“Maybe you’ll have another angle on it before we get through,” was all that Dick said in reply; and they set out.
As Dick had predicted, they were a little late; when they reached the streets they found them deserted. But they knew the location of the bridge, a mile back of the campus; and the mile was covered at a dog-trot.
Though they had been tardy for the assembling, they were in time for everything else. While the night was dark, the battlefield was luridly illuminated by flaring gasoline torches. The bridge was a modern concrete structure of a single long span over the small river; broad, and with footways at the sides protected by parapets breast-high. At either end was an ornamental portal arch, and it was upon this that the winning class was permitted to paint its year numerals.
When Larry and Dick arrived upon the scene, the Sophomores had taken possession of the bridge, and the Freshmen were massed in the road. Upperclassmen—Seniors for the Sophomores and Juniors for the Freshmen—were “frisking” the combatants for weapons. No fellow with good red blood in him would go into such a conflict armed; but in a bunch of six or eight hundred undergraduates there are always a few “yellows,” and they had to be searched.
As the Juniors in pairs searched the green caps, others followed with strips of white cloth to be worn on the arm as a distinguishing mark by the attackers. “Fair play!” was the oft-repeated caution of the upperclassmen; and dire punishment was promised to the fellows who should break this tradition.
Dick plunged into the thick of things as soon as he had been searched and marked; but Larry stood aside, grimly sizing up the situation. The first thing he remarked was the time-immemorial handicap of Freshman classes, namely, the lack of leadership which is the natural consequence in a body of fellows getting together for their first united effort. Wally Dixon, the big-voiced young Mechanical who had given Larry and Dick their joint nickname on the day of their arrival, was commanding and shouting and trying to bring some sort of order out of the chaos; but he was not making much headway.
The searching and marking finished, the upperclassmen laid down the iron-clad rules of the game. Slugging was prohibited, but anything less than a knock-out went. Prisoners could be taken by either side, but they had the privilege of escaping and rejoining their own side if they could. Time would not be called until one side or the other was clearly victorious.
When all was ready, the Freshmen made their first charge, with Dixon trying to get team play by forming his men into a flying wedge. Larry, from the half-back position into which he had mechanically dropped, saw at once that it was going to fail. The Sophomores were massed solidly all the way across the bridge, and the loosely-formed wedge doubled up like a handful of sand and went to pieces when it struck the obstacle.
For a shouting, ear-splitting five minutes there was a hilarious free-for-all, in which a dozen or more of the attackers were taken prisoner and shoved to the rear under guard. Then the defenders charged in their turn—good, old-fashioned mass play, this was—and drove the disorganized mob of Freshies off the bridge and a hundred yards or so up the road.
In the little lull which followed the return of the Sophomores to their stronghold, there was dazed confusion in the ranks of the defeated, with Dixon trying in vain to rally them into fighting shape again. Into the midst of things Dick Maxwell hurled himself like a human bombshell.