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Durant carried it forward ten yards, then Tom Curwood plunged through for five more. Then Dean called on Teeny-bits. "Twenty-seven, sixteen, eleven," he called out, and the ball came back swiftly into his hands.
Big Tom Curwood was battered, the guards beside him were battered and the tackles crouched low as if they would welcome a chance to lie down flat on the brown earth and rest. Neil Durant spoke a word and they stiffened, the secondary defense moved closer to the line and the whole team in one mass met the Jefferson charge.
The pigskin went sailing through the air impelled by the heavy boot of big Tom Curwood; it fell into the purple-covered arms of a rangy Wilton half-back who, instead of running with the ball, immediately sent away a long spiral punt that flew over the heads of the charging Ridgley players. Neil Durant yelled out a quick warning and turned with his team-mates.
The ball was far within the enemy territory again, but Wilton held, and on the fourth down Ned Stillson fell back and made a successful drop kick. During the rest of this quarter there was a good deal of seesawing back and forth and neither side seemed to have the advantage, until Tom Curwood recovered a fumble on the visitors' twenty-five-yard line.
He slipped out of the grasp of Ned Stillson and nearly eluded big Tom Curwood, who covered Teeny-bits so completely when he finally had him down that ball and runner were almost completely out of sight. "He's as slippery as an eel," said big Tom. "And so small you can't see him," growled Ned Stillson.
James O. Curwood, "The Great Lakes." Putnam, New York, 1909. James C. Mills, "Our Inland Seas." Nearly as many people live in States that have ports upon those shores as in France to-day between thirty-five and forty millions. "In 1913 the total tonnage of the Great Lakes was 2,940,000 tons, of the United States 7,887,000 tons."
Neil Durant had his say and thanked the members of the eleven for their loyalty and courage in a way that made them feel more than ever that he was the best captain in all the history of Ridgley football. Ned Stillson tried to keep out of sight by slumping down in his seat and getting behind big Tom Curwood, but Coach Murray singled him out and ordered him to stand up and make a speech.
Ned responded by dashing into a hole that big Tom Curwood made for him at center and, to the unmeasured delight of every son of Ridgley, advanced seven yards before he was brought to earth. On the next play Neil Durant slid around right end for a first down and it was now the turn of the red to wave aloft its colors.
Neil went into the line as if he had been hurled from a catapult. He dove into the opening that Tom Curwood, with a last burst of desperate strength, had made, took three steps and was astride the goal line.
Every one laughed at Ned, and big Tom Curwood thought that the right half-back's attempt at oratory was so funny that he laughed louder than any one else until he heard Coach Murray's fatal words: "All right, Tom, you're next!" whereupon his features "froze" in a look of embarrassment.
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