“It’s the usual warning that there are only three minutes more to play,” he explained.
Three minutes! Why, it couldn’t be possible. There must be some hideous mistake! Only three minutes before the game ended—and Landon one point ahead! That meant, unless some miracle took place, Bloss was beaten—beaten because a girl had asked a man to forget honor for her sake.
She had no watch. Yet she must time the game to its bitter end. The torture of waiting constantly for the final whistle, without knowing what moment it might come, was too great a strain to bear. Already her heart was pounding——
With a sudden inspiration, she dropped the finger tips of her right hand upon the pulse of the other wrist. The normal heartbeat was a little over seventy, wasn’t it? That meant practically a surge of the artery for every second.
She began to count—one, two, three, four, five, and so on up to the end of the first minute. Out on the floor, the ten players were scurrying here and there like frightened ants, apparently without aim or purpose, but in reality dodging and running with preconceived plans. But neither team scored again. Nor did Vern stand out conspicuously in the playing.
The second minute measured itself by her pulse beats. Now and then, during some tense moment, her fingers pressed so hard that she lost the steady throb-throb of the wrist. But she knew within a second or two when the final minute of play began.
The antlike players shifted toward the Bloss goal. They were almost constantly within throwing distance now, and one accurate toss would win. A dozen times the chance seemed to have come, but always there was some blocking Landon opponent.
“Fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four,” Hazel went on mechanically. Then, with a convulsive start, she realized what the figures meant. They were the final grains of sand in the hourglass. Her finger tips shook free of the wrist, and it was three seconds before they pressed the pulse again.
“Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty,” she resumed her counting, and lost the next beat as her heart stopped with the shock of apprehensive fear. Then she laughed with nervous relief. Sixty pulse beats weren’t quite a minute; there were from ten to fifteen still to record before the final whistle.
The ten players bunched just below the balcony, in front of the Bloss goal. As if realizing that the game depended upon their work during the next few seconds, they roused themselves above their natural speed and skill.