The football weeks were coming to an end. With the loss of eight strong players who had graduated the year before, or for other sufficient reasons had left school, and the lack of proper new material with which to work, the coach and school had been hard put to it to develop an eleven worthy of Seaton traditions. Sam played on the second eleven when he got the chance, and regularly did practice kicking to give exercise in catching punts to the backs on the first. He understood well, however, that he was not of the chosen, and cherished no illusions as to chance of promotion.

With the best of skill and labor a perfect finished product cannot be expected from poor materials. The school, whose pride had been exalted by the achievements of the Great Year just past, felt keenly the failure of the eleven to round into proper form. Weak spots, apparently incurable, developed in the line. The attack was frequently forceless and scattered, the defence slow, the whole game perfunctory and spiritless. Inferior elevens were allowed to score; teams which Hillbury had found easy, proved serious foes at Seaton. General sentiment grew pessimistic as the season advanced.

It was perhaps for this reason that the class games aroused so great an interest. The juniors got out their heavy men, inspired them with a spirit of dash and defiance, and beat the lower middlers. The seniors drafted four fellows from the school second eleven, filled up the number from the squad of brawny candidates, and went forth to bag the upper middlers. Varney, the captain of Archer’s class team, took what he could get from the second eleven,—three, all told,—picked the best of the crowd of ambitious amateurs, and took up the gage of battle. Sam found himself, as the only man who could put the ball back straight, playing at centre, expected to change places with Bull Norris, the full-back, when there was occasion for kicking.

The school team, with the faculty director of athletics, had gone to Cambridge for a game with the Harvard freshmen. Some of the teachers were out of town; others were busy with their own affairs. Not a soul of them was on the campus—a fact which was not at first observed. An umpire and a referee were chosen from the two lower classes. The referee, from the defeated lower middlers, showed himself a model of fairness; the umpire, a junior, favored the seniors, whom he considered the weaker team, hoping that they would survive the fray to meet his own class. The class supporters took their places decorously on the side benches, and cheered their representatives in due and seemly fashion. Archer kicked the ball to the seniors’ ten-yard line, where Hoover took it and ran it back fifteen yards. At this point there was a wrangle over Fairmount’s illegitimate blocking. The umpire affirmed at the outset that the performance was perfectly legal; but on being pressed, took safer ground for his decision by declaring that he didn’t see the blocking at all. This aroused a new spirit. The upper middlers jeered at the umpire, the seniors jeered at the upper middlers. In the next scrimmage, Taylor, who was playing quarter, didn’t receive the ball cleanly from his centre, and Archer, sprawling his full length through a narrow hole beside the guard’s knees, got his hands on the ball and pulled it under his chin. The squirming layers were stripped off and Sam was adjudged the rightful holder. Then the upper middlers pushed Kendrick, their heavy half-back, through the line again and again, now behind big Ames, now behind Mulcahy, the other tackle, now through the centre, until a touch-down was achieved, and later a goal. This score temporarily soothed the inflammation caused by Fairmount’s holding.

The seniors sent the ball down to Mudie, who fumbled it and was caught on the fifteen-yard line. Archer now gave up his place to Norris, who passed back for a kick. The ball came so high that Sam had to jump for it, but he managed to get his kick off before Putnam carried him down. The ball went out of bounds on the forty-yard line, where the seniors got it. They had no star like Kendrick, whose playing was surprisingly hard and fast, but they worked well together, and Taylor ran his game cleverly. Through guard and centre was no thoroughfare, but the upper middler ends were hugged and pulled out of the way, without protest from the short-sighted umpire, and the ball was shoved down upon the goal line by a series of successful flank movements, helped out by an occasional frontal attack on the tackles. So the score was made even by a senior touch-down and goal.

Meanwhile the audience was warming up. A detachment moved down from the benches to the side-lines, whither the balance of the interested sympathizers speedily followed. Regular cheering ceased. From either side now rose spontaneous yells of exultation or hoots of disapproval. The witty indulged in jocose personalities directed against players of the opposite camp. The two classes not concerned took sides, juniors with upper middlers, lower middlers with seniors. Archer kicked off again to the seniors’ fifteen-yard line. Taylor tried a quarterback run, and was nailed on the starting line and thrown back two yards. The seniors’ kick was blocked by Ames, who struck down the arms of his opponent, and rushing through, took the rising punt on his chest. From Ames the ball bounded against the goal-post and rebounded among the pack. It was found, in time, under an upper middler’s body. Wildes, the senior left end, declared that it had been stolen from him, but the referee would not allow the claim. Then Kendrick threw himself into several breaches, and plunged, wriggled, and crawled his way to a touch-down. Soon after this the half came to an end.

By this time it had become generally known that not a prof was on the field. A wild spirit possessed the crowd, a spirit of frolic and horse-play. Each party wanted victory, but it wanted fun also, and on the whole more. The ground was cleared for the second half by volunteer policemen, who made a great show of eagerness for order, and in fact led in the disorder. The crowd toed the side-lines when the seniors kicked off; when Kendrick got the ball and ran it back, the throng of upper middlers crossed the lines and swept in behind the wake of the play. Varney’s men rushed the ball until they were blocked, when Archer kicked. Hoover took the ball safely for the seniors, and started his team on a return trip. Immediately another line of spectators crept up behind the ball, crowding in upon the game, cutting off the seniors’ crack end runs and forcing the play directly through the line. Here the upper middlers held, and got the ball.

Yet, strange to say, though the upper middlers now found conditions exactly to their liking, the line plunges, which had been successful before, suddenly failed. Every attack that penetrated the line seemed to meet three men in the secondary defence. Big Ames glanced over the heads of his two opponents and yelled: “Referee! referee! they’re playing thirteen men!”

The line, and the crescent of supporters behind it, took up the cry. The crescent contracted, and meeting the line of seniors, enclosed the players and cut off escape. The two centres knelt at the ball, gazing at each other through sweat-dimmed eyes, while the officials counted. The senior uniforms numbered twelve!

“Referee! referee! they’re playing thirteen men!” Page 44.