When the team entered, bedlam broke loose. Every student stood on his chair, waved his arms, slapped his neighbor on the back or hugged him wildly, threw his hat in the air, if he had one--and, so great was his training, keeping an eye on the cheer-leader, who was on the platform going through a series of indescribable contortions. Suddenly he straightened up, held his hands above his head again, and shouted through his megaphone: "A regular cheer for the team--a regular cheer for the team. Make it big--BIG! Ready--!" Away whirled the megaphone, and he went through exactly the same performance that he had used before in conducting the regular cheer. Gifford looked like an inspired madman, but he knew exactly what he was doing. The students cheered lustily, so lustily that some of them were hoarse the next day. They continued to yell after the cheer was completed, ceasing only when Gifford signaled for silence. Then there were speeches by each member of the team, all enthusiastically applauded, and finally the speech of the evening, that of the coach, Jack Price. He was a big, compactly built man with regular features, heavy blond hair, and pale, cold blue eyes. He threw off his coat with a belligerent gesture, stuck his hands into his trousers pockets, and waited rigidly until the cheering had subsided. Then he began: "Go ahead and yell. It's easy as hell to cheer here in the gym; but what are you going to do Saturday afternoon?" His voice was sharp with sarcasm, and to the shouts of "Yell! Fight!" that came from all over the gymnasium, he answered, "Yeah, maybe--maybe." He shifted his position, stepping toward the front of the platform, thrusting his hands deeper into his pockets. "I've seen a lot of football games, and I've seen lots of rooters, but this is the goddamndest gang of yellow-bellied quitters that I've ever seen. What happened last Saturday when we were behind? I'm asking you; what happened? You quit! Quit like a bunch of whipped curs. God! you're yellow, yellow as hell. But the team went on fighting--and it won, won in spite of you, won for a bunch of yellow pups. And why? Because the team's got guts. And when it was all over, you cheered and howled and serpentined and felt big as hell. Lord Almighty! you acted as if you'd done something." His right hand came out of his pocket with a jerk, and he extended a fighting, clenched fist toward his breathless audience. "I'll tell you something," he said slowly, viciously; "the team can't win alone day after to-morrow. _It can't win alone!_ You've got to fight. Damn it! _You've got to fight!_ Raleigh's good, damn good; it hasn't lost a game this season--and we've got to win, _win_! Do you hear? We've got to win! And there's only one way that we can win, and that's with every man back of the team. Every goddamned mother's son of you. The team's good, but it can't win unless you fight--_fight_!"