The regulars started with the ball, and the first down netted them eight yards. The second plunge through the line was almost as successful; the third even more so. The scrub played apathetically, each fellow for himself. They lacked cohesion, and many of the individuals opposed the rushes half-heartedly and without spirit. Little Saunders, the scrub quarter, while working at full pressure himself, seemed to have grown discouraged by past failures to spur the fellows on. Occasionally he snapped out a rasping appeal for them to get together and do something, but there was a perfunctory note in his voice which told how little faith he had in their obeying.
To Ward, playing at left half on the regulars, it was an old story which had ceased, almost, to fret him. He had come to feel that the utmost he could hope for was to keep the scrub together and gain what practice was possible from their half-hearted resistance. Keeping his eye on Tompkins, he noted with approval that the boy was playing a very different sort of game. He flung himself into the fray with snap and energy, tackling well, recovering swiftly, and showing a pretty knowledge of interference. But it was soon apparent that his work failed more or less because of its very quickness. At every rush he was a foot or two ahead of the sluggish Vedder at guard or the discouraged Morris playing on his right. He might get his man and frequently did, but one player cannot do all the work of a team, and the holes in the line remained as gaping as before.
The regulars scored a touchdown and, returning to the center of the field, began the process anew. There was a sort of monotonous iteration about their advance that presently began to get a little on Sherman's nerves. The crisp, shrill voice of Court Parker calling the signal, the thud of feet over the turf, the crash as the wedge of bodies struck the wavering line and thrust its way through it and on, on, seemingly to endless distance in spite of the plucky efforts of the boy at right tackle to stop it--it was all so cut and dried, so certain, so unvaried. Now and again would come the tired, ill-tempered snap of Saunders's "Get into it, fellows! Wake up, for the love of Pete!" Occasionally, from left end, Ranny Phelps would make some sarcastic reference to Ward's "great find," to which, though it irritated him, the captain paid no heed. He was still watching critically and beginning to wonder, with a little touch of anxiety, whether Tompkins was going to be engulfed in the general slough of inertia. In this wise the play had progressed half-way toward the scrub's goal-posts when suddenly a new note was injected into the affair.