"I've got half of it done already," replied Peter. "Make it snappy." They were holding him up and he stopped to look over what he had written.
"Cambridge, Mass., November, 19—By Peter Neale—The Harvard worm turned into a snake dance. Tied by Penn State, beaten by Centre and by Princeton, the plucky Crimson eleven made complete atonement this afternoon when it won from Yale by a score of 10 to 3.
"Joy came in the evening. Harvard did all its scoring in the dusk of the final period. The Crimson backs showed that they were not afraid to go home in the dark.
"Charles K. Bullitt, quarterback, who weighs 156 pounds, earned most of the glory. In the past this slight young man has been valued chiefly for his head work. He is rather a delicate piece of thinking machinery and it has been the custom to guard him a little from the bumps of the game. His rôle has been like that of a chief of staff.
"The customary procedure is for Bullitt to peer calmly over the opposing lines and then make a suggestion to one of the bigger backs as to where it might be advisable for him to go. In general his acquaintance with the ball has been only a passing one. He is expected merely to fair catch punts and not to run them back. Indeed for the last two years Bullitt has fairly thought his way into a place on the Harvard team.
"But today the scholar in football suddenly became the man of action. He proved that he could function from the neck down. Standing at midfield, late in the third period, Bullitt received a punt from Aldrich. He switched his tactics. Instead of playing safe he began to run. Leaving his philosophic cloister, he plunged headlong into life. And it was life of the roughest sort, for Yale men were all about him. Fortunately for the little anchorite of the football field he had achieved a theory during his sheltered meditations and it worked. Whenever a Yale tackler approached him he thrust out one foot. And then, just to fool the foe, he took it away again.
"The zest of living gripped him and he went on and on over the chalk marks. It seemed to him that the rigors of existence had been overstated. Drunk with achievement he set no limit on his journey. But the Yale tacklers did.
"In the end the world was too much with him. Disillusion came in the form of two tacklers in blue who hurled themselves upon him. Their hands touched him and held tight. Down went Bullitt. The big stadium turned three complete revolutions before his eyes. Pinwheels danced. From a distance of approximately one million miles he heard thousands of people crying 'Harvard! Harvard! Harvard!' Curiously enough they were all whispering. And then he lost consciousness. After several quarts of water had been poured over Bullitt he came to. Dr. Nichols the physician of the Harvard team was standing over him. The doctor waited while Bullitt blinked a couple of times and then he propounded his stock questions which he always uses after a player has been knocked out. The test of rationality was, 'What day is it? Whom are you playing? And what's the score?' Dr. Nichols was gravity itself but Bullitt grinned and answered, 'It's Saturday, November nineteenth. We're playing Yale and the score is three to nothing against us but Harvard's going to get a touchdown damn soon.'
"Dr. Nichols gave it as his professional opinion that Bullitt was rational. Four minutes later as the Crimson swept over the line for a touchdown, he knew it."
Just as he finished rereading his story the wire chief came in and announced that he had the Bulletin looped up. Before Peter could hand him the copy Pat walked into the office. Peter felt just as he had done at the pier. He wanted to throw his arms around Pat. "It was wonderful, wasn't it?" he cried. "That's the greatest game I ever saw in my life."