It cost them a good deal of effort to keep it.
About a minute had passed since the fall, when the Harvard anchor suddenly gave his men the word, and leaned far back upon the floor.
It was a mighty tug. Slowly but apparently surely the ribbon moved toward the Harvard cleats.
Bruce caught the end of the rope in a knot, and muttered:
"Hold hard!"
The boys did hold hard, but in spite of that the rope gradually slipped through their hands.
"It can't last long," whispered Bruce, "keep cool."
A few seconds of such mighty tugging was indeed all that any team could stand, and presently the Harvard men rested, having gained three or four inches.
To many of the spectators it seemed now as if the ribbon was even with the chalk mark, and the Harvard crew were setting tip wild cries of triumph.
The Yale team, however, had been lying low. Bruce and his men had simply resisted the Harvard tug like so much dead weight, and the instant that the Yale anchor saw that the Harvard team had come to rest lie exclaimed: