Frank Armstrong, Drop Kicker

by Matthew M. Colton

And the Warwick team did its best to follow this cannibalistic advice. Taking up the former smashing game, Warwick quickly carried the ball far down the field, but just when Queen's was beginning to settle desperately to work, a fumble in the Warwick back field, which was recovered by Queen's, relieved the strain and Wheeler sent the sphere spinning back down the field.

Warwick, nothing daunted, with the same old methods, came back as determinedly as ever. Queen's seemed unable to stop them anywhere excepting once inside their own 10-yard line at the urgings of the stands, when the line stood up to its work like heroes and threw the Warwick runner back on the last down for a loss and took the ball; and once again when an onside kick was partially blocked and the ball recovered by Jimmy Turner.

Warwick had played so desperately hard to overcome the Queen's lead, that they were tiring perceptibly as the minutes went on. They had carried the ball two or three times the length of the field if all their gains were counted, but just when distance counted most, down by the Queen's goal, something would go wrong. Not only the Warwick bodies but their spirits were lagging, and they were as glad as the players of Queen's when the whistle blew to end the half. The score had not been changed and the hopes of the Queen's followers, as well as those of the team itself, had risen wonderfully.

The two teams trudged off rather slowly to their dressing rooms to be sponged off and talked to and rested during the fifteen minutes of intermission, leaving behind them a babel of talk on both sides of the field, interrupted every now and then by a school song or a series of cheers from one side or the other. It was all most friendly between the halves. Queen's boys and Warwick boys tumbled down from the stands and hobnobbed with each other. Queen's was jubilant, while in every Warwick boy's face one could read plainly: "Wait and see what we'll do in the second half."

The intermission passed rapidly. The appearance of the big Maroon players was the signal for a roar from the Warwick stands, broken into immediately by a like demonstration from Queen's when the blue-stockinged boys trotted onto the field from the opposite end, as spry-looking as if they had not gone through a hard half. Little time was lost in preliminaries. The Warwick captain, who had the kick-off, slapped his hands together and shouted confidently to his team-mates to "follow the ball hard." Down the field the Queen's players were scattered in defensive array, grim and defiant.

"Ready, Captain Wheeler?" cried the referee. Wheeler waved his hand as a signal that he was.

"Ready, Captain Burns?" The stands were so quiet that Burns' answer—"All ready, sir!"—could be plainly heard. The whistle shrilled sharply, the ball flew in a long curve down the field, settling in Turner's arms, who, after covering ten yards, was slammed to the earth. The last half of that memorable battle was on.

During the intermission, the Codfish, Lewis and David had squeezed themselves onto the sacred benches of the substitutes as near as they could get to Frank, and the four boys, with muscles stiffening at each crash of the lines, watched the tide of battle swing up and down the gridiron.

Warwick played furiously at the beginning, and although, as in the first half, they lost valuable territory by fumbles and misplays, gradually Burns steadied his team. After a particularly disastrous fumble, taking the ball at their own 35-yard line, Burns' Maroon-stockinged warriors began a great advance. Four and five yards were reeled off at every clip, and once when there was danger of being held Burns worked a beautiful forward pass for twenty yards. Warwick was now on Queen's 23-yard line, and their football machine was working with deadly precision.

"Now we have them!" yelled Burns jubilantly. "Squeeze that ball, you backs, and make it go!" The signal was snapped out, there was a crash of meeting bodies and Burns himself, with his head down, bored through the line like a drill until he met Wheeler and Jimmy; but when the pile which followed was pulled apart, the ball was five yards nearer the Queen's goal line.