Kitabı oku: «Tom Fairfield's Schooldays: or, The Chums of Elmwood Hall», sayfa 5
CHAPTER XI
A CLASS WARNING
“Well, if any of you young gentlemen have any more powder to scatter around, you had better do it, and have done with it,” remarked Professor Skeel a day or so later, when Tom and his chums came in to recite. “Only if you do,” he added sarcastically, “the punishment I meted out before will be doubled, and, in case the offense is repeated a third time, I will go on doubling the task, if necessary in arithmetical progression.”
He looked at the lads, with a sneering smile on his face. There were mutterings of discontent from all, save perhaps Sam Heller, for the lads felt not only the injustice of the uncalled-for remarks, but the former punishment still rankled in their minds.
“No one seems inclined to take advantage of my offer,” went on Professor Skeel, “so we will go on with the lesson. Fairfield, you may begin. We’ll see if you are prepared.”
Tom was, fortunately, and it seemed not only to him, but to some of the others, as if the teacher was displeased. Very likely he would have been glad of a chance to punish Tom. But he did not get it – at least that day.
“Unmannerly brute!” murmured Tom, as he sat down. “I’ll pay you back yet. Not because of what you did to me, but because you’re unfair to the rest of the class.”
Tom hated unfairness, and he also felt that, in a way, he was to blame for the punishment the class had unjustly suffered. He had not been able to learn anything about how the powder came to be put in his pocket, though he suspected Heller more than ever, as he saw how vindictive the Freshman bully was toward him.
“I almost wish he’d pick a fight with me,” thought Tom. “Then I could give him what he deserves.”
But Sam saw no chance of doing any further harm to the lad whom he hated with so little cause.
“Why can’t you think of something to help me out?” Sam asked of his crony.
“Think of something yourself,” retorted Nick. “I’ve got my own troubles. We’re going to haze the Freshmen tonight, and I’m on the committee of rules and regulations,” and he laughed.
“You are? Then this is my chance! Come over here where we can talk,” and the bully led his crony to one side.
This talk followed the dismissal of Professor Skeel’s Latin class, during which nothing had occurred save that the instructor took every chance of insulting the students.
“Say, if this keeps up much longer, we’ll have to do something, Jack,” declared Tom, as they proceeded on to another recitation.
“That’s right. But what can we do?”
“Oh, I’m going to think of something. I wish we could haze him.”
“So do I. But I guess we’ll be hazed ourselves first.”
“How’s that?”
“Why it’s this week that the Sophs get after us. We may expect them any night now. Going to crawl?”
“I am not! Might as well have it over with.”
“That’s what I say.”
Though Tom and his Freshmen chums rather expected the advent of their traditional enemies, the Sophomores, they hardly looked for visits that same night, and so, when a knock came on the door of the room occupied by Tom and Jack, they opened it unsuspectingly.
“Here are two!” exclaimed a voice, as several masked figures entered. “We’re in luck! Grab ’em!”
The orders of the ringleader were obeyed. Tom and Jack could not tell who their captors were.
“I say, Tom, shall we fight ’em?” asked Jack, always ready for a battle.
“No, what’s the use – in here?” asked Tom significantly.
“Ha! Scrappers, eh?” remarked another Sophomore. “You’re the kind we’re looking for!”
“And maybe you’ll get more than you want!” exclaimed Tom. Neither he nor Jack resisted as they were led forth. It was a sort of unwritten rule that no fighting against the hazers should take place in the dormitories, as property was likely to be damaged.
“Wait until we get in the open!” whispered Tom to Jack, as they were being led down stairs. “Then we’ll upset ’em if we can, and run. They don’t look to be very husky.”
“That’s right,” agreed Tom’s chum.
“Ha! No plotting!” cried the ringleader, giving Tom a dig in the ribs.
“I’ll give you that back with interest when I get the chance,” murmured our hero.
Other parties of hazers made their appearance in the corridor, some leading Bert Wilson and George Abbot.
“Where are you taking me? What are you going to do? Is this allowed?” fired George at his captors.
“Sure it’s allowed, you little question mark!” exclaimed a Sophomore. “Trot along now.”
Tom and his chums were led over the campus. They could see other little groups of prisoners in like plight, and the Sophomores, all of whom wore masks, gathered together with their captives.
“To the river!” ordered the ringleaders. “We’ll make ’em wade a bit.”
“Oh, they’re going to duck us!” whimpered George. “I wonder why they do it?”
“Oh, there goes Why!” exclaimed Jack. “He can’t keep still.”
“They’re not going to duck me!” murmured Tom. “Come on, Jack, now’s our chance. Make a break!”
It was the best chance Tom had seen, and, with a sudden push, and a putting out of his foot, he tripped the lad who had hold of his arm. Then, with a well-directed punch, he paid him back for the dig in the ribs. Tom was free to run.
“Come on, Jack!” he called. His chum, performing a like trick, was also free, and their two captors were down on the ground. But the flight did not go unnoticed.
“Two are loose! Grab the two Freshies!” yelled the lads who had held Tom and Jack. The cry was taken up, and some of the Sophomores, who had no Freshmen to take care of, ran after the two chums. Our heroes might have gotten away but for the fact that two lads, masked, who were coming across the campus to join their fellows, saw them, and waited to catch the two fleeing ones.
Tom and Jack tried to dodge, but could not. There was a clash, and Jack was caught. In a moment other Sophomores came up, and had him. Tom was struggling with his captor.
“Take that!” cried the latter, when, finding he could not subdue Tom, he struck our hero a blow in the face.
“I won’t take that from any one!” cried Tom fiercely. “Hazing customs or not!” He retaliated, and with such good measure that he knocked the other down. The black mask came off in the fall, and it was light enough for Tom to see Sam Heller.
“You!” he cried. “You’re not a Sophomore! You have no right to haze!”
“This is my second year here. I’m a Sophomore by rights!” growled Sam, much put out that his trick had been discovered. “I’ll get even with you, too!”
In his rage he leaped up and rushed at Tom. It was just the chance the other wanted, and our hero promptly knocked Sam down again. He was wild with rage. By this time a knot of Sophomores surrounded Tom.
“Hold on there, Fresh!” cried some one who seemed to be in authority. “This won’t do, you know. You shouldn’t fight back when you’re being hazed.”
“Has a Freshman the right to help the Sophs haze us?” demanded Tom, as he recognized Bruce Bennington in the objector. “Here’s Sam Heller, of our class, joining against us.”
“Is that so?” asked Bruce in surprise. With some other Seniors he had come out to see the fun. “That’s not allowed, you know, Wendell,” he said, turning to the leader of the Second year lads.
“I didn’t know Heller was here,” replied Wendell. “That’s straight. He has no right. We beg your pardon, Fairfield. Sam, how did this happen?” Wendell was justly indignant.
“Well, I claim I’m a Sophomore, and I would be if I had a fair show. I thought I had a right to help haze.” Sam was whining now, like all cowards when found out. His trick, which he had formed with the aid of Nick, had failed. The two had planned to get Jack and Tom off alone, during the general excitement over the hazing, and thrash them.
“You’re not a Soph, and you can’t do any hazing,” declared Wendell decidedly. “You ought to be hazed yourself, and you would be, only you got yours last year. Come along now, Fairfield, and take what’s coming to you.”
“All right,” agreed Tom good-naturedly. He was satisfied with what he had done to Sam. The crowd of Sophomores was now so large that there was no chance for our hero and his chum to escape.
“Take your medicine, Fairfield,” advised Bruce with a laugh. “It won’t be very bad.”
“All right,” said Tom again, and he and Jack were led back to their luckless mates, the little group of Seniors following.
The hazing was not very severe. The Freshmen were made to wade in the river up to their knees, and then, with coats turned inside out, forced to dance in a ring, while the Sophomores laughed their delight, and played mouth organs. Some few were tossed in blankets, and much horse play was indulged in. But the discovery of Heller’s trick rather discomfited the second year lads, and they felt that there was a little blight on their class. Otherwise the hazing might have been more severe.
“Now then, form in line, and give three cheers for the Sophs, and you can go home to your beds,” declared Wendell. “Only remember, every Freshman must wear his cap backwards every time he comes on the campus, for the next two weeks, and salute every Sophomore he meets, under penalty of being hazed over again. Remember! Now for the cheers!”
They were given, and the hazing was over. No one had been much annoyed by it, save perhaps Sam Heller.
“It didn’t work,” he grumbled to Nick, later that night. “We had a fight, though.”
“Did you lick him?” asked Nick, who had been separated from his crony during the fracas with Tom.
“I sure did.”
“How’d you get that bruise near your eye?” asked Nick.
“Oh – er – I – sort of fell,” stammered Sam. The bruise was where Tom had hit him.
And thus the hazing of Tom’s Freshman class passed into history.
Several weeks passed, and our hero came to like the school more and more. He made many new chums, and no more enemies, though Sam and Nick disliked him more than ever, and thought bitter thoughts, and devised endless schemes to “get even,” as they expressed it, though the debt was on their side. But, though they annoyed Tom and his chum often, the latter as often got back at them in hearty fashion.
Tom heard from his parents, that they had arrived safely, and they said the business was going on satisfactorily. The weather was getting colder each day, and the boys began to have thoughts of skating and ice boating as soon as the river should be frozen over. The football season had closed.
Then, unexpectedly, there came another clash with Professor Skeel. In Latin class one day several students came unprepared, and failed in reciting.
“We’ll stop right here!” exclaimed the professor. “It is evident to me that an organized attempt to miss in Latin is under way. I shall double the usual number of lines that you are all to write out. Perhaps that will teach you not to trifle with me.”
Several protested at this, saying that the reason for their failure was additional work in other classes. Others, who had not failed, declared that it was manifestly unfair to make them suffer with the rest.
“Silence!” snapped the professor. “You may stay here until your tasks are done,” and he prepared to leave the room, intending to send a monitor to take charge of the lads.
“Say, this is rank injustice!” exclaimed Jack.
“It sure is,” came from Tom. “And the ice on the river is thick enough for skating, I believe. If we didn’t have to stay here we could cut the next lecture and have some fun.”
“We sure could. What’ll we do?”
“Let’s haze Skeel!” suggested Bert Wilson, for there was no one in authority in the room now.
“Let’s send him a warning,” suggested Tom. “We’ll write it out in Latin, and threaten to go on a strike, or burn him in effigy if he doesn’t act more fair. How’s that?”
“Good!” exclaimed several. “Tom, you write out the notice.”
“I will!” agreed our hero, and then a monitor came in, and silence was enforced. But Tom, after hurrying through the prescribed number of lines of prose, began work on the warning.
CHAPTER XII
A RUNAWAY ICEBOAT
“How are we going to get it to him?” asked Bert Wilson, as the Latin class, its members having finished their punishment, filed out on the campus.
“Mail it to him,” suggested Jack.
“No, leave it at his door,” advised Henry Miller.
“Huh! Who’d do it?” asked George Abbot.
“There you go again, Why!” exclaimed Tom with a laugh, as he passed around the warning he had composed.
“Well, I mean who would have the nerve to go up and leave that at Skeel’s door?” went on the small lad. “I wouldn’t.”
“I would!” declared Tom. “I’m tired of being imposed upon!”
“And so am I!” exclaimed Jack. “I’m with you. Let’s get a lot of Freshmen, tog up in masks, or with pillow cases over our heads, and leave the warning at his door. That’ll make him be more decent, I guess.”
“All right,” agreed Tom. “We’ll do it.”
That same night Tom, and several bold spirits, with pillow cases, or white cloths over their coats, slipped from the dormitory where the Freshmen lived, moved and had their being. Tom carried his warning.
It was in Latin, more or less accurate, and in plain terms demanded on the part of Professor Skeel a more tolerant attitude toward the Freshman class, or, failure would be met with a burning in effigy of the disliked instructor. And the boys meant it, too.
“All ready now?” asked Tom as he and his chums, in the dark shadows of a thick hedge around Mr. Skeel’s house had adjusted their head-coverings. “All ready?”
“Lead on!” whispered Jack. “Who’s going to knock at the door?”
“I will,” agreed Tom. “We’ll go around to his ‘study,’ as he calls it. It’s got a door opening directly into the garden, and he’ll answer the knock himself.”
Advancing from amid group of his chums a little later, with the warning held in the cleft end of a long stick, Tom knocked on Mr. Skeel’s door. The professor was in his study, poring over some book, and laying new traps, in the way of difficult questions, for his pupils.
“Who’s there?” he cried sharply, at the sound of Tom’s rap.
A groan was the answer.
“What nonsense is this?” demanded Professor Skeel, as he rose from his chair.
“If those are students they’ll pay dearly for this nonsense!” he was heard to exclaim, as he opened the door. The sight of the white-robed figures, with one standing out from the others, holding forth a letter in a cleft stick, was a distinct surprise to the professor.
“What is the meaning of this?” he cried. “Who are you? I demand to know!”
Groans were his only answer, and Tom waved the letter before the professor’s face. In very wonderment the instructor took it and then, with a final series of groans, Tom and the others turned and hurried away.
“Come back. I demand that you return. Take those silly cloths from your heads, and let me see who you are!” cried Professor Skeel, but our hero and his chums knew better than to tarry.
“Halt!” cried the professor. He started after the lads, but, as he reached the bottom step he tripped on a stick, and fell and, as he had on light slippers, the contact of his toes with the ground was anything but comfortable.
Uttering an exclamation of anger, the professor went back into his study with the letter, while Tom and his chums hurried to their rooms, getting to them undetected.
“What’s this?” burst out Professor Skeel, as he read Tom’s Latin warning. “They demand better treatment! Burn me in effigy, eh? Why this is a threat! A threatening letter! I’ll have the entire Freshman class suspended! I shall see Dr. Meredith at once!”
In his anger he did go over and see the head master, showing him the letter.
“Hum! Well,” mused Doctor Meredith. “That is a sort of threat, Professor Skeel, but – er – would not it be well to – er – to grant the class a few more privileges? Remember they are first year lads, unused to the discipline of a college, and, therefor, not to be dealt with too harshly. Could you not grant their request?”
“What? My dear sir! Grant a request coupled with a threat? Never! I demand the suspension of the entire Freshman class, until the perpetrators of this outrage are discovered, and then I demand their expulsion. Why, Doctor Meredith, they had the audacity to call on me, disguised. On me! They had the effrontery to threaten me in a miserably composed Latin scrawl. Me! I demand the suspension of the entire class!”
“Hum! Well, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said the head master. “I shall take this under advisement, and act in the morning. But I can’t suspend the whole class. They are not all guilty, I’m sure,” and nothing the irate professor said could change this decision.
In the morning Doctor Meredith referred to the matter, not half as strongly, however, as Professor Skeel thought should have been done. There was no threat to suspend the class, and all the doctor did was to suggest that different measures be taken in the future. He also asked those engaged in the affair to make themselves known.
“As if we would!” exclaimed Tom, later. And I hardly believe Doctor Meredith expected that the lads would. He had been a college master for many years, and he knew boys, which Professor Skeel did not.
“Oh, but we’ll get it in Latin class,” predicted Jack. “We’d better all be prepared today.”
And they all were, very well prepared, but that did not save them from an angry tongue-lashing, in which the professor, on his own account, demanded to know those who had been instrumental in writing and bringing the warning.
Of course no one answered, and, as Tom had taken the precaution to print out the letter, his handwriting was not recognized. Every device, however, that an angry and bullying teacher could bring to bear, was used on the class. But no one failed, and no punishment could be inflicted. Though had the professor been able to use his power he would have administered corporal punishment to all the Freshmen.
The result was, however, that the Latin recitation was perfect, and, in his heart the instructor was just a little bit afraid of the threat of burning him in effigy. So, in a few days he did mend his ways somewhat, and the class began to feel that Tom’s plan had worked wonders. But the end was not yet.
“Well, Tom, I’ve had enough of this!” exclaimed Jack, one cold afternoon, when the two chums had been “boning” away in their room for some time. “Let’s go hire that iceboat you were talking of, and have a sail on the river. I guess she’s frozen over thick enough.”
“I’m with you!” and Tom tossed his book to one side. “Let’s get George, Bert and some of the others.”
Some days before Tom had discovered that the man of whom the lads hired their rowboats, had a couple of ice craft for rent, and he had engaged one for the first good day.
A little later Tom and several of his chums, including Jack, were on their way to the frozen river, lessons being over for the day.
“Well, where are you bound for?” asked Bruce Bennington, as he met Tom and the others near the stream.
“Ice boating. Come along,” invited Tom.
“Thanks. I believe I will. I was going for a skate, but somehow, I don’t feel like exerting myself.”
There was a look of worriment still on the Senior’s face, and he talked as though the trouble that was worrying him had not passed away. Tom wanted to help him, but knew it was best to say nothing.
A part of the river, where the water was not so deep, nor the current under the ice so swift as elsewhere, had been set aside by the school authorities as the place where the students might skate. They were forbidden to use the steel runners elsewhere, as a matter of safety, and, as the skating course was plenty long enough, none of the lads ventured on the part of the river where the ice boats were used. In fact the presence of those craft, of which there were several, made it necessary that the numerous skaters keep clear of them.
The place where Tom hired the iceboat was quite a distance from the skating course, and, in consequence of a bend in the river, none of the other pupils, who were indulging in sports on the steel blades, were in sight. There was one iceboat out on the broad surface of the river as our hero and his chums arrived.
“Know how to sail one?” asked Bruce, as he took his place in the shallow box that served as a sort of cockpit, while some of the boys perched on the runners.
“Fairly well,” replied Tom, and soon they were skimming over the slippery surface, with Tom at the helm. It was great sport, and they liked it immensely.
“This is fine!” exclaimed Bruce, with sparkling eyes, and something of a return of his old manner. “It beats skating!” and he kicked his skates that he had tossed into the box near him.
“Oh, skating’s all right!” declared Tom, as he changed the course slightly. “We’ll have some skating races soon, won’t we?”
“Yes, it’s about time for them,” answered the Senior.
After sailing for several miles Tom decided to put up a sort of auxiliary sail on the boat, to get more speed. It was fitted to a short bamboo mast, about five feet high.
“You’ll all have to get out while I fix it,” suggested Tom, as he let the wind spill out of the big sail, and brought the boat up with a turn, while it gradually came to a stop.
They piled out, stamping up and down to warm their rather benumbed legs and feet. Tom and Jack were soon putting up the little sail.
“I’ve got to whittle down the end of the mast to make it fit in,” declared Tom after a trial. “Lend me your knife, Jack.”
Bruce had put on his skates for a little turn while he waited, and the others were racing up and down. Tom and Jack were working over the auxiliary sail, standing a short distance away from the iceboat, when there came a sudden puff of wind. The main sheet became caught, the big sail filled, and a moment later the empty iceboat was racing over the smooth, frozen river at dangerous speed!
