"Touchdown! Touchdown for Bellport!" howled the enthusiasts, while the dazed Columbia team crawled out of the scrimmage and wondered how it had happened. So, too, did some of the Bellport players themselves wonder, for the play had come like a flash from a clear sky. The goal was easily kicked, tying the score, and then the big crowd sat up and wondered what would come next. "It's going to be a hot game all right!" was the general verdict. "Here's where we beat you, Columbia!" called a Bellport supporter, as he turned to Buster with a grin on his face. "Oh we've got you in a hole dead sure. We've got your number." "Oh, have you!" retorted Buster. "Wait. Don't count your chickens until they're out of the woods." After the kick-off there followed some line smashing tactics on both sides. Once Bellport was penalized for off-side play, and once Columbia lost the ball for holding in the line. Bellport was later penalized ten yards for a second offense in off-side work, and then the players seemed to realize the importance of being careful, and they got down to business. How they ever stood the smashing, banging tactics, the fierce tackling, the eager runs, the line bucking, the giving and taking, only one who has played football, and who knows the fierce joy of the game, can understand. Nervous women cried out in alarm as they saw the struggling mass and heap of boyish humanity. There were several times when the play had to be stopped to allow the dashing of cold water over some unlucky chap, to bring him out of a half faint, and the number of lads who lost their wind, and had to have it pumped into them by artificial respiration was many. But no one was seriously hurt, though Coddling had to leave the field because of a broken finger and Harper was replaced at the Columbia right guard because he was so disabled from a fierce piling-on of players that he was useless in the line. Ten minutes more to play, and the score tied! Back and forth the players had surged, up and down the field, now kicking, now plunging into each other's line, now circling the ends. It was the most fiercely contested game that had ever been played in the league. The Columbia-Clifford contest was as nothing to it. "Hold 'em, Tigers! Don't let 'em score again! Rip out another touchdown! Go at 'em!" How the cohorts of Columbia begged and pleaded! No less did the friends of Bellport. A touchdown, a field goal, or a safety for either side now would win the game and the championship. Which would it be? To which side would it go. A thousand admirers of either team asked those questions. Bellport had the ball, and had, by a smashing rush, carried it three yards through Columbia's line. It was on the latter's forty-yard line now, but it had been there before, and had not advanced much farther. That last attack, though, had had power behind it. "Look out!" warned Frank. "They may do us!"