Part 11 (1/2)

”Report at the Registrar's office at seven tonight, Thorwald,” said Prexy, and then, because he understood boys and campus problems, ”and to show your grat.i.tude, you might go out there and spank that team which is trying to lick old Bannister.”

John Thorwald, when Doctor Alford and the Registrar had gone, arose and stood gazing across Bannister Field. He saw not the white-lined gridiron, the gaunt goal-posts, the concrete stands filled with spectators, or the gay banners and pennants. He saw the buildings and campus of old Bannister, the stately old elms bordering the walks; he beheld the Gym., the four dormitories--Bannister, Nord.y.k.e, Smithson, and Creighton--the white Chapel, the ivy-covered Library, the Administration and Recitation Halls; he glimpsed the Memorial Arch over the entrance driveway, and big Alumni Hall.

All at once, like an inundating wave, the great realization flashed on Thor that he did not have to leave it all! Often again would he hear the skylarking youths, the gay songs, the banjo-strumming; often would he see the brightly lighted Quad., would gaze out on the campus! It was still his--the work, the study, and, if he tried, even the glad comrades.h.i.+p of the fellows, the bigger things of college life, which as yet he did not understand.

The big slow-minded youth could not awaken, at once, to a full knowledge and understanding of campus life and tradition, to a knowledge of college spirit; but, thanks to the belief that he had to leave it all, he had awakened to the startling fact that already he loved old Bannister. And now, joyous that he could stay, John Thorwald suddenly felt a strong desire to do something, not for himself, but for these splendid fellows who had worried for his sake, had worked to keep him at college. And just then he remembered the somewhat uncla.s.sical, yet well meant, words of dear old Doctor Alford, ”And to show your grat.i.tude, you might go out there and spank that team, which is trying to lick old Bannister.”

John Thorwald for the first time looked at the score-board; he saw, in big white letters:

BANNISTER .......... 0 LATHAM ............. 3

From the Gym. the Gold and Green players--grim, determined, and yet worried by the team that ”won't be beat!”--were jogging, followed by Head Coach Patrick Henry Corridan. The Latham eleven was on the field, the Gold and Blue rooters rioted in the stands. From the Bannister cohorts came a thunderous appeal:

”Hold 'em, boys--hold 'em, boys--hold--hold--!

Don't let 'em beat the Green and the Gold!”

A sudden fury swayed the Prodigious Prodigy; it was his college, his eleven, and those Blue and Gold youths were actually beating old Bannister!

The Bannister boys had admired him, some of them had helped him in his studies, three had told Doctor Alford of him, had made it possible for him to stay, to keep on toward his goal. They would be sorrow-stricken if Latham won! A feeling of indignation came to Thor. How dare those fellows think they could beat old Bannister! Why,would go out there and show them a few things!

Head Coach Corridan, let it be chronicled, was paralyzed when he ducked under the side-line rope--stretched to hold the spectators back--to collide with an immovable body, John Thorwald, and to behold an eager light on that behemoth's stolid face. Grasping the Slave-Driver in a grip that hurt, Thor boomed:

”Mr. Corridan, let me play, ! Send me out this half. We can win.

We'veto win! I want to do something for old Bannister. Why, if we lose today, we lose the Champions.h.i.+p! I don't understand things yet, but I do love the college. I want to fight for Bannister. Please let me play!”

The astonished coach and the equally dazed Gold and Green eleven, with the bewildered collegians who heard Thor's earnest appeal, were silent a few moments, unable to grasp the truth. Then Captain Brewster, his face aglow, seized the big Freshman's arm excitedly.

”Sure you'll play, Thor!” he shouted. ”Fullback, old man! Come on, team.

Thor's awake! He wants to fight for his Alma Mater; he wants Bannister to win! Oh, watch us shove Latham off the field--everybody together now--the yell, for Thor!”

”Right here,” grinned an excitedly happy T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., when the yell was given, ”is where a team that won't be beat gets licked by a chap what can lick 'em!”

What took place when the blond Prodigious Prodigy lumbered on Bannister Field at the start of the last half of the Bannister-Latham game can be imagined by the final score-board figures:

BANNISTER ......... 27 LATHAM ............. 3

It can best be described with the aid of Scoop Sawyer's account in the next Bannister Weekly:

--At the start of the second half, however, the Latham cohorts were given a shock when they beheld a colossal being almost as big as the entire Gold and Blue eleven, go in at fullback for Bannister. And the Latham eleven received a series of shocks when Thor began intruding that ma.s.sive body of his into their territory. Tennyson's saying, ”The old order changeth, yielding place to new” was aptly ill.u.s.trated in the second half; for Bannister's bugler quit sounding ”Retreat!” and blew ”Charge!” Four touchdowns and three goals from touchdowns, in one half, is usually considered a fair day's work for an entire team. Even Yale or Harvard; but when one player corrals four touchdowns in a half--he is going some! Well, Thor went some! Most of the half he furnished free transportation for two-thirds of the Latham team, carrying them on his back, legs, and neck, as he strode down the field; a writ of habeas corpus could not have stopped the blond Colossus. Anyone would have stood more show to stop an Alpine avalanche than to slow up Thor, and the stretcher was constantly in evidence, for Latham knockouts.

[Ill.u.s.tration C: 'A writ of habeas corpus could not have stopped the blond Colossus']

The game turned into a Thor's Personally Conducted Tour. Thorwald, escorted by the Gold and Green team, made four quick tours to the Latham goal-line.

It was simply a matter of giving the ball to the Prodigious Prodigy, then waving the linesmen to move down twenty yards or more toward Latham's line.

Thor was simply unstoppable, and more beneficial even than his phenomenal playing was his encouragement to the team. He kept urging them to action, his foghorn growl of, ”Come on, boys!” was a slogan of victory! Judging by Thor's awakening, and his work of the Latham game, Bannister's hopes of The State Intercollegiate Football Champions.h.i.+p are as roseate as the blush on a maiden's cheek at her first kiss, and--

That night, in the cozy room of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., John Thorwald, supremely happy yet withal as uncomfortable as a whale on the Sahara Desert, overflowed an easy-chair. The room was filled, or what s.p.a.ce Thor left, with the Bannister eleven, second-team players, Coach Corridan, and several students; on the campus a riotous crowd of Bannister youths ”raised merry Heck,” as Hicks phrased it, and their cheer floated up to the windows: