The ball lay inside the ten-yard line, within the sacred zone. In a moment, no longer eliminated, but close to the breathing mass, he was at the back of his own men, shrieking and imploring: "Get the jump, Yale!" "Throw them back, Yale!" "Fight 'em back!" "You've got to, Yale--you've got to!" Then, again and again, the same perfected grinding surge of the complete machine: three yards, two yards, two yards, and he was underneath the last mass, desperately blocking off some one who held the vital ball, hoping against hope, blind with the struggle, saying to himself: "It isn't a touchdown! It can't be! We've stopped them! It's Yale's ball!" Some one was squirming down through the gradually lightening mass. A great weight went from his back, and suddenly he saw the face of the referee seeking the exact location of the ball. "What is it?" he asked wildly. "Touchdown." Some one dragged him to his feet, and, unnoticing, he leaned against him, gazing at the ball that lay just over the goal-line, seeing with almost a bull-like rage the Princeton substitutes frantically capering up and down the line, hugging one another, agitating their blankets, turning somersaults. "Line up, Yale," said the captain's unyielding voice, "this is only the beginning. We'll get 'em." But Stover knew better. The burst of anger past, his head cleared. That Princeton team was going to score again, by the same process, playing on his weakness, exchanging punts, hoping to block one of his until within striking distance, and the size of the score would depend on how long he could stand it off. "Goal," came the referee's verdict, and with it another roar from somewhere. He went up the field looking straight ahead, hearing, like a sound in a memory, a song of jubilation and the brassy accompaniment of a band. Again the same story: ten, fifteen yards gained on every exchange of kicks, and a slow retrogression toward their own goal. Time and again they flung themselves against a stronger line, in a vain effort to win back the last yards. Once, in a plunge through center, he found an opening, and went plunging along for ten yards; but at the last the ball was Princeton's on the thirty-five-yard line, and a second irresistible march bore Yale back, fighting and frantic over the line for the second score. Playing became an instinct with him. He no longer feared the soaring punts that came tumbling to him from the clouds. His arms closed around them like tentacles, and he was off for the meager yards he could gain before he went down with a crash. He no longer felt the shock of the desperate tackles he was called on to make, nor the stifling pressure above him when he flung himself under the serried legs of the mass. He had but one duty--to be true to what he had promised Tompkins: not to fumble, not to miss a tackle, to get each punt off clean. All at once, as he was setting in position, a body rushed in, seizing the ball. "Time!"