The manner in which the cadets dine has not as yet been described in these pages; perhaps here is just as good a place as any to picture the historic mess hall where Lee and Grant and Sherman once dined, and toward which on that Saturday afternoon were marching not only the group we have just left, but also the object of all their dislike, the B. J. plebe who fell in behind the cadets as the battalion swung past barracks.  
The cadets march to mess hall; they march to every place they go as a company. The building itself is just south of the "Academic" and barracks; it is built of gray stone, and forcibly reminds the candid observer of a jail. They tell stories at West Point of credulous candidates who have "swallowed" that, and believed that the cadet battalion was composed of disobedient cadets, about to be locked up in confinement.
 
There is a flight of iron steps in the center, and at the foot of these steps, three times every day, the battalion[Pg 205] breaks ranks and dissolves into a mob of actively bounding figures. Upon entering, the cadets do not take seats, but stand behind their chairs, and await the order, "Company A, take seats!" "Company B, take seats!" and so on. The plebes, who, up to this time, are still a separate company, come last, as usual; they are seated by themselves, at one side of the dining-room.
 
The tables seat twenty-two persons, ten on a side, and one at each end. The cadets are placed according to rank, and they always sit in the same seats. The tables are divided down the center by an imaginary line, each part being a "table"; first class men sit near the head, and so on down to the plebes, who find themselves at the center (that is, after they have moved into camp, and been "sized" and assigned to companies; before that they are "beasts," herded apart, as has been said).
 
The dinner is upon the table when the cadets enter; the corporals are charged with the duty of carving, and the luckless plebe is expected to help everybody to water upon demand, and eats nothing until that duty has been attended to. After the meal, for which half an hour is allowed, the command, "Company A, rise!" and so on, is the signal to leave the table and fall into line again on[Pg 206] the street outside. This, however, does not take place until a lynx-eyed "tac" has gone the rounds, making notes—"So-and-so, too much butter on plate." "Somebody else, napkin not properly folded," and so on. This ceremony over, the battalion marches back to camp, a good half mile, in the broiling sun or pouring rain, as the case may be.
 
That Saturday afternoon being a hot one, and a holiday, our friends of the last chapter, Bull Harris and his gang, sought out an occupation in which fully half the cadets at the post chanced to agree; they went in swimming, a diversion which the superintendent sees fit to allow. "Gee's Point," on the Hudson, is within the government property, and thither the cadets gather whenever the weather is suitable.
 
That particular party included Bull and Baby (who didn't swim, but liked to watch Bull), Gus Murray, Vance and the rest of their retainers. And, on the way, they passed the time by discussing their one favorite topic, their recent triumph over "that B. J. beast." There was a new phase of the question they had to speculate upon now, and that was what the "beast" could possibly have done to move to such unholy wrath so important a per[Pg 207]sonage as the senior captain of the Battalion. Also, they were interested in trying to think up a method by which those extra demerits might be speedily given without incurring the wrath of that officer. Though each one of the yearlings was ready, even anxious, to explain that he wasn't the least bit afraid of him.
 
"I tell you," declared Bull, "he couldn't prove anything against us if he tried. It's all one great bluff of Fischer's, and he's a fool............