Frank Armstrong at College

by Matthew M. Colton

  CHAPTER XVI.

  MAKING THE 'VARSITY NINE.

  Frank Armstrong returned to college in the fall with a reputation.His remarkable jumping which won the deciding event of the meet atQueen's Club in London, and no less the picturesque manner in whichhe had made his way from Brighton that eventful day, had been spreadwidely in the newspapers, and no one within reach of the cable ortelegraph but knew the details of the story.

  But the publicity and adulation in no way disturbed Frank's balance.He was much too level-headed for that, and went about his work themost unassuming of his classmates. "Nothing to make such a fussabout," he used to say. "I simply had to do it. That's all there isto it."

  The luck of the room drawings had landed our three friends inConnecticut Hall, that century and a half memorial to old Yale."Comfortable and musty," was the Codfish's comment when he hadheard the news. David Powers had drawn a room in Welch Halldirectly opposite. It was David's secret ambition to win a positionon the Literary Magazine, and to this end he had applied himselfindustriously in the Freshman year. He succeeded in getting severalessays and a poem accepted by the august editors. He had triedhimself out, and was now going after the coveted honor with highdetermination.

  Out on the football field the annual preparation for the greatstruggles with Harvard and Princeton was going on. James Turner andFrank Armstrong were enrolled as members of the squad, and took theirdaily medicine on the second eleven. Frank's lack of weight--he wasstill only about one hundred and fifty pounds--prevented him fromcompeting on an even footing with ends twenty pounds heavier, withwhich the 'Varsity was well supplied that year. The quarterbackposition was so well filled that he despaired of winning his waythere and the coaches, evidently of the same opinion, kept him wherehe had played on the Freshman team. Turner, on the other hand, hadadded weight and was in a fair way to win a place somewhere in theback field. Frank put in a great deal of time under the direction ofthe punting coach, and made good progress at that department of thegame, but at drop-kicking he had little opportunity.

  "Drop-kicking isn't Yale's way of scoring," said Jimmy Turner onenight when the day's work was being discussed in the Connecticut Hallroom before a crackling fire of log-wood. "The coaches want a teamthat can carry the ball over the goal-line, not one that can boot itover the cross-bar."

  "I know it looks better to have the force drive the other fellow backacross his own goal, but since these new rules went into effect it'smighty seldom you ever see it in a big game. But I'm not knocking.I'll keep at the drop-kicking and hope for a chance."

  But the chance for Frank did not come. In two of the smaller games hewas called in the fourth quarter with a number of other substitutes,and when the team play was badly disorganized because so few regularswere in the line. He played at end in each case and was pulled backfor the punting. Once with a good opportunity for a field goal on theopponent's twenty-yard line, a poor protection allowed a lineman toget through and block the ball--a thing which very nearly resultedin a touchdown against Yale, for a free end picked up the loose balland was not brought down until he was well into Yale's territory.While Armstrong was not at all to blame, the general crowd saw onlythat his kick was blocked and considered him unsafe as a drop-kicker.

  Turner won his Y in the Princeton game when he was sent in to relieveCummings, the right halfback, a few minutes before the final whistle,but Armstrong's chance didn't come. He sat through the four quartersand saw the Yale team win at the very end. A week later Armstrongwas among the blanketed figures on the side-lines, who watched thestruggle of Yale and Harvard up and down the gridiron, with hopesrising and falling as the tide turned one way or the other. At thevery end of the game, with the score against Yale, a fumble in theHarvard back field gave Yale possession of the ball on Harvard'sthirty-yard line. The Yale stand rose en masse and begged for atouchdown, but two assaults were stopped with scant advance. Thecoach ran down the line, looking among his substitutes.

  "Armstrong, get ready to go in," he said in a quiet, tense voice, buteven as Frank jumped to his feet to obey the summons, the whistleblew and the game was over.

  "Another year coming," Frank said quietly as Jimmy, with arm acrosshis roommate's shoulder, on their way from the field, protestedagainst the hard luck.

  "You're pretty cheerful about it," commented Turner, "and youdeserved the chance as much as I did."

  "If I had been good enough, I'd have gone in before. The coaches knowwhat they are about. If I ever get enough weight on me, I'll have abetter chance to make the eleven."

  "And then you'll not be able to jump twenty-three feet," said Turner;"for every compensation there's some setback. That's the way of life."

  The Codfish was bitter in his condemnation of the entire coachingsystem which did not discover Armstrong's "supreme merit." "The ideaof not using you, Frank, when they had every chance in that lastquarter. I call it a murdering shame! They might have pulled out thegame."

  Frank laughed. "I recognize your talent as a musician and yourloyalty as a friend and your virtue as a gentleman, but I still thinkthe coaches knew their jobs, and that when they didn't send me inthey had good and sufficient reason for it. I'm not kicking. Anyway,I have two more chances, so what's the use of crying?"

  The Codfish continued to growl about the "injustice" for severaldays, and then, like everyone else, forgot all about football andturned his attentions to the future.

  Before the fall Frank had taken occasional dips in the pool when notovertired by the work at the Field. Max, foreseeing a recruit for hisswimmers, took pains to encourage him, and, later, at the suggestionof Captain Wilson of the swimming team, Frank became a member of thesquad. After the close of the football season, being well up in hisstudies and glad of the opportunity to take up a form of athleticswhich appealed to him strongly, he went at the work with greatearnestness.

  In the try-outs Armstrong won his right to a place on the team inthe fifty and one hundred yards, having covered these distances ingood time, and, when the intercollegiate meets came along, he did hisshare in point-winning for Yale.

  "Armstrong," said Captain Wilson one afternoon as the two wereresting after a practice spin of one hundred and fifty yards, "didyou ever try to swim a two-twenty?"

  "Used to go more than that distance in open water, but never in thetank. Why?"

  "Well, McGill, the Canadian university, is sending a team down herein February. They have two or three crackajacks up there and they aremaking a little southern trip. I've just wired them the date and I'dlike to make as good a showing as possible."

  "We ought to be pretty good excepting in the two-twenty," said Frank.

  "And if you'll work for that distance we ought to be pretty goodthere, too. I'll take care of the hundred as well as I know how, andI'll let Hobbs swim the fifty."

  "And who swims the two-twenty for McGill?"

  "Hopkins, the Olympic champion."

  Frank gave a long whistle. "And so you want me to be the goat? Allright, Mr. Captain, I'll do my best and lead the goat right up tothe altar to be sacrificed by the Olympic champion. But to do itgracefully, I ought to have some coaching in that distance."

  "And you're going to get it. I've sent for Burton to come up andgive us a little advice. He was one of our best men at the distanceas well as at the hundred."

  "Yes, I know him. Taught me to swim."

  "Really! Well, that's fine. He has the knack of teaching, and cantell you the tricks of the furlong if anyone can."

  The McGill meet was only two weeks off, and Frank began his trainingin earnest. Twice a day he swam the furlong, first at a moderate gaitand then quickening the stroke until he was traveling at good speedthroughout the distance.

  Burton came up from New York and spent a portion of two days withhim, and, before the coaching was over, Frank had the satisfaction ofbeating out his old teacher of the crawl stroke.

  "You're too good for me now," gasped Burton as he pulled himself outof the water at the end of the race. "I'll have to
leave you to thetender mercies of Hopkins himself."

  The night of the meet finally came around, and the building was alltoo small to hold the hundreds who crowded to the pool doors. Everyseat was sold long in advance and standing room was crowded almostto suffocation. The attraction was, of course, Hopkins, who had beentaking the measure of every swimmer at his distance that he had met,and who was heralded as the greatest swimmer in the world over thefurlong distance.

  After Wilson had won the hundred and Hobbs had lost the fifty-yardcontest, Hopkins sauntered carelessly from the dressing room, clad ina black silk racing suit. He proved to be a tall and powerful youngman, heavily muscled. Alongside of him, as the two stood perched onthe pool end, Frank looked very slender, but there was a suggestionof concealed strength in the latter's well-rounded limbs and ofvitality and staying power in the deep chest.

  "Two-twenty yards even!" sang out the referee. "Eight lengths andsixty feet. Hopkins, the Olympic champion on the left for McGill;Armstrong on the right for Yale. Ready! Get set! GO!"

  At the word, both bodies shot through the air and hit the water likeone. The champion used a long, rather slow but powerful trudgeonwhich was peculiarly mixed with the crawl in the leg action;Armstrong used a quicker crawl, in which the legs were scarcely bentat the knee, but were thrashed rapidly in a very narrow angle. Thecrowd expected the champion to pull away at once, but when the twoturned at the far end of the pool, they turned at exactly the sameinstant. Down to the starting point the swimmers came, moving withgreat speed, but still the Yale man stayed with his big opponentwith grim determination, and even finished the fifty a fraction ofa second in advance of his Canadian opponent, shooting away on thesecond fifty still in the lead. Twice more the swimmers covered thelength of the tank without relative change in position.

  And now the crowd, with nearly half the race over, seeing that theirrepresentative was holding his own, rose to their feet and delivereda wild yell which echoed among the high girders of the place, andfrom that time they did not cease to yell at the game fight wagedin the water below them. At the one hundred and fifty-yard mark,Armstrong, putting on a burst of speed, led his great rival by fiveor six feet. Hopkins, who had never changed his steady drive for amoment, now quickened his thresh perceptibly, and in another lengthof the tank had almost overhauled the Yale man who was kicking alongwith every pound of energy in his body. Armstrong still led, but asthey approached the two hundred-yard mark, there was less than ayard separating them.

  "Armstrong! Armstrong! Armstrong!" yelled the crowd.

  But the boy who was causing all the excitement was not conscious ofanything but a dull roaring in his head. The noise of the cheeringcame to him faintly, much more faintly than the splash, splash ofHopkins's arms just behind him, and, even as he looked out of thecorner of a water-filled eye, the relentless Canadian drew up nearerand still nearer.

  "Sixty feet to go!" Frank heard in a dull sort of way the official'svoice. Could he do it, that impossible distance? His throat wasparched and his chest seemed bursting with the strain of the pumpingheart. Could he live for sixty feet more? It was a thousand miles.Summoning every last ounce of will pressure, he drove ahead blindly,following mechanically the swimming lines on the pool bottom with nohelp from smarting eyes. Somewhere near was Hopkins, he could feelthe swirl of water from his powerful arm drives, but whether Hopkinswas ahead or behind he could not tell. His arms were like lead, hislegs paralyzed. A great weariness settled upon him, a great andcompelling burden which benumbed all the faculties of brain and body.

  About fifteen minutes later Frank found himself lying on a couch inthe room of the 'Varsity swimming team, with several anxious faceslooking down at him, among them that of Hopkins.

  "What's the matter?" he asked in a bewildered way.

  "Nothing, 'cepting you drowned yourself," said Captain Wilson, "deadas a door nail."

  "Did I finish?" he asked very weakly.

  "You certainly did, you finished the race and yourself at the sametime. Two of us had to go to the bottom for you," said the Captain."You sank like a stone."

  "That's where I went to sleep, then?"

  "I guess so, you had us scared, I tell you."

  "You gave me a great race, Armstrong," said Hopkins, "one of thehardest I ever had. It wasn't record time, but it was as fast as thetwo-twenty is generally done. I only won by a few inches, and mightylucky to get it at that," admitted the Canadian generously.

  "If I made you work, I'm satisfied," said Frank weakly. "I hadn't aghost of a chance to win, but I set out to make you work for yourvictory."

  "And you did," returned Hopkins laughing.