Yale's defense stiffened and made her opponent's going become harder. With five yards to go for a first down, the Harvard quarter and his right end executed a neat forward pass which put the ball on Yale's twelve-yard line directly opposite the posts, and one smash at right tackle put it three yards nearer the goal line.

"Touchdown! touchdown! touchdown!" begged the Harvard stand.

"Hold 'em, hold 'em, hold 'em!" pleaded Yale, but the pleading was of no avail, for that splendid Harvard team, working like a well-oiled piece of machinery, drove on and over their opponents till the ball lay only three yards away from the goal. A touchdown seemed inevitable.

Captain Baldwin drew his men together in a little group and exhorted them to such good purpose that the next charge was stopped dead in its tracks. Again the lines faced each other, again came the crash of body meeting body. The Harvard back with the ball tucked under his arm shot off to the left, slipped inside his own tackle and was clear of the first line of defense. But as he straightened up from his running crouching position, Turner met him with a bull-like rush, picked him clear off his feet and threw him with such violence that the ball flew from his grasp and bounced crazily along the ground in the direction of the goal. Man after man took a diving shot at it as it rolled until the turf was covered with sprawling figures. Finally the ball disappeared beneath a mass of bodies which the referee slowly dug apart and found—Frank Armstrong wrapped around the ball in a loving embrace!

"Yale's ball," was the silent announcement of the scoreboard, but never was an announcement before or since greeted with such a yell.

From that moment the tide of battle turned. Porter got off a long, low twisting punt which caught the Harvard backfield man napping. He made a desperate effort to reach it, but although he got his hands on the ball he could not hold it, and was swept away by a blue avalanche. When the smoke cleared away, Captain Baldwin was lying on the ball on Harvard's forty-yard line. Before the teams could line up again, the whistle blew to end the quarter and the teams changed ends of the field.

Three minutes later the game was on again, this time with Yale the aggressor and Harvard on the defensive. Conditions of the first quarter were reversed and now it was Yale, the team fighting like one man, who was pushing her opponents steadily down the field. Held at the thirty-yard line with three yards to go for a first down, the Yale quarter sent a pretty forward pass to Armstrong who made a beautiful catch and was not downed till he was run out of bounds at the fifteen-yard line. Pandemonium reigned among the Yale hosts, and the cheer-leaders tried vainly to get a unison cheer. The crowd would not look but kept their eyes glued on the play.

Now it was Yale's turn to call for a touchdown, and the tiered thousands did it right lustily, but unfortunately, for their hopes, a bad pass on the next play lost five yards and Turner was stopped on the next attempt.

"Armstrong back!" cried the quarter.

Frank left his place at end and took up his position fifteen yards back of the line of scrimmage, measuring carefully the distance to the goal posts, thirty-five yards away, while the crowd waited in breathless silence. The lines crouched tense and ready. The ball shot back from Biddle on a long pass to Frank but it came so low that he had almost to pick it from the ground. Quick as a flash he straightened up, dropped the ball to the ground, and drove his toe against it as it rose again. Away it spun on its course, while the eyes of forty thousand people strained after its flight. But luck was against Yale that day. The ball, traveling straight and true, had not been given quite enough power. It struck the cross-bar, bounced high in the air and fell back into the playing field where a Harvard back pounced upon it. Harvard punted on the kick-out over forty-five yards and after several exchanges without result, the half ended and the tired players tramped slowly off to the Locker House to be told by the coaches why they had not done their work just right.

Fifteen minutes later the game was on again, but not with its first fierceness. No human beings could continue the pace set in that first half, and the play settled into a punting duel between Porter and his opponent, with neither team able to gain much by straight rushing. Both tried forward passes but with a few exceptions they failed for one reason or another. The quarter passed without either team threatening the other's goal, and predictions were beginning to be made that barring accidents the game would be a tie.

Five minutes after the fourth period began, a fumbled punt by the Yale quarter and a recovery by an alert Harvard end shifted the battle with jarring suddenness into Yale territory, with Yale on the defensive. Again the Harvard machine began to work with its first smoothness and down, down they drove the ball in spite of a desperate defense.

Held at the ten-yard line, the Harvard quarter, who in the early season had been heralded as a great drop-kicker but who had shown nothing of his ability in late games, dropped back ten or twelve yards behind his line and put the ball between the posts with neatness and dispatch. When the tumult, which the field goal had brought to pass in the Harvard stands, quieted down again Yale set out to win back the points lost. But it seemed like a hopeless task, for Harvard, with victory in sight met every effort, and stopped it.

Time was flying, and many of the Harvard people, feeling assured of Harvard's victory, were filing out of the stands. Yale supporters stayed on, hoping against hope, for only five minutes were left to play.

Suddenly the Yale quarter changed his tactics. Catching the Harvard backs in a favorable position for the play, he snapped a forward pass to Armstrong who caught it and made the middle of the field on a dodging run, where he was brought down from behind. The gain brought hope back to drooping Yale spirits, and a cheer rattled across the field. Immediately on the heels of this successful pass, which drew out the Harvard defense, he sent Turner into the line and added another eight yards. The tide of Harvard departure was suddenly checked by this hostile demonstration, and seeing that the defense did not close up, the heady little quarter tried Turner again with such effect that it was a first down.

The Yale stands were cheering like mad, at this unlooked-for burst of speed when the team was supposed to be beaten. The captain himself, with Turner clearing the way, lunged forward five yards and added two more a moment later. Again the Harvard defense crept in and the Yale quarter, seeing his opportunity, drove another forward pass to Armstrong who caught it cleanly and was off like the wind. He sidestepped the tackle by the opposing end, ran obliquely toward the side-line, stopped and let the rush of tacklers pass him, slipped out of what seemed an impossible position, and with a clear field, with the exception of one man, cut straight for the goal line with friend and foe thundering behind. Straight at the tackler, who waited with outstretched arms, he ran. The muscles, which had been crying for rest a moment before, were now like steel. Now he was within two steps of the Harvard back. He appeared to be running straight to certain disaster, but as the Harvard tackler lunged forward, Frank swung his body to one side, brought his forearm down with all his force on the outstretched arm nearest him, and was past. The momentary check, however, brought a fleet Harvard end up to him, who, unwilling to take a chance at the Yale man's flying legs, sprang full upon his back. The force carried Frank off his feet, staggering headlong. Even with the burden on his back he managed to fall head-first toward the goal line, where he was instantly pinned to the ground by two tacklers with such force that he lay stunned.

He required the services of the trainer with sponge and water bottle before the play could be resumed. The ball lay exactly ten yards from the goal and in the face of the known defensive strength of Harvard, it seemed an impossible task to put it over from there.

Captain Baldwin took the ball two yards on the first try and then the red-headed Turner, like a maddened bull, drove through for four yards in a whirling mass of red and blue-legged players. Again Turner was called upon and when the pile untangled, he had laid the ball within two yards of the coveted white line which to cross meant glorious victory.

Captain Baldwin drew his men back for a conference while the stands stopped their cheering long enough to speculate whether he would attempt a goal from the field or risk defeat on an attempt to carry the ball across for a touchdown. Doubts were soon set at rest for the Yale team sprang back into regular formation and crouched for the signal.

You might have heard a pin drop in that vast crowd, so still they were as the two lines crouched, with swaying arms and tense bodies. Snappily came the signal, sounding high, clear and shrill in that amazing quiet, followed by the crash of meeting lines. Turner with his head down between his mighty shoulders, drove like a catapult into the struggling mass on the heels of his captain. There was a moment of squirming and grinding, then the whole mass fell in a sort of pyramid which refused to untangle itself even at the orders of the referee, and he was obliged to pull and dig to get at the bottom. And what he found at the bottom was Turner, bruised and bleeding, but joyfully happy with the ball hugged to his breast and across the goal line by four inches!

It was of no account that the kick-out (for the touchdown had been made well toward the corner of the field) was bungled. Yale had scored a touchdown and the lead. Two minutes afterward the whistle ended the game, and the wildest sort of celebration began. Every member of the Yale team was seized, protesting, and carried by the half-crazed students in a whirling march around the field. Hats were thrown over the goal posts by the hundreds, the owners entirely indifferent as to whether they ever got their headgear back again. Many students went back to New Haven that night minus their hats, but little did it matter as Yale had won a glorious battle in the face of what seemed certain defeat. And the names of Turner and Armstrong were on every tongue.

That night Turner was elected captain and Frank cast his vote for his old friend although he himself had been nominated as a candidate.