"Mr. Referee, it isn't time. Mr. Referee—"
"Game's over," said Captain Dana's still voice. "Get together, Yale. Cheer for Princeton now. Make it a good one!"
But no one heard them in the uproar that suddenly went up. Nature could not hold out; the disappointment had been too severe. Stover stood with his arms on Regan's shoulders, and together they bowed their heads and went choking through the crowd. Others rushed around him—he thought he heard Tompkins saying something. He seemed lost in the crowd that stared at him, struggling to hold back his grief. Only one figure stood out distinctly—the figure of a white-haired man, who took off his hat to him as he went through the barrier, and shouted something unintelligible—a strangely excited white-haired man.
All the way back to the gymnasium, through the jubilant street, Dink sat staring out unseeing, his eyes blurred, a great lump in his throat, possessed by a fatigue such as he had never known before. No one spoke. Through his own brain ceaselessly the score, strangely jumbled, went its tiring way:
"Eighteen to nothing—to nothing! Eighteen to six—it should have been eighteen to six. Eighteen to nothing. It's awful—awful! If I only could punt!"
His ideal, his dream of a Yale team, had always been of victory, not like this, to go down powerless, swept aside, routed—to such a defeat!
Then he shut his eyes, fighting over again those last desperate rushes against defeat, against hope, against time, unable to believe it was over.
"How many times did I take that ball?" he thought wearily. "Was it seven or eight? If I'd only got free that last time—kept my feet!"
He remembered flashes of that last frenzy—the face of a Princeton rusher who reached for him and missed, the teeth savage as a wolf's and the strained mouth. He saw again Regan turning around to pull him through, Regan, the brute, raging like a fury. He remembered the quick, strange white looks that Charlie De Soto had given him, wondering each time if he had the strength to go on. Why had they stopped them? They had a right to that last rally!