As though in weariness it sinks to rest,
And one by one the glowing lamps go out.
So flutter all the little weary souls
In trembling dreams a moment and are still;
The school is wrapped in darkness; on the shoals
The tide turns; night enfolds the silent hill.
*********
The day of the game turned out bright and fair, after a dull gray morning, with ozone and freshness in the nippy air of early November. Recitations of a sort were held in the morning, though to be sure most of the masters fell into reminiscent vein and àpropos of nothing at all told their classes stories of the bygone heroes of the School—of Nifty Turner’s mighty kick and Pard’s immortal run from the enemy’s ten-yard line. Mr. Roylston alone had the ability and the temerity to hold his form down to an unrelieved discussion of the sequence of tenses in Cæsar and mercilessly put Kit Wilson into detention for misconstruing an obvious Imperfect with the remark, “I guess to-day it is an Historical Present.” Kit served his detention and passed into history.
The team, including Tony in a brand-new red sweater with a gorgeous black “D” across the breast, were excused from school at noon, and had dinner in the Refectory with the Boxfordians, who had coached across the hills in the morning. By two o’clock the teams were on the field, passing footballs, catching punts and kicking goals in regulation fashion.
The boys poured out of the Schoolhouse after two o’clock call-over, and crowded the side lines, while the faculty and their wives and distinguished visitors from Boxford and Monday Port filled the line of wooden bleachers which had been run up the day before.
Doctor Forester and the Head Master of Boxford walked up and down within the lines, repeating the same amiable courtesies and remarks about the weather and the view and the condition of the teams that they had made for years, as though this were the first instead of the twentieth struggle in which Deal and Boxford had been engaged. It was a specially important game, as the score in games between the two schools was a tie.
The present scribe, who was not a football player, cannot undertake to describe that eventful game in technical language. The intricacies of formation and mass play were beyond his humble abilities at school, as he has no doubt they are to the majority of people who nevertheless follow the game with as keen interest as if they knew it. That is to say, it is inconceivable to him, that anything could be quite as exciting to a Deal boy or a Kingsbridge man as to see his school or college team pressing nearer and nearer the coveted goal, or to watch a fleet-footed boy dodge through a broken field, sprint as though the fate of empires hung upon his fleetness, and sprawl gloriously at last behind the enemy’s line on top of the ball. The technically curious are referred to Vol. LX, No. 2 of the Deal Literary Magazine, where they will find a more accurate account than they certainly will find in the pages of this chronicle. They will miss there, however, an incident, which impresses the scribe as having been the most important of the game.
Suffice it, the ball was kicked off at three o’clock by the Boxford center, and went sailing down the field into the arms of Sandy Maclaren on the ten-yard line, and eleven blue-garbed Boxfordians went chasing after it lipity-cut. Here one described a graceful parabola as his knees encountered the hardy back of Arthur Chapin, another went flying off involuntarily in a reverse direction as he caught Deering’s hand in his ribs, but one, surer than the rest, dived for a tackle and laid Sandy low just as he was crossing the thirty-yard line. Cheers rang out indiscriminately from both sides of the field, until the scattered teams had run together, and, kneeling face to face, with hands clenched, faces grimly set, the muscles a-quiver, waited while Kid Drayton, Deal’s little quarter-back, gave the signals in his high shrill voice, “Forty-nine, eleven, sixteen.” Then the ball was snapped, and Chapin, the half-back, was hurled through a hole in Boxford’s line for a gain of seven yards. Once, twice, thrice, the Deal boys made their distance to the indescribable joy of their supporters. Then the Boxford team, recovering from the unexpected strength of the first onslaught, stiffened and became as a stone wall, and held Deal for three downs, so that Thorndyke, the full-back, dropped behind for a kick. The oval went spinning through the air, Tony speeding away almost under it, dodging the player who tried to intercept him, so that as the Boxford half leaned back to catch the ball, he downed him in his tracks. For the first time Tony heard the Sis, Boom, Ah! of the rippling cheer ring out with his own name tacked on to the end of it.