“Which one of these trunks do you belong to, Gordon?” inquired a young second-lieutenant, whose duty it was to see that the students were assigned to rooms as fast as they arrived. “The one with the canvas cover is mine,” replied Don.
“Any preference among the boys?” asked the lieutenant. “You can’t have Bert for a room-mate this term, you know. The second sergeant of his company will be chummed on him.”
Don replied that he didn’t care who he had for a companion, so long as he was a well-behaved boy; whereupon the lieutenant beckoned to a negro porter whom he called “Rosebud,” and directed him to take Don’s trunk up to No. 45, third floor.
“By the way, I suppose that that fellow who[26] has just gone into the superintendent’s room with Bert is a crony of yours?” continued the young officer.
“He is from Mississippi,” said Don. He did not wish to publish the fact that Lester Brigham was no friend of his, for that would prejudice the students against him at once. Lester was likely to have a hard time of it at the best, and Don did not want to say or do anything that would make it harder for him.
“All right,” said the officer. “I will take pains to see that he is chummed on some good fellow.”
“You needn’t put yourself to any trouble for him on my account,” said Don in a low tone, at the same time turning his back upon a sprucely-dressed but rather brazen-faced boy, who persisted in crowding up close to him and Egan, as if he meant to hear every word that passed between them. “He is nothing to me, and I wish he was back where he came from. He’ll wish so too, before he has been here many days. I said everything I could to induce his father to keep him at home, but he——”
“Let’s take a walk as far as the gate,” said Egan, seizing Don by the arm and nodding to[27] Hopkins and Curtis. “You stay here, Enoch,” he added, turning to the sprucely-dressed boy.
“What’s the reason I can’t go too?” demanded the latter.
“Because we don’t want you,” replied Egan, bluntly. “I told you before we left home, that you needn’t expect to hang on to my coat-tails. Make friends with the members of your own company, for they are the only associates you will have after school begins.”
“But they are all strangers to me, and you won’t introduce me,” said Enoch.
“Then pitch in and get acquainted, as I did when I first came here. You may be sure I’ll not introduce you,” said Egan, in a low voice, as he and his three friends walked toward the gate. “An introduction is an indorsement, and I don’t indorse any such fellows as you are.”
“What’s the matter with him?” asked Don, who had never seen Egan so annoyed and provoked as he was at that moment.
“Everything,” replied the ex-sergeant. “He’s the meanest boy I ever met—I except nobody—and if he doesn’t prove to be a second Clarence Duncan, I shall miss my guess.”
[28]
“The boy who came here with me will make a good mate for him,” said Don.
“This fellow’s father has only recently moved into our neighborhood,” continued Egan. “He went into ecstasies over my uniform the first time he saw it, and wanted to know where I got it, and how much it cost, and all that sort of thing. Of course I praised the school and everybody and everything connected with it; but I wish now that I had kept still. The next time that I met him he told me that when I returned to Bridgeport he was going with me. I was in hopes he wouldn’t stick, but he did.”
“Mr. Brigham crowded Lester upon Bert and me in about the same way,” said Don.
“Was that Lester Brigham?” exclaimed Curtis—“the boy who burned your old shooting-box and kicked up that rumpus while we were at Rochdale? We often heard you speak of him, but you know we never saw him.”
“He’s the very one,” replied Don.
“Then he will make a good mate for Enoch Williams,” said Egan. “Why, Don, this fellow has been caught in the act of looting ducks on the bay.”
[29]
Egan’s tone and manner seemed to indicate that he looked upon this as one of the worst offenses that could be committed, and both he and Hopkins were surprised because Don did not grow angry over it.
“What’s looting ducks?” asked the latter.
“It is a system of hunting pursued by the pot-hunters of Chesapeake bay, who shoot for the market and not for sport. A huge blunderbuss, which will hold a handful of powder and a pound or more of shot, and which is kept concealed during the day-time, is put into the bow of a skiff at night, and carried into the very midst of a flock of sleeping ducks; and sometimes the men who manage it, secure as many as sixty or seventy birds at one discharge. The law expressly prohibits it, and denounces penalties against those who are caught at it.”
“Then why wasn’t Enoch punished?”
“Because everybody is afraid to complain of him or of any one else who violates the law. It isn’t safe to say anything against these duck-shooters, and those who do it are sure to suffer. Their yachts will be bored full of holes, their oyster-beds dragged at night or filled with sharp[30] things for the dredges to catch on, their lobster-pots pulled up and destroyed or carried off, their retrievers shot or stolen—oh, it wouldn’t take long to raise an excitement down there that would be fully equal to that which was occasioned in Rochdale by that mail robbery.”
If the reader will bear these words in mind, he will see that subsequent events proved the truthfulness of them. The professional duck-shooters who played such havoc with the wild fowl in Chesapeake bay, were determined and vindictive men, and it was very easy to get into trouble with them, especially when there were such fellows as Enoch Williams and Lester Brigham to help it along.
The four friends spent half an hour in walking about the grounds, talking over the various exciting and amusing incidents that had happened while they were living in Don Gordon’s Shooting-Box, and then Don went to his dormitory to put on his uniform, preparatory to reporting his arrival to the superintendent. Every train that steamed into the station brought a crowd of students with it, and the evening of the 14th of January found them all snug in their quarters,[31] and ready for the serious business of the term, which was to begin with the booming of the morning gun. All play was over now. There had been guard-mount that morning, sentries were posted on the grounds and in the buildings, and the new students began to see how it seemed to feel the tight reins of military discipline drawn about them. Of course there were a good many who did not like it at all. Events proved that there was a greater number of malcontents in the school this term than there had ever been before. Bold fellows some of them were, too—boys who had always been allowed to do as they pleased at home, and who proceeded to get up a rebellion before they had donned their uniforms. One of them, it is hardly necessary to say, was Lester Brigham. On the morning when the ceremony of guard-mounting was gone through with for the first time, he stood off by himself, muffled up head and ears, and watching the proceeding. Presently his attention was attracted by the actions of a boy who came rapidly along the path, shaking his gloved fists in the air and talking to himself. He did not see Lester until he was close upon him, and then he stopped and looked ashamed.
[32]
“What’s the trouble?” asked Lester, who was in no very good humor himself.
“Matter enough,” replied the boy. “I wish I had never seen or heard of this school.”
“Here too,” said Lester. “Are you a new scholar? Then we belong to the same class and company.”
“I wouldn’t belong to any class or company if I could help it,” snapped the boy. “My father didn’t want me to come here, but I insisted, like the dunce I was, and now I’ve got to stay.”
“So have I; but I didn’t come of my own free will. My father made me.”
“Get into any row at home?” asked the boy.
“Well—yes,” replied Lester, hesitatingly.
“I don’t see that it is anything to be ashamed of. You look like a city boy; did the cops get after you?”
“No; I had no trouble with the police, but I thought for a while that I was going to have. I live in the canebrakes of Mississippi, and my name is Lester Brigham. I used to live in the city, and I wish I had never left it.”
“My name is Enoch Williams, and I am from Maryland,” said the other. “I don’t live in a[33] cane-brake, but I live on the sea-shore, and right in the midst of a lot of Yahoos who don’t know enough to keep them over night. Egan is one of them and Hopkins is another.”
“Why, those are two of the boys that Don Gordon brought home with him last fall,” exclaimed Lester. “Do you know them?”
“I know Egan very well. His father’s plantation is next to ours. If he had been anything of a gentleman, I might have been personally acquainted with Hopkins by this time; but, although we traveled in company all the way from Maryland, he never introduced me. Do you know them?”
“I used to see them occasionally last fall, but I have never spoken to either of them,” answered Lester. “By the way, the first sergeant of our company is a near neighbor of mine.”
“Do you mean Bert Gordon? Well, he’s a little snipe. He throws on more airs than a country dancing-master. I have been insulted ever since I have been here,” said Enoch, hotly. “The boys from my own State, who ought to have brought me to the notice of the teachers and of some good fellows among the students, have turned their backs upon me, and told me in[34] so many words, that they don’t want my company.”
“Don and Bert Gordon have treated me in nearly the same way,” observed Lester.
“But, for all that, I have made some acquaintances among the boys in the third class, who gave me a few hints that I intend to act upon,” continued Enoch. “They say the rules are very strict, and that it is of no earthly use for me to try to keep out of trouble. There are a favored few who are allowed to do as they please; but the rest of us must walk turkey, or spend our Saturday afternoons in doing extra duty. Now I say that isn’t fair—is it, Jones?” added Enoch, appealing to a third-class boy who just then came up.
Jones had been at the academy just a year, and of course he was a member of Don Gordon’s class and company. He was one of those who, by the aid of Don’s “Yankee Invention,” had succeeded in making their way into the fire-escape, and out of the building. They failed to get by the guard, as we know, and Jones was court-martialed as well as the rest. His back and arms ached whenever he thought of the long hours he had spent in walking extras to pay for that one night’s fun;[35] and he had made the mental resolution that before he left the academy he would do something that would make those who remained bear him in remembrance. He was lazy, vicious and idle, and quite willing to back up Enoch’s statement.
“Of course it isn’t fair,” said he, after Enoch had introduced him to Lester Brigham. “You needn’t expect to be treated fairly as long as you remain here, unless you are willing to curry favor with the teachers, and so win a warrant or a commission; but that is something no decent boy will do. I can prove it to you. Take the case of Don Gordon: he’s a good fellow, in some respects——”
“There’s where I differ with you,” interrupted Lester. “I have known him for a long time, and I have yet to see anything good about him.”
“I don’t care if you have. I say he’s a good fellow,” said Jones, earnestly. “There isn’t a better boy in school to run with than Don Gordon would be, if he would only get rid of the notion that it is manly to tell the truth at all times and under all circumstances, no matter who suffers by it. He’s as full of plans as an egg is of meat; he is afraid of nothing, and there wasn’t a boy in our set who dared join him in carrying out some[36] schemes he proposed. Why, he wanted to capture the butcher’s big bull-dog, take him up to the top of the building, and then kick him down stairs after tying a tin-can to his tail! He would have done it, too, if any of the set had offered to help him; but I tell you, I wouldn’t have taken a hand in it for all the money there is in America.”
“He must be a good one,” said Enoch, admiringly.
“Oh, he is. We had many a pleasant evening at Cony Ryan’s last winter that we would not have had if Don had not come to our aid; but when the critical moment arrived, he failed us.”
“You might have expected it,” sneered Lester, who could not bear to hear these words of praise bestowed upon the boy he so cordially hated.
“Well, I didn’t expect it. Don was one of the floor-guards that night, and he allowed a lot of us to pass him and go out of the building. When the superintendent hauled him up for it the next day, he acknowledged his guilt, but he would not give our names, although he knew he stood a good chance of being sent down for his refusal. I shall always honor him for that.”
“I wish he had been expelled,” said Lester, bitterly.[37] “Then I should not have been sent to this school.”
“Well, when the examination came off,” continued Jones, “Don was so far ahead of his class that none of them could touch him with a ten-foot pole; and yet he is a private to-day, while that brother of his, who won the good-will of the teachers by toadying to them, wears a first sergeant’s chevrons. Of course such partiality as that is not fair for the rest of us.”
“There isn’t a single redeeming feature about this school, is there?” said Enoch, after a pause. “A fellow can’t enjoy himself in any way.”
“Oh yes, he can—if he is smart and a trifle reckless. He can go to Cony Ryan’s and eat pancakes. I suppose Egan told you of the high old times we had here last winter running the guard, didn’t he?”
“He never mentioned it,” replied Enoch.
“Well, didn’t he describe the fight we had with the Indians last camp?”
“Indians!” repeated Enoch, incredulously, while Lester’s eyes opened with amazement.
“Yes; sure-enough Indians they were too, and not make-believes. We thought, by the way they[38] yelled at us, that they meant business. Why, they raised such a rumpus about the camp that some of our lady guests came very near fainting, they were so frightened. Didn’t Egan tell you how he and Don deserted, swam the creek, went to the show disguised as country boys, and finally fell into the hands of those same Indians who had surrounded the camp and were getting ready to attack us?”
No, Egan hadn’t said a word about any of these things to Enoch, and neither had Don or Bert spoken of them to Lester; although they might have done so if the latter had showed them a little more courtesy when they called upon him at his house. Some of the matters referred to were pleasant episodes in the lives of the Bridgeport students, and the reason why Egan had not spoken of them was because he did not want Enoch to think there was anything agreeable about the institution. He didn’t want him there, because he did not believe that Enoch would be any credit to the school; and so he did with him just as Don and Bert did with Lester: he enlarged upon the rigor of the discipline, the stern impartiality of the instructors, the promptness with which they[39] called a delinquent to account, and spoke feelingly of their long and difficult lessons; but he never said “recreation” once, nor did he so much as hint that there were certain hours in the day that the students could call their own.
“Tell us about that fight,” said Enoch.
“Yes, do,” chimed in Lester. “If there is any way to see fun here, let us know what it is.”
Jones was just the boy to go to with an appeal of this sort. He was thoroughly posted, and if there were any one in the academy who was always ready to set the rules and regulations at defiance, especially if he saw the shadow of a chance for escaping punishment, Jones was the fellow. He gave a glowing description of the battle at the camp; told how the boys ran the guard, and where they went and what they did after they got out; related some thrilling stories of adventure of which the law-breakers were the heroes; and by the time the dinner-call was sounded, he had worked his two auditors up to such a pitch of excitement that they were ready to attempt almost anything.
“You have given me some ideas,” said Enoch, as they hurried toward their dormitories in obedience[40] to the call, “and who knows but they may grow to something? I’ve got to stay here—I had a plain understanding with my father on that point—and I am going to think up something that will yield us some sport.”
“That’s the way I like to hear a fellow talk,” said Jones, approvingly; “and I will tell you this for your encouragement: we care nothing for the risk we shall run in carrying out your scheme, whatever it may be, but before we undertake it, you must be able to satisfy us that we can carry it out successfully. Do that, and I will bring twenty boys to back you up, if you need so many. We are always glad to have fellows like you come among us, for our tricks grow stale after a while, and we learn new ones of you. Don Gordon can think up something in less time than anybody I ever saw; but it would be useless to look to him for help. Egan and the other good little boys have taken him in hand, and they’ll make an officer of him this year; you wait and see if they don’t.”
“Jones gave me some ideas, too,” thought Lester, as he marched into the dining-hall with his company, and took his seat at the table; “but I[41] must say I despise the way he lauded that Don Gordon. Don seems to make friends wherever he goes, and they are among the best, too; while I have to be satisfied with such companions as I can get. I am going to set my wits at work and see if I can’t study up something that will throw that bull-dog business far into the shade.”
Unfortunately for Lester this was easy of accomplishment. He was not obliged to do any very hard thinking on the subject, for a plan was suggested to him that very afternoon. There was but one objection to it: he would have to wait four or five months before it could be carried out.
Lester’s room-mate was a boy who spelled his name Huggins, but pronounced it as though it were written Hewguns. He had showed but little disposition to talk about himself and his affairs, and all Lester could learn concerning him was that he was from Massachusetts, and that he lived somewhere on the sea-coast. He and Lester met in their dormitory after dinner, and while the latter proceeded to put on his hat and overcoat, Huggins threw himself into a chair, buried his hands in his pockets and gazed steadily at the floor.
[42]
“What’s the matter?” inquired Lester. “You act as if something had gone wrong with you.”
“Things never go right with me,” was the surly response. “There isn’t a boy in the world who has so much trouble as I do.”
“I have often thought that of myself,” Lester remarked. “Come out and take a walk. Perhaps the fresh air will do you good.”
“I don’t want any fresh air,” growled Huggins. “I want to think. I have been trying all the morning to hit upon something that would enable me to get to windward of my father, and I guess I have got it at last.”
“What do you mean by getting to windward of him?” asked Lester.
“Why, getting the advantage of him. If two vessels were racing, the one that was to windward would have the odds of the other, especially if the breeze was not steady, because she would always catch it first. I guess you don’t know much about the water, do you?”
“I don’t know much about boats,” replied Lester; “but when it comes to hunting, fishing or riding, I am there. I have yet to see the fellow who can beat me.”
[43]
“I am fond of fishing,” said Huggins. “I was out on the banks last season. We made a very fine catch, and had a tidy row with the Newfoundland fishermen before we could get our bait.”
“What sort of fish did you take?”
“Codfish, of course.”
“Do you angle for them from the banks?”
“I said on the banks—that is, in shoal water.”
“Oh,” said Lester. “I don’t know anything about that kind of fishing. Did you ever play a fifteen pound brook-trout on an eight-ounce fly-rod?”
“No; nor nobody else.”
“I have done it many a time,” said Lester. “I tell you it takes a man who understands his business to land a fish like that with light tackle. A greenhorn would have broken his pole or snapped his line the very first jerk he made.”
“You may tell that to the marines, but you needn’t expect me to believe it,” said Huggins, quietly. “In the first place, a fly-fisher doesn’t fasten his hook by giving a jerk. He does it by a simple turn of the wrist. In the second place, the Salmo fontinalis doesn’t grow to the weight of fifteen pounds.”
[44]
Lester was fairly staggered. He had set out with the intention of giving his room-mate a graphic account of some of his imaginary exploits and adventures (those of our readers who are well acquainted with him will remember that he kept a large supply of them on hand), but he saw that it was time to stop. There was no use in trying to deceive a boy who could fire Latin at him in that way.
“The largest brook-trout that was ever caught was taken in the Rangeley lakes, and weighed a trifle over ten pounds,” continued Huggins. “And lastly, the members of the order Salmonid? don’t live in the muddy, stagnant bayous you have down South. They want clear cold water.”
“Why do you want to get to windward of your father?” inquired Lester, who thought it best to change the subject.
“To pay him for sending me to this school,” replied Huggins.
“And you think you know how to do it?”
“I do.”
Lester became interested. He took off his hat and overcoat and sat down on the edge of his bed.