"Dalzell and I can stand hard work and pounding whenever you get ready to put it on us," Dave announced to Hepson. "Don't try to spare us any. Both of us would sooner be carried away on stretchers than see the Navy lose its first game to a minor college."
The game was resumed. For ten minutes the Navy played mainly on the defensive. Indeed, to the spectators it seemed all that the middies could do against such big fellows as the visitors.
Just after that, however, Hepson passed the silent signal, and then the midshipmen hurled themselves into the fray to test out all the endurance that the Hanniston players might possess.
Many a college boy on the opposing line wondered where these smaller men in the Navy togs had obtained all the fight that they now showed. The big fellows didn't seem able to stand it long. The Navy had the ball, and now slowly fought down toward the college goal. Onlookers in the Navy seats began to stand up, to watch breathlessly, and be ever ready to cheer.
"Hurl little Darry in!" yelled someone hoarsely in a momentary lull in the noise.
But Hepson, watching every chance with tigerish eyes, was yet cool-headed, as a football general should be. Twice he used Darrin to advance the ball, and each time Dave gained a few yards. The third time, wearied by pounding his head against a human stone wall, Dave failed to gain more than half a yard. Watchful Hepson sent the ball, after the next snap-back, over to the Navy's right.
The time of the second half was slipping away, and it now looked as though the middies might gradually have won by the steady, bull-dog quality of their tactics.
Nearer and nearer to the college goal line the team of smaller men fought the pigskin, until at last they had it within six yards of the Hanniston fortress. But at this point the visitors stayed further progress long enough to have the pigskin ovoid come to them by a block.
The situation was desperate. Hanniston could not get the ball away from its present locality, and in dread the college captain sent the ball back of his own line to a safety.
This counted two for Annapolis, but it also set the ball back twenty-five yards from the college line.