddenly came the gladiators who were to struggle for the supremacy. Shaggy and lion-maned, they were armored and prepared for the terrible battle that was impending. And all eyes were turned upon them, while the college men stood up and waved their colors and roared and roared again. That great mass of human beings broke out into a flutter of crimson and blue color. Amid those men who came out thus upon the field was one for whom the eyes of two-thirds of the college men and football cranks within that enclosure searched. The cheering lulled, and a Yale man shrieked:
“There he is! There’s Frank Merriwell!”
What a sound followed, coming from the throats of that gathering of Yale students. It was a note of greeting, exultation, and joy! The man on whom it seemed that their hopes centered had trotted onto the field with the others. There was no longer a doubt but it was a trick, all this business of Merriwell having been severely injured. The preliminary practise began. Men fell to chasing the ball about and falling on it. There was some signal-practise, and then:
“The game is going to begin!”