An opening? No, he was mistaken. Instead, the Blues were massing there by the Goal. Bitterly he swore. Under his arm he tightened the ball. He ran! What? They were trying to tackle? "Damn you!" he cried, in boiling anger. "I'll--I'll show you a trick or two--yet!" He stopped, circled, dodged the clutching hands, feinted with a tactic long unthought of, and broke into a straight, resistless dash for the posts. As he ran, he yelled: "_Smash_ them--and--break _through!_ . ....." All his waning strength upgathered for that run. Yet how strangely tired he felt--how heavy the ball was growing! What was the matter with his head? With his right arm? They both ached hideously. He must have got hurt, some way, in one of the "downs." Some dirty work, somewhere. Rotten sport! He ran. Never in all his many games had he seen such peculiar gridiron, all tangled and overgrown. Never, such host of tackles. Hundreds of them! Where were the Crimsons? What? No support, no interference? Hell! Yet the Goal was surely just there, now right ahead. He ran. "Foul!" he shouted savagely, as a Blue struck at him, then another and another, and many more. The taste of blood came to his tongue. He spat. "Foul!" Right and left he dashed them, with a giant's strength. They scattered in panic, with strange and unintelligible cries. "The goal!" He reached it. And, as he crossed the line, he fell. "_Down_, down!" sobbed he. CHAPTER XXVI BEATRICE DARES An hour later, Stern and Beatrice sat weak and shaken in their stronghold on the fifth floor, resting, trying to gather up some strength again, to pull together for resistance to the siege that had set in. With the return of reason to the engineer--his free bleeding had somewhat checked the onset of fever--and of consciousness to the girl, they began to piece out, bit by bit, the stages of their retreat. Now that Stern had barricaded the stairs, two stories below, and that for a little while they felt reasonably safe, they were able to take their bearings, to recall the flight, to plan a bit for the future, a future dark with menace, seemingly hopeless in its outlook. "If it--hadn't been for you," Beatrice was saying, "if you hadn't picked me up and carried me, when that stone struck, I--I--" "How's the ache now?" Stern hastily interrupted, in a rather weak yet brisk voice, which he was trying hard to render matter-of-fact. "Of course the lack of water, except that half-pint or so, to bathe your bruise with, is a rank barbarity. But if we haven't got any, we haven't--that's all. All--till we have another go at 'em!" "Oh, Allan!" she exclaimed, tremulously. "Don't think of _me!_ Of me, when your back's gashed with a spear-cut, your head's battered, arm pierced, and we've neither water nor bandages--nothing of any kind to treat your wounds with!"