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Mike

by P. G. Wodehouse · English · Gutenberg #7423 · 616,109 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Mike

Author: P. G. Wodehouse


        
Release date: February 1, 2005 [eBook #7423]
                Most recently updated: January 30, 2026

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MIKE ***




MIKE

A PUBLIC SCHOOL STORY


BY
P. G. WODEHOUSE


CONTAINING TWELVE FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
BY T. M. R. WHITWELL


LONDON
1909.


[Illustration (Frontispiece): “ARE YOU THE M. JACKSON THEN WHO HAD AN
AVERAGE OF FIFTY ONE POINT NOUGHT THREE LAST YEAR?”]


[Dedication]
TO
ALAN DURAND




CONTENTS


CHAPTER
I.       MIKE

II.      THE JOURNEY DOWN

III.     MIKE FINDS A FRIENDLY NATIVE

IV.      AT THE NETS

V.       REVELRY BY NIGHT

VI.      IN WHICH A TIGHT CORNER IS EVADED

VII.     IN WHICH MIKE IS DISCUSSED

VIII.    A ROW WITH THE TOWN

IX.      BEFORE THE STORM

X.       THE GREAT PICNIC

XI.      THE CONCLUSION OF THE PICNIC

XII.     MIKE GETS HIS CHANCE

XIII.    THE M.C.C. MATCH

XIV.     A SLIGHT IMBROGLIO

XV.      MIKE CREATES A VACANCY

XVI.     AN EXPERT EXAMINATION

XVII.    ANOTHER VACANCY

XVIII.   BOB HAS NEWS TO IMPART

XIX.     MIKE GOES TO SLEEP AGAIN

XX.      THE TEAM IS FILLED UP

XXI.     MARJORY THE FRANK

XXII.    WYATT IS REMINDED OF AN ENGAGEMENT

XXIII.   A SURPRISE FOR MR. APPLEBY

XXIV.    CAUGHT

XXV.     MARCHING ORDERS

XXVI.    THE AFTERMATH

XXVII.   THE RIPTON MATCH

XXVIII.  MIKE WINS HOME

XXIX.    WYATT AGAIN

XXX.     MR. JACKSON MAKES UP HIS MIND

XXXI.    SEDLEIGH

XXXII.   PSMITH

XXXIII.  STAKING OUT A CLAIM

XXXIV.   GUERILLA WARFARE

XXXV.    UNPLEASANTNESS IN THE SMALL HOURS

XXXVI.   ADAIR

XXXVII.  MIKE FINDS OCCUPATION

XXXVIII. THE FIRE BRIGADE MEETING

XXXIX.   ACHILLES LEAVES HIS TENT

XL.      THE MATCH WITH DOWNING’S

XLI.     THE SINGULAR BEHAVIOUR OF JELLICOE

XLII.    JELLICOE GOES ON THE SICK-LIST

XLIII.   MIKE RECEIVES A COMMISSION

XLIV.    AND FULFILS IT

XLV.     PURSUIT

XLVI.    THE DECORATION OF SAMMY

XLVII.   MR. DOWNING ON THE SCENT

XLVIII.  THE SLEUTH-HOUND

XLIX.    A CHECK

L.       THE DESTROYER OF EVIDENCE

LI.      MAINLY ABOUT BOOTS

LII.     ON THE TRAIL AGAIN

LIII.    THE KETTLE METHOD

LIV.     ADAIR HAS A WORD WITH MIKE

LV.      CLEARING THE AIR

LVI.     IN WHICH PEACE IS DECLARED

LVII.    MR. DOWNING MOVES

LVIII.   THE ARTIST CLAIMS HIS WORK

LIX.     SEDLEIGH _v._ WRYKYN




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

BY T. M. R. WHITWELL


“ARE YOU THE M. JACKSON, THEN, WHO HAD AN AVERAGE OF FIFTY-ONE POINT
NOUGHT THREE LAST YEAR?”

THE DARK WATERS WERE LASHED INTO A MAELSTROM

“DON’T _LAUGH_, YOU GRINNING APE”

“DO--YOU--SEE, YOU FRIGHTFUL KID?”

“WHAT’S ALL THIS ABOUT JIMMY WYATT?”

MIKE AND THE BALL ARRIVED ALMOST SIMULTANEOUSLY

“WHAT THE DICKENS ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

PSMITH SEIZED AND EMPTIED JELLICOE’S JUG OVER SPILLER

“WHY DID YOU SAY YOU DIDN’T PLAY CRICKET?” HE ASKED

“WHO--” HE SHOUTED, “WHO HAS DONE THIS?”

“DID--YOU--PUT--THAT--BOOT--THERE, SMITH?”

MIKE DROPPED THE SOOT-COVERED OBJECT IN THE FENDER




CHAPTER I

MIKE


It was a morning in the middle of April, and the Jackson family were
consequently breakfasting in comparative silence. The cricket season
had not begun, and except during the cricket season they were in the
habit of devoting their powerful minds at breakfast almost exclusively
to the task of victualling against the labours of the day. In May,
June, July, and August the silence was broken. The three grown-up
Jacksons played regularly in first-class cricket, and there was always
keen competition among their brothers and sisters for the copy of the
_Sportsman_ which was to be found on the hall table with the
letters. Whoever got it usually gloated over it in silence till urged
wrathfully by the multitude to let them know what had happened; when
it would appear that Joe had notched his seventh century, or that
Reggie had been run out when he was just getting set, or, as sometimes
occurred, that that ass Frank had dropped Fry or Hayward in the slips
before he had scored, with the result that the spared expert had made
a couple of hundred and was still going strong.

In such a case the criticisms of the family circle, particularly of
the smaller Jackson sisters, were so breezy and unrestrained that Mrs.
Jackson generally felt it necessary to apply the closure. Indeed,
Marjory Jackson, aged fourteen, had on three several occasions been
fined pudding at lunch for her caustic comments on the batting of her
brother Reggie in important fixtures. Cricket was a tradition in the
family, and the ladies, unable to their sorrow to play the game
themselves, were resolved that it should not be their fault if the
standard was not kept up.

On this particular morning silence reigned. A deep gasp from some
small Jackson, wrestling with bread-and-milk, and an occasional remark
from Mr. Jackson on the letters he was reading, alone broke it.

“Mike’s late again,” said Mrs. Jackson plaintively, at last.

“He’s getting up,” said Marjory. “I went in to see what he was doing,
and he was asleep. So,” she added with a satanic chuckle, “I squeezed
a sponge over him. He swallowed an awful lot, and then he woke up, and
tried to catch me, so he’s certain to be down soon.”

“Marjory!”

“Well, he was on his back with his mouth wide open. I had to. He was
snoring like anything.”

“You might have choked him.”

“I did,” said Marjory with satisfaction. “Jam, please, Phyllis, you
pig.”

Mr. Jackson looked up.

“Mike will have to be more punctual when he goes to Wrykyn,” he said.

“Oh, father, is Mike going to Wrykyn?” asked Marjory. “When?”

“Next term,” said Mr. Jackson. “I’ve just heard from Mr. Wain,” he
added across the table to Mrs. Jackson. “The house is full, but he is
turning a small room into an extra dormitory, so he can take Mike
after all.”

The first comment on this momentous piece of news came from Bob
Jackson. Bob was eighteen. The following term would be his last at
Wrykyn, and, having won through so far without the infliction of a
small brother, he disliked the prospect of not being allowed to finish
as he had begun.

“I say!” he said. “What?”

“He ought to have gone before,” said Mr. Jackson. “He’s fifteen. Much
too old for that private school. He has had it all his own way there,
and it isn’t good for him.”

“He’s got cheek enough for ten,” agreed Bob.

“Wrykyn will do him a world of good.”

“We aren’t in the same house. That’s one comfort.”

Bob was in Donaldson’s. It softened the blow to a certain extent that
Mike should be going to Wain’s. He had the same feeling for Mike that
most boys of eighteen have for their fifteen-year-old brothers. He was
fond of him in the abstract, but preferred him at a distance.

Marjory gave tongue again. She had rescued the jam from Phyllis, who
had shown signs of finishing it, and was now at liberty to turn her
mind to less pressing matters. Mike was her special ally, and anything
that affected his fortunes affected her.

“Hooray! Mike’s going to Wrykyn. I bet he gets into the first eleven
his first term.”

“Considering there are eight old colours left,” said Bob loftily,
“besides heaps of last year’s seconds, it’s hardly likely that a kid
like Mike’ll get a look in. He might get his third, if he sweats.”

The aspersion stung Marjory.

“I bet he gets in before you, anyway,” she said.

Bob disdained to reply. He was among those heaps of last year’s
seconds to whom he had referred. He was a sound bat, though lacking
the brilliance of his elder brothers, and he fancied that his cap was
a certainty this season. Last year he had been tried once or twice.
This year it should be all right.

Mrs. Jackson intervened.

“Go on with your breakfast, Marjory,” she said. “You mustn’t say ‘I
bet’ so much.”

Marjory bit off a section of her slice of bread-and-jam.

“Anyhow, I bet he does,” she muttered truculently through it.

There was a sound of footsteps in the passage outside. The door
opened, and the missing member of the family appeared. Mike Jackson
was tall for his age. His figure was thin and wiry. His arms and legs
looked a shade too long for his body. He was evidently going to be
very tall some day. In face, he was curiously like his brother Joe,
whose appearance is familiar to every one who takes an interest in
first-class cricket. The resemblance was even more marked on the
cricket field. Mike had Joe’s batting style to the last detail. He was
a pocket edition of his century-making brother. “Hullo,” he said,
“sorry I’m late.”

This was mere stereo. He had made the same remark nearly every morning
since the beginning of the holidays.

“All right, Marjory, you little beast,” was his reference to the
sponge incident.

His third remark was of a practical nature.

“I say, what’s under that dish?”

“Mike,” began Mr. Jackson--this again was stereo--“you really must
learn to be more punctual----”

He was interrupted by a chorus.

“Mike, you’re going to Wrykyn next term,” shouted Marjory.

“Mike, father’s just had a letter to say you’re going to Wrykyn next
term.” From Phyllis.

“Mike, you’re going to Wrykyn.” From Ella.

Gladys Maud Evangeline, aged three, obliged with a solo of her own
composition, in six-eight time, as follows: “Mike Wryky. Mike Wryky.
Mike Wryke Wryke Wryke Mike Wryke Wryke Mike Wryke Mike Wryke.”

“Oh, put a green baize cloth over that kid, somebody,” groaned Bob.

Whereat Gladys Maud, having fixed him with a chilly stare for some
seconds, suddenly drew a long breath, and squealed deafeningly for
more milk.

Mike looked round the table. It was a great moment. He rose to it with
the utmost dignity.

“Good,” he said. “I say, what’s under that dish?”

       *       *       *       *       *

After breakfast, Mike and Marjory went off together to the meadow at
the end of the garden. Saunders, the professional, assisted by the
gardener’s boy, was engaged in putting up the net. Mr. Jackson
believed in private coaching; and every spring since Joe, the eldest
of the family, had been able to use a bat a man had come down from the
Oval to teach him the best way to do so. Each of the boys in turn had
passed from spectators to active participants in the net practice in
the meadow. For several years now Saunders had been the chosen man,
and his attitude towards the Jacksons was that of the Faithful Old
Retainer in melodrama. Mike was his special favourite. He felt that in
him he had material of the finest order to work upon. There was
nothing the matter with Bob. In Bob he would turn out a good, sound
article. Bob would be a Blue in his third or fourth year, and probably
a creditable performer among the rank and file of a county team later
on. But he was not a cricket genius, like Mike. Saunders would lie
awake at night sometimes thinking of the possibilities that were in
Mike. The strength could only come with years, but the style was there
already. Joe’s style, with improvements.

Mike put on his pads; and Marjory walked with the professional to the
bowling crease.

“Mike’s going to Wrykyn next term, Saunders,” she said. “All the boys
were there, you know. So was father, ages ago.”

“Is he, miss? I was thinking he would be soon.”

“Do you think he’ll get into the school team?”

“School team, miss! Master Mike get into a school team! He’ll be
playing for England in another eight years. That’s what he’ll be
playing for.”

“Yes, but I meant next term. It would be a record if he did. Even Joe
only got in after he’d been at school two years. Don’t you think he
might, Saunders? He’s awfully good, isn’t he? He’s better than Bob,
isn’t he? And Bob’s almost certain to get in this term.”

Saunders looked a little doubtful.

“Next term!” he said. “Well, you see, miss, it’s this way. It’s all
there, in a manner of speaking, with Master Mike. He’s got as much
style as Mr. Joe’s got, every bit. The whole thing is, you see, miss,
you get these young gentlemen of eighteen, and nineteen perhaps, and
it stands to reason they’re stronger. There’s a young gentleman,
perhaps, doesn’t know as much about what I call real playing as Master
Mike’s forgotten; but then he can hit ’em harder when he does hit ’em,
and that’s where the runs come in. They aren’t going to play Master
Mike because he’ll be in the England team when he leaves school.
They’ll give the cap to somebody that can make a few then and there.”

“But Mike’s jolly strong.”

“Ah, I’m not saying it mightn’t be, miss. I was only saying don’t
count on it, so you won’t be disappointed if it doesn’t happen. It’s
quite likely that it will, only all I say is don’t count on it. I only
hope that they won’t knock all the style out of him before they’re
done with him. You know these school professionals, miss.”

“No, I don’t, Saunders. What are they like?”

“Well, there’s too much of the come-right-out-at-everything about ’em
for my taste. Seem to think playing forward the alpha and omugger of
batting. They’ll make him pat balls back to the bowler which he’d cut
for twos and threes if he was left to himself. Still, we’ll hope for
the best, miss. Ready, Master Mike? Play.”

As Saunders had said, it was all there. Of Mike’s style there could be
no doubt. To-day, too, he was playing more strongly than usual.
Marjory had to run to the end of the meadow to fetch one straight
drive. “He hit that hard enough, didn’t he, Saunders?” she asked, as
she returned the ball.

“If he could keep on doing ones like that, miss,” said the
professional, “they’d have him in the team before you could say
knife.”

Marjory sat down again beside the net, and watched more hopefully.




CHAPTER II

THE JOURNEY DOWN


The seeing off of Mike on the last day of the holidays was an imposing
spectacle, a sort of pageant. Going to a public school, especially at
the beginning of the summer term, is no great hardship, more
particularly when the departing hero has a brother on the verge of the
school eleven and three other brothers playing for counties; and Mike
seemed in no way disturbed by the prospect. Mothers, however, to the
end of time will foster a secret fear that their sons will be bullied
at a big school, and Mrs. Jackson’s anxious look lent a fine solemnity
to the proceedings.

And as Marjory, Phyllis, and Ella invariably broke down when the time
of separation arrived, and made no exception to their rule on the
present occasion, a suitable gloom was the keynote of the gathering.
Mr. Jackson seemed to bear the parting with fortitude, as did Mike’s
Uncle John (providentially roped in at the eleventh hour on his way
to Scotland, in time to come down with a handsome tip). To their
coarse-fibred minds there was nothing pathetic or tragic about the
affair at all. (At the very moment when the train began to glide out
of the station Uncle John was heard to remark that, in his opinion,
these Bocks weren’t a patch on the old shaped Larranaga.) Among others
present might have been noticed Saunders, practising late cuts rather
coyly with a walking-stick in the background; the village idiot, who
had rolled up on the chance of a dole; Gladys Maud Evangeline’s nurse,
smiling vaguely; and Gladys Maud Evangeline herself, frankly bored
with the whole business.

The train gathered speed. The air was full of last messages. Uncle
John said on second thoughts he wasn’t sure these Bocks weren’t half a
bad smoke after all. Gladys Maud cried, because she had taken a sudden
dislike to the village idiot; and Mike settled himself in the corner
and opened a magazine.

He was alone in the carriage. Bob, who had been spending the last week
of the holidays with an aunt further down the line, was to board the
train at East Wobsley, and the brothers were to make a state entry
into Wrykyn together. Meanwhile, Mike was left to his milk chocolate,
his magazines, and his reflections.

The latter were not numerous, nor profound. He was excited. He had
been petitioning the home authorities for the past year to be allowed
to leave his private school and go to Wrykyn, and now the thing had
come about. He wondered what sort of a house Wain’s was, and whether
they had any chance of the cricket cup. According to Bob they had no
earthly; but then Bob only recognised one house, Donaldson’s. He
wondered if Bob would get his first eleven cap this year, and if he
himself were likely to do anything at cricket. Marjory had faithfully
reported every word Saunders had said on the subject, but Bob had been
so careful to point out his insignificance when compared with the
humblest Wrykynian that the professional’s glowing prophecies had not
had much effect. It might be true that some day he would play for
England, but just at present he felt he would exchange his place in
the team for one in the Wrykyn third eleven. A sort of mist enveloped
everything Wrykynian. It seemed almost hopeless to try and compete
with these unknown experts. On the other hand, there was Bob. Bob, by
all accounts, was on the verge of the first eleven, and he was nothing
special.

While he was engaged on these reflections, the train drew up at a
small station. Opposite the door of Mike’s compartment was standing a
boy of about Mike’s size, though evidently some years older. He had a
sharp face, with rather a prominent nose; and a pair of pince-nez gave
him a supercilious look. He wore a bowler hat, and carried a small
portmanteau.

He opened the door, and took the seat opposite to Mike, whom he
scrutinised for a moment rather after the fashion of a naturalist
examining some new and unpleasant variety of beetle. He seemed about
to make some remark, but, instead, got up and looked through the open
window.

“Where’s that porter?” Mike heard him say.

The porter came skimming down the platform at that moment.

“Porter.”

“Sir?”

“Are those frightful boxes of mine in all right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because, you know, there’ll be a frightful row if any of them get
lost.”

“No chance of that, sir.”

“Here you are, then.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The youth drew his head and shoulders in, stared at Mike again, and
finally sat down. Mike noticed that he had nothing to read, and
wondered if he wanted anything; but he did not feel equal to offering
him one of his magazines. He did not like the looks of him
particularly. Judging by appearances, he seemed to carry enough side
for three. If he wanted a magazine, thought Mike, let him ask for it.

The other made no overtures, and at the next stop got out. That
explained his magazineless condition. He was only travelling a short
way.

“Good business,” said Mike to himself. He had all the Englishman’s
love of a carriage to himself.

The train was just moving out of the station when his eye was suddenly
caught by the stranger’s bag, lying snugly in the rack.

And here, I regret to say, Mike acted from the best motives, which is
always fatal.

He realised in an instant what had happened. The fellow had forgotten
his bag.

Mike had not been greatly fascinated by the stranger’s looks; but,
after all, the most supercilious person on earth has a right to his
own property. Besides, he might have been quite a nice fellow when you
got to know him. Anyhow, the bag had better be returned at once. The
train was already moving quite fast, and Mike’s compartment was nearing
the end of the platform.

He snatched the bag from the rack and hurled it out of the window.
(Porter Robinson, who happened to be in the line of fire, escaped with
a flesh wound.) Then he sat down again with the inward glow of
satisfaction which comes to one when one has risen successfully to a
sudden emergency.

       *       *       *       *       *

The glow lasted till the next stoppage, which did not occur for a good
many miles. Then it ceased abruptly, for the train had scarcely come
to a standstill when the opening above the door was darkened by a head
and shoulders. The head was surmounted by a bowler, and a pair of
pince-nez gleamed from the shadow.

“Hullo, I say,” said the stranger. “Have you changed carriages, or
what?”

“No,” said Mike.

“Then, dash it, where’s my frightful bag?”

Life teems with embarrassing situations. This was one of them.

“The fact is,” said Mike, “I chucked it out.”

“Chucked it out! what do you mean? When?”

“At the last station.”

The guard blew his whistle, and the other jumped into the carriage.

“I thought you’d got out there for good,” explained Mike. “I’m awfully
sorry.”

“Where _is_ the bag?”

“On the platform at the last station. It hit a porter.”

Against his will, for he wished to treat the matter with fitting
solemnity, Mike grinned at the recollection. The look on Porter
Robinson’s face as the bag took him in the small of the back had been
funny, though not intentionally so.

The bereaved owner disapproved of this levity; and said as much.

“Don’t _grin_, you little beast,” he shouted. “There’s nothing to
laugh at. You go chucking bags that don’t belong to you out of the
window, and then you have the frightful cheek to grin about it.”

“It wasn’t that,” said Mike hurriedly. “Only the porter looked awfully
funny when it hit him.”

“Dash the porter! What’s going to happen about my bag? I can’t get out
for half a second to buy a magazine without your flinging my things
about the platform. What you want is a frightful kicking.”

The situation was becoming difficult. But fortunately at this moment
the train stopped once again; and, looking out of the window, Mike saw
a board with East Wobsley upon it in large letters. A moment later
Bob’s head appeared in the doorway.

“Hullo, there you are,” said Bob.

His eye fell upon Mike’s companion.

“Hullo, Gazeka!” he exclaimed. “Where did you spring from? Do you know
my brother? He’s coming to Wrykyn this term. By the way, rather lucky
you’ve met. He’s in your house. Firby-Smith’s head of Wain’s, Mike.”

Mike gathered that Gazeka and Firby-Smith were one and the same
person. He grinned again. Firby-Smith continued to look ruffled,
though not aggressive.

“Oh, are you in Wain’s?” he said.

“I say, Bob,” said Mike, “I’ve made rather an ass of myself.”

“Naturally.”

“I mean, what happened was this. I chucked Firby-Smith’s portmanteau
out of the window, thinking he’d got out, only he hadn’t really, and
it’s at a station miles back.”

“You’re a bit of a rotter, aren’t you? Had it got your name and
address on it, Gazeka?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, then it’s certain to be all right. It’s bound to turn up some
time. They’ll send it on by the next train, and you’ll get it either
to-night or to-morrow.”

“Frightful nuisance, all the same. Lots of things in it I wanted.”

“Oh, never mind, it’s all right. I say, what have you been doing in
the holidays? I didn’t know you lived on this line at all.”

From this point onwards Mike was out of the conversation altogether.
Bob and Firby-Smith talked of Wrykyn, discussing events of the
previous term of which Mike had never heard. Names came into their
conversation which were entirely new to him. He realised that school
politics were being talked, and that contributions from him to the
dialogue were not required. He took up his magazine again, listening
the while. They were discussing Wain’s now. The name Wyatt cropped up
with some frequency. Wyatt was apparently something of a character.
Mention was made of rows in which he had played a part in the past.

“It must be pretty rotten for him,” said Bob. “He and Wain never get
on very well, and yet they have to be together, holidays as well as
term. Pretty bad having a step-father at all--I shouldn’t care to--and
when your house-master and your step-father are the same man, it’s a
bit thick.”

“Frightful,” agreed Firby-Smith.

“I swear, if I were in Wyatt’s place, I should rot about like
anything. It isn’t as if he’d anything to look forward to when he
leaves. He told me last term that Wain had got a nomination for him in
some beastly bank, and that he was going into it directly after the
end of this term. Rather rough on a chap like Wyatt. Good cricketer
and footballer, I mean, and all that sort of thing. It’s just the sort
of life he’ll hate most. Hullo, here we are.”

Mike looked out of the window. It was Wrykyn at last.




CHAPTER III

MIKE FINDS A FRIENDLY NATIVE


Mike was surprised to find, on alighting, that the platform was
entirely free from Wrykynians. In all the stories he had read the
whole school came back by the same train, and, having smashed in one
another’s hats and chaffed the porters, made their way to the school
buildings in a solid column. But here they were alone.

A remark of Bob’s to Firby-Smith explained this. “Can’t make out why
none of the fellows came back by this train,” he said. “Heaps of them
must come by this line, and it’s the only Christian train they run,”

“Don’t want to get here before the last minute they can possibly
manage. Silly idea. I suppose they think there’d be nothing to do.”

“What shall _we_ do?” said Bob. “Come and have some tea at
Cook’s?”

“All right.”

Bob looked at Mike. There was no disguising the fact that he would be
in the way; but how convey this fact delicately to him?

“Look here, Mike,” he said, with a happy inspiration, “Firby-Smith and
I are just going to get some tea. I think you’d better nip up to the
school. Probably Wain will want to see you, and tell you all about
things, which is your dorm. and so on. See you later,” he concluded
airily. “Any one’ll tell you the way to the school. Go straight on.
They’ll send your luggage on later. So long.” And his sole prop in
this world of strangers departed, leaving him to find his way for
himself.

There is no subject on which opinions differ so widely as this matter
of finding the way to a place. To the man who knows, it is simplicity
itself. Probably he really does imagine that he goes straight on,
ignoring the fact that for him the choice of three roads, all more or
less straight, has no perplexities. The man who does not know feels as
if he were in a maze.

Mike started out boldly, and lost his way. Go in which direction he
would, he always seemed to arrive at a square with a fountain and an
equestrian statue in its centre. On the fourth repetition of this feat
he stopped in a disheartened way, and looked about him. He was
beginning to feel bitter towards Bob. The man might at least have
shown him where to get some tea.

At this moment a ray of hope shone through the gloom. Crossing the
square was a short, thick-set figure clad in grey flannel trousers, a
blue blazer, and a straw hat with a coloured band. Plainly a
Wrykynian. Mike made for him.

“Can you tell me the way to the school, please,” he said.

“Oh, you’re going to the school,” said the other. He had a pleasant,
square-jawed face, reminiscent of a good-tempered bull-dog, and a pair
of very deep-set grey eyes which somehow put Mike at his ease. There
was something singularly cool and genial about them. He felt that they
saw the humour in things, and that their owner was a person who liked
most people and whom most people liked.

“You look rather lost,” said the stranger. “Been hunting for it long?”

“Yes,” said Mike.

“Which house do you want?”

“Wain’s.”

“Wain’s? Then you’ve come to the right man this time. What I don’t
know about Wain’s isn’t worth knowing.”

“Are you there, too?”

“Am I not! Term _and_ holidays. There’s no close season for me.”

“Oh, are you Wyatt, then?” asked Mike.

“Hullo, this is fame. How did you know my name, as the ass in the
detective story always says to the detective, who’s seen it in the
lining of his hat? Who’s been talking about me?”

“I heard my brother saying something about you in the train.”

“Who’s your brother?”

“Jackson. He’s in Donaldson’s.”

“I know. A stout fellow. So you’re the newest make of Jackson, latest
model, with all the modern improvements? Are there any more of you?”

“Not brothers,” said Mike.

“Pity. You can’t quite raise a team, then? Are you a sort of young
Tyldesley, too?”

“I played a bit at my last school. Only a private school, you know,”
added Mike modestly.

“Make any runs? What was your best score?”

“Hundred and twenty-three,” said Mike awkwardly. “It was only against
kids, you know.” He was in terror lest he should seem to be bragging.

“That’s pretty useful. Any more centuries?”

“Yes,” said Mike, shuffling.

“How many?”

“Seven altogether. You know, it was really awfully rotten bowling. And
I was a good bit bigger than most of the chaps there. And my pater
always has a pro. down in the Easter holidays, which gave me a bit of
an advantage.”

“All the same, seven centuries isn’t so dusty against any bowling. We
shall want some batting in the house this term. Look here, I was just
going to have some tea. You come along, too.”

“Oh, thanks awfully,” said Mike. “My brother and Firby-Smith have gone
to a place called Cook’s.”

“The old Gazeka? I didn’t know he lived in your part of the world.
He’s head of Wain’s.”

“Yes, I know,” said Mike. “Why is he called Gazeka?” he asked after a
pause.

“Don’t you think he looks like one? What did you think of him?”

“I didn’t speak to him much,” said Mike cautiously. It is always
delicate work answering a question like this unless one has some sort
of an inkling as to the views of the questioner.

“He’s all right,” said Wyatt, answering for himself. “He’s got a habit
of talking to one as if he were a prince of the blood dropping a
gracious word to one of the three Small-Heads at the Hippodrome, but
that’s his misfortune. We all have our troubles. That’s his. Let’s go
in here. It’s too far to sweat to Cook’s.”

It was about a mile from the tea-shop to the school. Mike’s first
impression on arriving at the school grounds was of his smallness and
insignificance. Everything looked so big--the buildings, the grounds,
everything. He felt out of the picture. He was glad that he had met
Wyatt. To make his entrance into this strange land alone would have
been more of an ordeal than he would have cared to face.

“That’s Wain’s,” said Wyatt, pointing to one of half a dozen large
houses which lined the road on the south side of the cricket field.
Mike followed his finger, and took in the size of his new home.

“I say, it’s jolly big,” he said. “How many fellows are there in it?”

“Thirty-one this term, I believe.”

“That’s more than there were at King-Hall’s.”

“What’s King-Hall’s?”

“The private school I was at. At Emsworth.”

Emsworth seemed very remote and unreal to him as he spoke.

They skirted the cricket field, walking along the path that divided
the two terraces. The Wrykyn playing-fields were formed of a series of
huge steps, cut out of the hill. At the top of the hill came the
school. On the first terrace was a sort of informal practice ground,
where, though no games were played on it, there was a good deal of
punting and drop-kicking in the winter and fielding-practice in the
summer. The next terrace was the biggest of all, and formed the first
eleven cricket ground, a beautiful piece of turf, a shade too narrow
for its length, bounded on the terrace side by a sharply sloping bank,
some fifteen feet deep, and on the other by the precipice leading to
the next terrace. At the far end of the ground stood the pavilion, and
beside it a little ivy-covered rabbit-hutch for the scorers. Old
Wrykynians always claimed that it was the prettiest school ground in
England. It certainly had the finest view. From the verandah of the
pavilion you could look over three counties.

Wain’s house wore an empty and desolate appearance. There were signs
of activity, however, inside; and a smell of soap and warm water told
of preparations recently completed.

Wyatt took Mike into the matron’s room, a small room opening out of
the main passage.

“This is Jackson,” he said. “Which dormitory is he in, Miss Payne?”

The matron consulted a paper.

“He’s in yours, Wyatt.”

“Good business. Who’s in the other bed? There are going to be three of
us, aren’t there?”

“Fereira was to have slept there, but we have just heard that he is
not coming back this term. He has had to go on a sea-voyage for his
health.”

“Seems queer any one actually taking the trouble to keep Fereira in
the world,” said Wyatt. “I’ve often thought of giving him Rough On
Rats myself. Come along, Jackson, and I’ll show you the room.”

They went along the passage, and up a flight of stairs.

“Here you are,” said Wyatt.

It was a fair-sized room. The window, heavily barred, looked out over
a large garden.

“I used to sleep here alone last term,” said Wyatt, “but the house is
so full now they’ve turned it into a dormitory.”

“I say, I wish these bars weren’t here. It would be rather a rag to
get out of the window on to that wall at night, and hop down into the
garden and explore,” said Mike.

Wyatt looked at him curiously, and moved to the window.

“I’m not going to let you do it, of course,” he said, “because you’d
go getting caught, and dropped on, which isn’t good for one in one’s
first term; but just to amuse you----”

He jerked at the middle bar, and the next moment he was standing with
it in his hand, and the way to the garden was clear.

“By Jove!” said Mike.

“That’s simply an object-lesson, you know,” said Wyatt, replacing the
bar, and pushing the screws back into their putty. “I get out at night
myself because I think my health needs it. Besides, it’s my last term,
anyhow, so it doesn’t matter what I do. But if I find you trying to
cut out in the small hours, there’ll be trouble. See?”

“All right,” said Mike, reluctantly. “But I wish you’d let me.”

“Not if I know it. Promise you won’t try it on.”

“All right. But, I say, what do you do out there?”

“I shoot at cats with an air-pistol, the beauty of which is that even
if you hit them it doesn’t hurt--simply keeps them bright and
interested in life; and if you miss you’ve had all the fun anyhow.
Have you ever shot at a rocketing cat? Finest mark you can have.
Society’s latest craze. Buy a pistol and see life.”

“I wish you’d let me come.”

“I daresay you do. Not much, however. Now, if you like, I’ll take you
over the rest of the school. You’ll have to see it sooner or later, so
you may as well get it over at once.”




CHAPTER IV

AT THE NETS


There are few better things in life than a public school summer term.
The winter term is good, especially towards the end, and there are
points, though not many, about the Easter term: but it is in the
summer that one really appreciates public school life. The freedom of
it, after the restrictions of even the most easy-going private school,
is intoxicating. The change is almost as great as that from public
school to ’Varsity.

For Mike the path was made particularly easy. The only drawback to
going to a big school for the first time is the fact that one is made
to feel so very small and inconspicuous. New boys who have been
leading lights at their private schools feel it acutely for the first
week. At one time it was the custom, if we may believe writers of a
generation or so back, for boys to take quite an embarrassing interest
in the newcomer. He was asked a rain of questions, and was, generally,
in the very centre of the stage. Nowadays an absolute lack of interest
is the fashion. A new boy arrives, and there he is, one of a crowd.

Mike was saved this salutary treatment to a large extent, at first by
virtue of the greatness of his family, and, later, by his own
performances on the cricket field. His three elder brothers were
objects of veneration to most Wrykynians, and Mike got a certain
amount of reflected glory from them. The brother of first-class
cricketers has a dignity of his own. Then Bob was a help. He was on
the verge of the cricket team and had been the school full-back for
two seasons. Mike found that people came up and spoke to him, anxious
to know if he were Jackson’s brother; and became friendly when he
replied in the affirmative. Influential relations are a help in every
stage of life.

It was Wyatt who gave him his first chance at cricket. There were nets
on the first afternoon of term for all old colours of the three teams
and a dozen or so of those most likely to fill the vacant places.
Wyatt was there, of course. He had got his first eleven cap in the
previous season as a mighty hitter and a fair slow bowler. Mike met
him crossing the field with his cricket bag.

“Hullo, where are you off to?” asked Wyatt. “Coming to watch the
nets?”

Mike had no particular programme for the afternoon. Junior cricket had
not begun, and it was a little difficult to know how to fill in the
time.

“I tell you what,” said Wyatt, “nip into the house and shove on some
things, and I’ll try and get Burgess to let you have a knock later
on.”

This suited Mike admirably. A quarter of an hour later he was sitting
at the back of the first eleven net, watching the practice.

Burgess, the captain of the Wrykyn team, made no pretence of being a
bat. He was the school fast bowler and concentrated his energies on
that department of the game. He sometimes took ten minutes at the
wicket after everybody else had had an innings, but it was to bowl
that he came to the nets.

He was bowling now to one of the old colours whose name Mike did not
know. Wyatt and one of the professionals were the other two bowlers.
Two nets away Firby-Smith, who had changed his pince-nez for a pair of
huge spectacles, was performing rather ineffectively against some very
bad bowling. Mike fixed his attention on the first eleven man.

He was evidently a good bat. There was style and power in his batting.
He had a way of gliding Burgess’s fastest to leg which Mike admired
greatly. He was succeeded at the end of a quarter of an hour by
another eleven man, and then Bob appeared.

It was soon made evident that this was not Bob’s day. Nobody is at his
best on the first day of term; but Bob was worse than he had any right
to be. He scratched forward at nearly everything, and when Burgess,
who had been resting, took up the ball again, he had each stump
uprooted in a regular series in seven balls. Once he skied one of
Wyatt’s slows over the net behind the wicket; and Mike, jumping up,
caught him neatly.

“Thanks,” said Bob austerely, as Mike returned the ball to him. He
seemed depressed.

Towards the end of the afternoon, Wyatt went up to Burgess.

“Burgess,” he said, “see that kid sitting behind the net?”

“With the naked eye,” said Burgess. “Why?”

“He’s just come to Wain’s. He’s Bob Jackson’s brother, and I’ve a sort
of idea that he’s a bit of a bat. I told him I’d ask you if he could
have a knock. Why not send him in at the end net? There’s nobody there
now.”

Burgess’s amiability off the field equalled his ruthlessness when
bowling.

“All right,” he said. “Only if you think that I’m going to sweat to
bowl to him, you’re making a fatal error.”

“You needn’t do a thing. Just sit and watch. I rather fancy this kid’s
something special.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Mike put on Wyatt’s pads and gloves, borrowed his bat, and walked
round into the net.

“Not in a funk, are you?” asked Wyatt, as he passed.

Mike grinned. The fact was that he had far too good an opinion of
himself to be nervous. An entirely modest person seldom makes a good
batsman. Batting is one of those things which demand first and
foremost a thorough belief in oneself. It need not be aggressive, but
it must be there.

Wyatt and the professional were the bowlers. Mike had seen enough of
Wyatt’s bowling to know that it was merely ordinary “slow tosh,” and
the professional did not look as difficult as Saunders. The first
half-dozen balls he played carefully. He was on trial, and he meant to
take no risks. Then the professional over-pitched one slightly on the
off. Mike jumped out, and got the full face of the bat on to it. The
ball hit one of the ropes of the net, and nearly broke it.

“How’s that?” said Wyatt, with the smile of an impresario on the first
night of a successful piece.

“Not bad,” admitted Burgess.

A few moments later he was still more complimentary. He got up and
took a ball himself.

Mike braced himself up as Burgess began his run. This time he was more
than a trifle nervous. The bowling he had had so far had been tame.
This would be the real ordeal.

As the ball left Burgess’s hand he began instinctively to shape for a
forward stroke. Then suddenly he realised that the thing was going to
be a yorker, and banged his bat down in the block just as the ball
arrived. An unpleasant sensation as of having been struck by a
thunderbolt was succeeded by a feeling of relief that he had kept the
ball out of his wicket. There are easier things in the world than
stopping a fast yorker.

“Well played,” said Burgess.

Mike felt like a successful general receiving the thanks of the
nation.

The fact that Burgess’s next ball knocked middle and off stumps out of
the ground saddened him somewhat; but this was the last tragedy that
occurred. He could not do much with the bowling beyond stopping it and
feeling repetitions of the thunderbolt experience, but he kept up his
end; and a short conversation which he had with Burgess at the end of
his innings was full of encouragement to one skilled in reading
between the lines.

“Thanks awfully,” said Mike, referring to the square manner in which
the captain had behaved in letting him bat.

“What school were you at before you came here?” asked Burgess.

“A private school in Hampshire,” said Mike. “King-Hall’s. At a place
called Emsworth.”

“Get much cricket there?”

“Yes, a good lot. One of the masters, a chap called Westbrook, was an
awfully good slow bowler.”

Burgess nodded.

“You don’t run away, which is something,” he said.

Mike turned purple with pleasure at this stately compliment. Then,
having waited for further remarks, but gathering from the captain’s
silence that the audience was at an end, he proceeded to unbuckle his
pads. Wyatt overtook him on his way to the house.

“Well played,” he said. “I’d no idea you were such hot stuff. You’re a
regular pro.”

“I say,” said Mike gratefully, “it was most awfully decent of you
getting Burgess to let me go in. It was simply ripping of you.”

“Oh, that’s all right. If you don’t get pushed a bit here you stay for
ages in the hundredth game with the cripples and the kids. Now you’ve
shown them what you can do you ought to get into the Under Sixteen
team straight away. Probably into the third, too.”

“By Jove, that would be all right.”

“I asked Burgess afterwards what he thought of your batting, and he
said, ‘Not bad.’ But he says that about everything. It’s his highest
form of praise. He says it when he wants to let himself go and simply
butter up a thing. If you took him to see N. A. Knox bowl, he’d say he
wasn’t bad. What he meant was that he was jolly struck with your
batting, and is going to play you for the Under Sixteen.”

“I hope so,” said Mike.

The prophecy was fulfilled. On the following Wednesday there was a
match between the Under Sixteen and a scratch side. Mike’s name was
among the Under Sixteen. And on the Saturday he was playing for the
third eleven in a trial game.

“This place is ripping,” he said to himself, as he saw his name on the
list. “Thought I should like it.”

And that night he wrote a letter to his father, notifying him of the
fact.




CHAPTER V

REVELRY BY NIGHT


A succession of events combined to upset Mike during his first
fortnight at school. He was far more successful than he had any right
to be at his age. There is nothing more heady than success, and if it
comes before we are prepared for it, it is apt to throw us off our
balance. As a rule, at school, years of wholesome obscurity make us
ready for any small triumphs we may achieve at the end of our time
there. Mike had skipped these years. He was older than the average new
boy, and his batting was undeniable. He knew quite well that he was
regarded as a find by the cricket authorities; and the knowledge was
not particularly good for him. It did not make him conceited, for his
was not a nature at all addicted to conceit. The effect it had on him
was to make him excessively pleased with life. And when Mike was
pleased with life he always found a difficulty in obeying Authority
and its rules. His state of mind was not improved by an interview with
Bob.

Some evil genius put it into Bob’s mind that it was his duty to be, if
only for one performance, the Heavy Elder Brother to Mike; to give him
good advice. It is never the smallest use for an elder brother to
attempt to do anything for the good of a younger brother at school,
for the latter rebels automatically against such interference in his
concerns; but Bob did not know this. He only knew that he had received
a letter from home, in which his mother had assumed without evidence
that he was leading Mike by the hand round the pitfalls of life at
Wrykyn; and his conscience smote him. Beyond asking him occasionally,
when they met, how he was getting on (a question to which Mike
invariably replied, “Oh, all right”), he was not aware of having done
anything brotherly towards the youngster. So he asked Mike to tea in
his study one afternoon before going to the nets.

Mike arrived, sidling into the study in the half-sheepish, half-defiant
manner peculiar to small brothers in the presence of their elders, and
stared in silence at the photographs on the walls. Bob was changing into
his cricket things. The atmosphere was one of constraint and awkwardness.

The arrival of tea was the cue for conversation.

“Well, how are you getting on?” asked Bob.

“Oh, all right,” said Mike.

Silence.

“Sugar?” asked Bob.

“Thanks,” said Mike.

“How many lumps?”

“Two, please.”

“Cake?”

“Thanks.”

Silence.

Bob pulled himself together.

“Like Wain’s?”

“Ripping.”

“I asked Firby-Smith to keep an eye on you,” said Bob.

“What!” said Mike.

The mere idea of a worm like the Gazeka being told to keep an eye on
_him_ was degrading.

“He said he’d look after you,” added Bob, making things worse.

Look after him! Him!! M. Jackson, of the third eleven!!!

Mike helped himself to another chunk of cake, and spoke crushingly.

“He needn’t trouble,” he said. “I can look after myself all right,
thanks.”

Bob saw an opening for the entry of the Heavy Elder Brother.

“Look here, Mike,” he said, “I’m only saying it for your good----”

I should like to state here that it was not Bob’s habit to go about
the world telling people things solely for their good. He was only
doing it now to ease his conscience.

“Yes?” said Mike coldly.

“It’s only this. You know, I should keep an eye on myself if I were
you. There’s nothing that gets a chap so barred here as side.”

“What do you mean?” said Mike, outraged.

“Oh, I’m not saying anything against you so far,” said Bob. “You’ve
been all right up to now. What I mean to say is, you’ve got on so well
at cricket, in the third and so on, there’s just a chance you might
start to side about a bit soon, if you don’t watch yourself. I’m not
saying a word against you so far, of course. Only you see what I
mean.”

Mike’s feelings were too deep for words. In sombre silence he reached
out for the jam; while Bob, satisfied that he had delivered his
message in a pleasant and tactful manner, filled his cup, and cast
about him for further words of wisdom.

“Seen you about with Wyatt a good deal,” he said at length.

“Yes,” said Mike.

“Like him?”

“Yes,” said Mike cautiously.

“You know,” said Bob, “I shouldn’t--I mean, I should take care what
you’re doing with Wyatt.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s an awfully good chap, of course, but still----”

“Still what?”

“Well, I mean, he’s the sort of chap who’ll probably get into some
thundering row before he leaves. He doesn’t care a hang what he does.
He’s that sort of chap. He’s never been dropped on yet, but if you go
on breaking rules you’re bound to be sooner or later. Thing is, it
doesn’t matter much for him, because he’s leaving at the end of the
term. But don’t let him drag you into anything. Not that he would try
to. But you might think it was the blood thing to do to imitate him,
and the first thing you knew you’d be dropped on by Wain or somebody.
See what I mean?”

Bob was well-intentioned, but tact did not enter greatly into his
composition.

“What rot!” said Mike.

“All right. But don’t you go doing it. I’m going over to the nets. I
see Burgess has shoved you down for them. You’d better be going and
changing. Stick on here a bit, though, if you want any more tea. I’ve
got to be off myself.”

Mike changed for net-practice in a ferment of spiritual injury. It was
maddening to be treated as an infant who had to be looked after. He
felt very sore against Bob.

A good innings at the third eleven net, followed by some strenuous
fielding in the deep, soothed his ruffled feelings to a large extent;
and all might have been well but for the intervention of Firby-Smith.

That youth, all spectacles and front teeth, met Mike at the door of
Wain’s.

“Ah, I wanted to see you, young man,” he said. (Mike disliked being
called “young man.”) “Come up to my study.”

Mike followed him in silence to his study, and preserved his silence
till Firby-Smith, having deposited his cricket-bag in a corner of the
room and examined himself carefully in a looking-glass that hung over
the mantelpiece, spoke again.

“I’ve been hearing all about you, young man.” Mike shuffled.

“You’re a frightful character from all accounts.” Mike could not think
of anything to say that was not rude, so said nothing.

“Your brother has asked me to keep an eye on you.”

Mike’s soul began to tie itself into knots again. He was just at the
age when one is most sensitive to patronage and most resentful of it.

“I promised I would,” said the Gazeka, turning round and examining
himself in the mirror again. “You’ll get on all right if you behave
yourself. Don’t make a frightful row in the house. Don’t cheek your
elders and betters. Wash. That’s all. Cut along.”

Mike had a vague idea of sacrificing his career to the momentary
pleasure of flinging a chair at the head of the house. Overcoming this
feeling, he walked out of the room, and up to his dormitory to change.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the dormitory that night the feeling of revolt, of wanting to
do something actively illegal, increased. Like Eric, he burned, not
with shame and remorse, but with rage and all that sort of thing.
He dropped off to sleep full of half-formed plans for asserting
himself. He was awakened from a dream in which he was batting against
Firby-Smith’s bowling, and hitting it into space every time, by a
slight sound. He opened his eyes, and saw a dark figure silhouetted
against the light of the window. He sat up in bed.

“Hullo,” he said. “Is that you, Wyatt?”

“Are you awake?” said Wyatt. “Sorry if I’ve spoiled your beauty
sleep.”

“Are you going out?”

“I am,” said Wyatt. “The cats are particularly strong on the wing just
now. Mustn’t miss a chance like this. Specially as there’s a good
moon, too. I shall be deadly.”

“I say, can’t I come too?”

A moonlight prowl, with or without an air-pistol, would just have
suited Mike’s mood.

“No, you can’t,” said Wyatt. “When I’m caught, as I’m morally certain
to be some day, or night rather, they’re bound to ask if you’ve ever
been out as well as me. Then you’ll be able to put your hand on your
little heart and do a big George Washington act. You’ll find that
useful when the time comes.”

“Do you think you will be caught?”

“Shouldn’t be surprised. Anyhow, you stay where you are. Go to sleep
and dream that you’re playing for the school against Ripton. So long.”

And Wyatt, laying the bar he had extracted on the window-sill,
wriggled out. Mike saw him disappearing along the wall.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was all very well for Wyatt to tell him to go to sleep, but it was
not so easy to do it. The room was almost light; and Mike always found
it difficult to sleep unless it was dark. He turned over on his side
and shut his eyes, but he had never felt wider awake. Twice he heard
the quarters chime from the school clock; and the second time he gave
up the struggle. He got out of bed and went to the window. It was a
lovely night, just the sort of night on which, if he had been at home,
he would have been out after moths with a lantern.

A sharp yowl from an unseen cat told of Wyatt’s presence somewhere in
the big garden. He would have given much to be with him, but he
realised that he was on parole. He had promised not to leave the
house, and there was an end of it.

He turned away from the window and sat down on his bed. Then a
beautiful, consoling thought came to him. He had given his word that
he would not go into the garden, but nothing had been said about
exploring inside the house. It was quite late now. Everybody would be
in bed. It would be quite safe. And there must be all sorts of things
to interest the visitor in Wain’s part of the house. Food, perhaps.
Mike felt that he could just do with a biscuit. And there were bound
to be biscuits on the sideboard in Wain’s dining-room.

He crept quietly out of the dormitory.

He had been long enough in the house to know the way, in spite of the
fact that all was darkness. Down the stairs, along the passage to the
left, and up a few more stairs at the end. The beauty of the position
was that the dining-room had two doors, one leading into Wain’s part
of the house, the other into the boys’ section. Any interruption that
there might be would come from the further door.

To make himself more secure he locked that door; then, turning up the
incandescent light, he proceeded to look about him.

Mr. Wain’s dining-room repaid inspection. There were the remains of
supper on the table. Mike cut himself some cheese and took some
biscuits from the box, feeling that he was doing himself well. This
was Life. There was a little soda-water in the syphon. He finished it.
As it swished into the glass, it made a noise that seemed to him like
three hundred Niagaras; but nobody else in the house appeared to have
noticed it.

He took some more biscuits, and an apple.

After which, feeling a new man, he examined the room.

And this was where the trouble began.

On a table in one corner stood a small gramophone. And gramophones
happened to be Mike’s particular craze.

All thought of risk left him. The soda-water may have got into his
head, or he may have been in a particularly reckless mood, as indeed
he was. The fact remains that _he_ inserted the first record that
came to hand, wound the machine up, and set it going.

The next moment, very loud and nasal, a voice from the machine
announced that Mr. Godfrey Field would sing “The Quaint Old Bird.”
And, after a few preliminary chords, Mr. Field actually did so.

_“Auntie went to Aldershot in a Paris pom-pom hat.”_

Mike stood and drained it in.

_“... Good gracious_ (sang Mr. Field), _what was that?”_

It was a rattling at the handle of the door. A rattling that turned
almost immediately into a spirited banging. A voice accompanied the
banging. “Who is there?” inquired the voice. Mike recognised it as Mr.
Wain’s. He was not alarmed. The man who holds the ace of trumps has no
need to be alarmed. His position was impregnable. The enemy was held
in check by the locked door, while the other door offered an admirable
and instantaneous way of escape.

Mike crept across the room on tip-toe and opened the window. It had
occurred to him, just in time, that if Mr. Wain, on entering the room,
found that the occupant had retired by way of the boys’ part of the
house, he might possibly obtain a clue to his identity. If, on the
other hand, he opened the window, suspicion would be diverted. Mike
had not read his “Raffles” for nothing.

The handle-rattling was resumed. This was good. So long as the frontal
attack was kept up, there was no chance of his being taken in the
rear--his only danger.

He stopped the gramophone, which had been pegging away patiently at
“The Quaint Old Bird” all the time, and reflected. It seemed a pity to
evacuate the position and ring down the curtain on what was, to date,
the most exciting episode of his life; but he must not overdo the
thing, and get caught. At any moment the noise might bring
reinforcements to the besieging force, though it was not likely, for
the dining-room was a long way from the dormitories; and it might
flash upon their minds that there were two entrances to the room. Or
the same bright thought might come to Wain himself.

“Now what,” pondered Mike, “would A. J. Raffles have done in a case
like this? Suppose he’d been after somebody’s jewels, and found that
they were after him, and he’d locked one door, and could get away by
the other.”

The answer was simple.

“He’d clear out,” thought Mike.

Two minutes later he was in bed.

He lay there, tingling all over with the consciousness of having
played a masterly game, when suddenly a gruesome idea came to him, and
he sat up, breathless. Suppose Wain took it into his head to make a
tour of the dormitories, to see that all was well! Wyatt was still
in the garden somewhere, blissfully unconscious of what was going on
indoors. He would be caught for a certainty!




CHAPTER VI

IN WHICH A TIGHT CORNER IS EVADED


For a moment the situation paralysed Mike. Then he began to be equal
to it. In times of excitement one thinks rapidly and clearly. The main
point, the kernel of the whole thing, was that he must get into the
garden somehow, and warn Wyatt. And at the same time, he must keep Mr.
Wain from coming to the dormitory. He jumped out of bed, and dashed
down the dark stairs.

He had taken care to close the dining-room door after him. It was open
now, and he could hear somebody moving inside the room. Evidently his
retreat had been made just in time.

He knocked at the door, and went in.

Mr. Wain was standing at the window, looking out. He spun round at the
knock, and stared in astonishment at Mike’s pyjama-clad figure. Mike,
in spite of his anxiety, could barely check a laugh. Mr. Wain was a
tall, thin man, with a serious face partially obscured by a grizzled
beard. He wore spectacles, through which he peered owlishly at Mike.
His body was wrapped in a brown dressing-gown. His hair was ruffled.
He looked like some weird bird.

“Please, sir, I thought I heard a noise,” said Mike.

Mr. Wain continued to stare.

“What are you doing here?” said he at last.

“Thought I heard a noise, please, sir.”

“A noise?”

“Please, sir, a row.”

“You thought you heard----!”

The thing seemed to be worrying Mr. Wain.

“So I came down, sir,” said Mike.

The house-master’s giant brain still appeared to be somewhat clouded.
He looked about him, and, catching sight of the gramophone, drew
inspiration from it.

“Did you turn on the gramophone?” he asked.

“_Me_, sir!” said Mike, with the air of a bishop accused of
contributing to the _Police News_.

“Of course not, of course not,” said Mr. Wain hurriedly. “Of course
not. I don’t know why I asked. All this is very unsettling. What are
you doing here?”

“Thought I heard a noise, please, sir.”

“A noise?”

“A row, sir.”

If it was Mr. Wain’s wish that he should spend the night playing Massa
Tambo to his Massa Bones, it was not for him to baulk the house-master’s
innocent pleasure. He was prepared to continue the snappy dialogue till
breakfast time.

“I think there must have been a burglar in here, Jackson.”

“Looks like it, sir.”

“I found the window open.”

“He’s probably in the garden, sir.”

Mr. Wain looked out into the garden with an annoyed expression, as if
its behaviour in letting burglars be in it struck him as unworthy of a
respectable garden.

“He might be still in the house,” said Mr. Wain, ruminatively.

“Not likely, sir.”

“You think not?”

“Wouldn’t be such a fool, sir. I mean, such an ass, sir.”

“Perhaps you are right, Jackson.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if he was hiding in the shrubbery, sir.”

Mr. Wain looked at the shrubbery, as who should say, _“Et tu,
Brute!”_

“By Jove! I think I see him,” cried Mike. He ran to the window, and
vaulted through it on to the lawn. An inarticulate protest from Mr.
Wain, rendered speechless by this move just as he had been beginning
to recover his faculties, and he was running across the lawn into the
shrubbery. He felt that all was well. There might be a bit of a row on
his return, but he could always plead overwhelming excitement.

Wyatt was round at the back somewhere, and the problem was how to get
back without being seen from the dining-room window. Fortunately a
belt of evergreens ran along the path right up to the house. Mike
worked his way cautiously through these till he was out of sight, then
tore for the regions at the back.

The moon had gone behind the clouds, and it was not easy to find a way
through the bushes. Twice branches sprang out from nowhere, and hit
Mike smartly over the shins, eliciting sharp howls of pain.

On the second of these occasions a low voice spoke from somewhere on
his right.

“Who on earth’s that?” it said.

Mike stopped.

“Is that you, Wyatt? I say----”

“Jackson!”

The moon came out again, and Mike saw Wyatt clearly. His knees were
covered with mould. He had evidently been crouching in the bushes on
all fours.

“You young ass,” said Wyatt. “You promised me that you wouldn’t get
out.”

“Yes, I know, but----”

“I heard you crashing through the shrubbery like a hundred elephants.
If you _must_ get out at night and chance being sacked, you might
at least have the sense to walk quietly.”

“Yes, but you don’t understand.”

And Mike rapidly explained the situation.

“But how the dickens did he hear you, if you were in the dining-room?”
asked Wyatt. “It’s miles from his bedroom. You must tread like a
policeman.”

“It wasn’t that. The thing was, you see, it was rather a rotten thing
to do, I suppose, but I turned on the gramophone.”

“You--_what?_”

“The gramophone. It started playing ‘The Quaint Old Bird.’ Ripping it
was, till Wain came along.”

Wyatt doubled up with noiseless laughter.

“You’re a genius,” he said. “I never saw such a man. Well, what’s the
game now? What’s the idea?”

“I think you’d better nip back along the wall and in through the
window, and I’ll go back to the dining-room. Then it’ll be all right
if Wain comes and looks into the dorm. Or, if you like, you might come
down too, as if you’d just woke up and thought you’d heard a row.”

“That’s not a bad idea. All right. You dash along then. I’ll get
back.”

Mr. Wain was still in the dining-room, drinking in the beauties of the
summer night through the open window. He gibbered slightly when Mike
reappeared.

“Jackson! What do you mean by running about outside the house in this
way! I shall punish you very heavily. I shall certainly report the
matter to the headmaster. I will not have boys rushing about the
garden in their pyjamas. You will catch an exceedingly bad cold. You
will do me two hundred lines, Latin and English. Exceedingly so. I
will not have it. Did you not hear me call to you?”

“Please, sir, so excited,” said Mike, standing outside with his hands
on the sill.

“You have no business to be excited. I will not have it. It is
exceedingly impertinent of you.”

“Please, sir, may I come in?”

“Come in! Of course, come in. Have you no sense, boy? You are laying
the seeds of a bad cold. Come in at once.”

Mike clambered through the window.

“I couldn’t find him, sir. He must have got out of the garden.”

“Undoubtedly,” said Mr. Wain. “Undoubtedly so. It was very wrong of
you to search for him. You have been seriously injured. Exceedingly
so.”

He was about to say more on the subject when Wyatt strolled into the
room. Wyatt wore the rather dazed expression of one who has been
aroused from deep sleep. He yawned before he spoke.

“I thought I heard a noise, sir,” he said.

He called Mr. Wain “father” in private, “sir” in public. The presence
of Mike made this a public occasion.

“Has there been a burglary?”

“Yes,” said Mike, “only he has got away.”

“Shall I go out into the garden, and have a look round, sir?” asked
Wyatt helpfully.

The question stung Mr. Wain into active eruption once more.

“Under no circumstances whatever,” he said excitedly. “Stay where you
are, James. I will not have boys running about my garden at night. It
is preposterous. Inordinately so. Both of you go to bed immediately. I
shall not speak to you again on this subject. I must be obeyed
instantly. You hear me, Jackson? James, you understand me? To bed at
once. And, if I find you outside your dormitory again to-night, you
will both be punished with extreme severity. I will not have this lax
and reckless behaviour.”

“But the burglar, sir?” said Wyatt.

“We might catch him, sir,” said Mike.

Mr. Wain’s manner changed to a slow and stately sarcasm, in much the
same way as a motor-car changes from the top speed to its first.

“I was under the impression,” he said, in the heavy way almost
invariably affected by weak masters in their dealings with the
obstreperous, “I was distinctly under the impression that I had
ordered you to retire immediately to your dormitory. It is possible
that you mistook my meaning. In that case I shall be happy to repeat
what I said. It is also in my mind that I threatened to punish you
with the utmost severity if you did not retire at once. In these
circumstances, James--and you, Jackson--you will doubtless see the
necessity of complying with my wishes.”

They made it so.




CHAPTER VII

IN WHICH MIKE IS DISCUSSED


Trevor and Clowes, of Donaldson’s, were sitting in their study a week
after the gramophone incident, preparatory to going on the river. At
least Trevor was in the study, getting tea ready. Clowes was on the
window-sill, one leg in the room, the other outside, hanging over
space. He loved to sit in this attitude, watching some one else work,
and giving his views on life to whoever would listen to them. Clowes
was tall, and looked sad, which he was not. Trevor was shorter, and
very much in earnest over all that he did. On the present occasion he
was measuring out tea with a concentration worthy of a general
planning a campaign.

“One for the pot,” said Clowes.

“All right,” breathed Trevor. “Come and help, you slacker.”

“Too busy.”

“You aren’t doing a stroke.”

“My lad, I’m thinking of Life. That’s a thing you couldn’t do. I often
say to people, ‘Good chap, Trevor, but can’t think of Life. Give him a
tea-pot and half a pound of butter to mess about with,’ I say, ‘and
he’s all right. But when it comes to deep thought, where is he? Among
the also-rans.’ That’s what I say.”

“Silly ass,” said Trevor, slicing bread. “What particular rot were you
thinking about just then? What fun it was sitting back and watching
other fellows work, I should think.”

“My mind at the moment,” said Clowes, “was tensely occupied with the
problem of brothers at school. Have you got any brothers, Trevor?”

“One. Couple of years younger than me. I say, we shall want some more
jam to-morrow. Better order it to-day.”

“See it done, Tigellinus, as our old pal Nero used to remark. Where is
he? Your brother, I mean.”

“Marlborough.”

“That shows your sense. I have always had a high opinion of your
sense, Trevor. If you’d been a silly ass, you’d have let your people
send him here.”

“Why not? Shouldn’t have minded.”

“I withdraw what I said about your sense. Consider it unsaid. I have a
brother myself. Aged fifteen. Not a bad chap in his way. Like the
heroes of the school stories. ‘Big blue eyes literally bubbling over
with fun.’ At least, I suppose it’s fun to him. Cheek’s what I call
it. My people wanted to send him here. I lodged a protest. I said,
‘One Clowes is ample for any public school.’”

“You were right there,” said Trevor.

“I said, ‘One Clowes is luxury, two excess.’ I pointed out that I was
just on the verge of becoming rather a blood at Wrykyn, and that I
didn’t want the work of years spoiled by a brother who would think it
a rag to tell fellows who respected and admired me----”

“Such as who?”

“----Anecdotes of a chequered infancy. There are stories about me
which only my brother knows. Did I want them spread about the school?
No, laddie, I did not. Hence, we see my brother two terms ago, packing
up his little box, and tooling off to Rugby. And here am I at Wrykyn,
with an unstained reputation, loved by all who know me, revered by all
who don’t; courted by boys, fawned upon by masters. People’s faces
brighten when I throw them a nod. If I frown----”

“Oh, come on,” said Trevor.

Bread and jam and cake monopolised Clowes’s attention for the next
quarter of an hour. At the end of that period, however, he returned to
his subject.

“After the serious business of the meal was concluded, and a simple
hymn had been sung by those present,” he said, “Mr. Clowes resumed his
very interesting remarks. We were on the subject of brothers at
school. Now, take the melancholy case of Jackson Brothers. My heart
bleeds for Bob.”

“Jackson’s all right. What’s wrong with him? Besides, naturally, young
Jackson came to Wrykyn when all his brothers had been here.”

“What a rotten argument. It’s just the one used by chaps’ people, too.
They think how nice it will be for all the sons to have been at the
same school. It may be all right after they’re left, but while they’re
there, it’s the limit. You say Jackson’s all right. At present,
perhaps, he is. But the term’s hardly started yet.”

“Well?”

“Look here, what’s at the bottom of this sending young brothers to the
same school as elder brothers?”

“Elder brother can keep an eye on him, I suppose.”

“That’s just it. For once in your life you’ve touched the spot. In
other words, Bob Jackson is practically responsible for the kid.
That’s where the whole rotten trouble starts.”

“Why?”

“Well, what happens? He either lets the kid rip, in which case he may
find himself any morning in the pleasant position of having to explain
to his people exactly why it is that little Willie has just received
the boot, and why he didn’t look after him better: or he spends all
his spare time shadowing him to see that he doesn’t get into trouble.
He feels that his reputation hangs on the kid’s conduct, so he broods
over him like a policeman, which is pretty rotten for him and maddens
the kid, who looks on him as no sportsman. Bob seems to be trying the
first way, which is what I should do myself. It’s all right, so far,
but, as I said, the term’s only just started.”

“Young Jackson seems all right. What’s wrong with him? He doesn’t
stick on side any way, which he might easily do, considering his
cricket.”

“There’s nothing wrong with him in that way. I’ve talked to him
several times at the nets, and he’s very decent. But his getting into
trouble hasn’t anything to do with us. It’s the masters you’ve got to
consider.”

“What’s up? Does he rag?”

“From what I gather from fellows in his form he’s got a genius for
ragging. Thinks of things that don’t occur to anybody else, and does
them, too.”

“He never seems to be in extra. One always sees him about on
half-holidays.”

“That’s always the way with that sort of chap. He keeps on wriggling
out of small rows till he thinks he can do anything he likes without
being dropped on, and then all of a sudden he finds himself up to the
eyebrows in a record smash. I don’t say young Jackson will land
himself like that. All I say is that he’s just the sort who does. He’s
asking for trouble. Besides, who do you see him about with all the
time?”

“He’s generally with Wyatt when I meet him.”

“Yes. Well, then!”

“What’s wrong with Wyatt? He’s one of the decentest men in the
school.”

“I know. But he’s working up for a tremendous row one of these days,
unless he leaves before it comes off. The odds are, if Jackson’s so
thick with him, that he’ll be roped into it too. Wyatt wouldn’t land
him if he could help it, but he probably wouldn’t realise what he was
letting the kid in for. For instance, I happen to know that Wyatt
breaks out of his dorm. every other night. I don’t know if he takes
Jackson with him. I shouldn’t think so. But there’s nothing to prevent
Jackson following him on his own. And if you’re caught at that game,
it’s the boot every time.”

Trevor looked disturbed.

“Somebody ought to speak to Bob.”

“What’s the good? Why worry him? Bob couldn’t do anything. You’d only
make him do the policeman business, which he hasn’t time for, and
which is bound to make rows between them. Better leave him alone.”

“I don’t know. It would be a beastly thing for Bob if the kid did get
into a really bad row.”

“If you must tell anybody, tell the Gazeka. He’s head of Wain’s, and
has got far more chance of keeping an eye on Jackson than Bob has.”

“The Gazeka is a fool.”

“All front teeth and side. Still, he’s on the spot. But what’s the
good of worrying. It’s nothing to do with us, anyhow. Let’s stagger
out, shall we?”

       *       *       *       *       *

Trevor’s conscientious nature, however, made it impossible for him to
drop the matter. It disturbed him all the time that he and Clowes were
on the river; and, walking back to the house, he resolved to see Bob
about it during preparation.

He found him in his study, oiling a bat.

“I say, Bob,” he said, “look here. Are you busy?”

“No. Why?”

“It’s this way. Clowes and I were talking----”

“If Clowes was there he was probably talking. Well?”

“About your brother.”

“Oh, by Jove,” said Bob, sitting up. “That reminds me. I forgot to get
the evening paper. Did he get his century all right?”

“Who?” asked Trevor, bewildered.

“My brother, J. W. He’d made sixty-three not out against Kent in this
morning’s paper. What happened?”

“I didn’t get a paper either. I didn’t mean that brother. I meant the
one here.”

“Oh, Mike? What’s Mike been up to?”

“Nothing as yet, that I know of; but, I say, you know, he seems a
great pal of Wyatt’s.”

“I know. I spoke to him about it.”

“Oh, you did? That’s all right, then.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with Wyatt.”

“Not a bit. Only he is rather mucking about this term, I hear. It’s
his last, so I suppose he wants to have a rag.”

“Don’t blame him.”

“Nor do I. Rather rot, though, if he lugged your brother into a row by
accident.”

“I should get blamed. I think I’ll speak to him again.”

“I should, I think.”

“I hope he isn’t idiot enough to go out at night with Wyatt. If Wyatt
likes to risk it, all right. That’s his look out. But it won’t do for
Mike to go playing the goat too.”

“Clowes suggested putting Firby-Smith on to him. He’d have more
chance, being in the same house, of seeing that he didn’t come a
mucker than you would.”

“I’ve done that. Smith said he’d speak to him.”

“That’s all right then. Is that a new bat?”

“Got it to-day. Smashed my other yesterday--against the school house.”

Donaldson’s had played a friendly with the school house during the
last two days, and had beaten them.

“I thought I heard it go. You were rather in form.”

“Better than at the beginning of the term, anyhow. I simply couldn’t
do a thing then. But my last three innings have been 33 not out, 18,
and 51.

“I should think you’re bound to get your first all right.”

“Hope so. I see Mike’s playing for the second against the O.W.s.”

“Yes. Pretty good for his first term. You have a pro. to coach you in
the holidays, don’t you?”

“Yes. I didn’t go to him much this last time. I was away a lot. But
Mike fairly lived inside the net.”

“Well, it’s not been chucked away. I suppose he’ll get his first next
year. There’ll be a big clearing-out of colours at the end of this
term. Nearly all the first are leaving. Henfrey’ll be captain, I
expect.”

“Saunders, the pro. at home, always says that Mike’s going to be the
star cricketer of the family. Better than J. W. even, he thinks. I
asked him what he thought of me, and he said, ‘You’ll be making a lot
of runs some day, Mr. Bob.’ There’s a subtle difference, isn’t there?
I shall have Mike cutting me out before I leave school if I’m not
careful.”

“Sort of infant prodigy,” said Trevor. “Don’t think he’s quite up to
it yet, though.”

He went back to his study, and Bob, having finished his oiling and
washed his hands, started on his Thucydides. And, in the stress of
wrestling with the speech of an apparently delirious Athenian general,
whose remarks seemed to contain nothing even remotely resembling sense
and coherence, he allowed the question of Mike’s welfare to fade from
his mind like a dissolving view.




CHAPTER VIII

A ROW WITH THE TOWN


The beginning of a big row, one of those rows which turn a school
upside down like a volcanic eruption and provide old boys with
something to talk about, when they meet, for years, is not unlike the
beginning of a thunderstorm.

You are walking along one seemingly fine day, when suddenly there is a
hush, and there falls on you from space one big drop. The next moment
the thing has begun, and you are standing in a shower-bath. It is just
the same with a row. Some trivial episode occurs, and in an instant
the place is in a ferment. It was so with the great picnic at Wrykyn.

The bare outlines of the beginning of this affair are included in a
letter which Mike wrote to his father on the Sunday following the Old
Wrykynian matches.

This was the letter:

   “DEAR FATHER,--Thanks awfully for your letter. I hope you are quite
   well. I have been getting on all right at cricket lately. My scores
   since I wrote last have been 0 in a scratch game (the sun got in my
   eyes just as I played, and I got bowled); 15 for the third against an
   eleven of masters (without G. B. Jones, the Surrey man, and Spence);
   28 not out in the Under Sixteen game; and 30 in a form match. Rather
   decent. Yesterday one of the men put down for the second against the
   O.W.’s second couldn’t play because his father was very ill, so I
   played. Wasn’t it luck? It’s the first time I’ve played for the
   second. I didn’t do much, because I didn’t get an innings. They stop
   the cricket on O.W. matches day because they have a lot of rotten
   Greek plays and things which take up a frightful time, and half the
   chaps are acting, so we stop from lunch to four. Rot I call it. So I
   didn’t go in, because they won the toss and made 215, and by the time
   we’d made 140 for 6 it was close of play. They’d stuck me in eighth
   wicket. Rather rot. Still, I may get another shot. And I made rather a
   decent catch at mid-on. Low down. I had to dive for it. Bob played for
   the first, but didn’t do much. He was run out after he’d got ten. I
   believe he’s rather sick about it.

   “Rather a rummy thing happened after lock-up. I wasn’t in it, but a
   fellow called Wyatt (awfully decent chap. He’s Wain’s step-son, only
   they bar one another) told me about it. He was in it all right.
   There’s a dinner after the matches on O.W. day, and some of the chaps
   were going back to their houses after it when they got into a row with
   a lot of brickies from the town, and there was rather a row. There was
   a policeman mixed up in it somehow, only I don’t quite know where he
   comes in. I’ll find out and tell you next time I write. Love to
   everybody. Tell Marjory I’ll write to her in a day or two.

   “Your loving son,

              “MIKE.

   “P.S.--I say, I suppose you couldn’t send me five bob, could you? I’m
   rather broke.

   “P.P.S.--Half-a-crown would do, only I’d rather it was five bob.”

And, on the back of the envelope, these words: “Or a bob would be
better than nothing.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The outline of the case was as Mike had stated. But there were certain
details of some importance which had not come to his notice when he
sent the letter. On the Monday they were public property.

The thing had happened after this fashion. At the conclusion of the
day’s cricket, all those who had been playing in the four elevens
which the school put into the field against the old boys, together
with the school choir, were entertained by the headmaster to supper in
the Great Hall. The banquet, lengthened by speeches, songs, and
recitations which the reciters imagined to be songs, lasted, as a
rule, till about ten o’clock, when the revellers were supposed to go
back to their houses by the nearest route, and turn in. This was the
official programme. The school usually performed it with certain
modifications and improvements.

About midway between Wrykyn, the school, and Wrykyn, the town, there
stands on an island in the centre of the road a solitary lamp-post. It
was the custom, and had been the custom for generations back, for the
diners to trudge off to this lamp-post, dance round it for some
minutes singing the school song or whatever happened to be the popular
song of the moment, and then race back to their houses. Antiquity had
given the custom a sort of sanctity, and the authorities, if they
knew--which they must have done--never interfered.

But there were others.

Wrykyn, the town, was peculiarly rich in “gangs of youths.” Like the
vast majority of the inhabitants of the place, they seemed to have no
work of any kind whatsoever to occupy their time, which they used,
accordingly, to spend prowling about and indulging in a mild,
brainless, rural type of hooliganism. They seldom proceeded to
practical rowdyism and never except with the school. As a rule, they
amused themselves by shouting rude chaff. The school regarded them
with a lofty contempt, much as an Oxford man regards the townee. The
school was always anxious for a row, but it was the unwritten law that
only in special circumstances should they proceed to active measures.
A curious dislike for school-and-town rows and most misplaced severity
in dealing with the offenders when they took place, were among the few
flaws in the otherwise admirable character of the headmaster of
Wrykyn. It was understood that one scragged bargees at one’s own risk,
and, as a rule, it was not considered worth it.

But after an excellent supper and much singing and joviality, one’s
views are apt to alter. Risks which before supper seemed great, show a
tendency to dwindle.

When, therefore, the twenty or so Wrykynians who were dancing round
the lamp-post were aware, in the midst of their festivities, that they
were being observed and criticised by an equal number of townees, and
that the criticisms were, as usual, essentially candid and personal,
they found themselves forgetting the headmaster’s prejudices and
feeling only that these outsiders must be put to the sword as speedily
as possible, for the honour of the school.

Possibly, if the town brigade had stuck to a purely verbal form of
attack, all might yet have been peace. Words can be overlooked.

But tomatoes cannot.

No man of spirit can bear to be pelted with over-ripe tomatoes for any
length of time without feeling that if the thing goes on much longer
he will be reluctantly compelled to take steps.

In the present crisis, the first tomato was enough to set matters
moving.

As the two armies stood facing each other in silence under the dim and
mysterious rays of the lamp, it suddenly whizzed out from the enemy’s
ranks, and hit Wyatt on the right ear.

There was a moment of suspense. Wyatt took out his handkerchief and
wiped his face, over which the succulent vegetable had spread itself.

“I don’t know how you fellows are going to pass the evening,” he said
quietly. “My idea of a good after-dinner game is to try and find the
chap who threw that. Anybody coming?”

For the first five minutes it was as even a fight as one could have
wished to see. It raged up and down the road without a pause, now in a
solid mass, now splitting up into little groups. The science was on
the side of the school. Most Wrykynians knew how to box to a certain
extent. But, at any rate at first, it was no time for science. To be
scientific one must have an opponent who observes at least the more
important rules of the ring. It is impossible to do the latest ducks
and hooks taught you by the instructor if your antagonist butts you in
the chest, and then kicks your shins, while some dear friend of his,
of whose presence you had no idea, hits you at the same time on the
back of the head. The greatest expert would lose his science in such
circumstances.

Probably what gave the school the victory in the end was the
righteousness of their cause. They were smarting under a sense of
injury, and there is nothing that adds a force to one’s blows and a
recklessness to one’s style of delivering them more than a sense of
injury.

Wyatt, one side of his face still showing traces of the tomato, led
the school with a vigour that could not be resisted. He very seldom
lost his temper, but he did draw the line at bad tomatoes.

Presently the school noticed that the enemy were vanishing little by
little into the darkness which concealed the town. Barely a dozen
remained. And their lonely condition seemed to be borne in upon these
by a simultaneous brain-wave, for they suddenly gave the fight up, and
stampeded as one man.

The leaders were beyond recall, but two remained, tackled low by Wyatt
and Clowes after the fashion of the football-field.

       *       *       *       *       *

The school gathered round its prisoners, panting. The scene of the
conflict had shifted little by little to a spot some fifty yards from
where it had started. By the side of the road at this point was a
green, depressed looking pond. Gloomy in the daytime, it looked
unspeakable at night. It struck Wyatt, whose finer feelings had been
entirely blotted out by tomato, as an ideal place in which to bestow
the captives.

“Let’s chuck ’em in there,” he said.

The idea was welcomed gladly by all, except the prisoners. A move was
made towards the pond, and the procession had halted on the brink,
when a new voice made itself heard.

“Now then,” it said, “what’s all this?”

A stout figure in policeman’s uniform was standing surveying them with
the aid of a small bull’s-eye lantern.

“What’s all this?”

“It’s all right,” said Wyatt.

“All right, is it? What’s on?”

One of the prisoners spoke.

“Make ’em leave hold of us, Mr. Butt. They’re a-going to chuck us in
the pond.”

“Ho!” said the policeman, with a change in his voice. “Ho, are they?
Come now, young gentleman, a lark’s a lark, but you ought to know
where to stop.”

“It’s anything but a lark,” said Wyatt in the creamy voice he used
when feeling particularly savage. “We’re the Strong Right Arm of
Justice. That’s what we are. This isn’t a lark, it’s an execution.”

“I don’t want none of your lip, whoever you are,” said Mr. Butt,
understanding but dimly, and suspecting impudence by instinct.

“This is quite a private matter,” said Wyatt. “You run along on your
beat. You can’t do anything here.”

“Ho!”

“Shove ’em in, you chaps.”

“Stop!” From Mr. Butt.

“Oo-er!” From prisoner number one.

There was a sounding splash as willing hands urged the first of the
captives into the depths. He ploughed his way to the bank, scrambled
out, and vanished.

Wyatt turned to the other prisoner.

“You’ll have the worst of it, going in second. He’ll have churned up
the mud a bit. Don’t swallow more than you can help, or you’ll go
getting typhoid. I expect there are leeches and things there, but if
you nip out quick they may not get on to you. Carry on, you chaps.”

It was here that the regrettable incident occurred. Just as the second
prisoner was being launched, Constable Butt, determined to assert
himself even at the eleventh hour, sprang forward, and seized the
captive by the arm. A drowning man will clutch at a straw. A man about
to be hurled into an excessively dirty pond will clutch at a stout
policeman. The prisoner did.

Constable Butt represented his one link with dry land. As he came
within reach he attached himself to his tunic with the vigour and
concentration of a limpet.

At the same moment the executioners gave their man the final heave.
The policeman realised his peril too late. A medley of noises made the
peaceful night hideous. A howl from the townee, a yell from the
policeman, a cheer from the launching party, a frightened squawk from
some birds in a neighbouring tree, and a splash compared with which
the first had been as nothing, and all was over.

The dark waters were lashed into a maelstrom; and then two streaming
figures squelched up the further bank.

[Illustration: THE DARK WATERS WERE LASHED INTO A MAELSTROM]

The school stood in silent consternation. It was no occasion for light
apologies.

“Do you know,” said Wyatt, as he watched the Law shaking the water
from itself on the other side of the pond, “I’m not half sure that we
hadn’t better be moving!”




CHAPTER IX

BEFORE THE STORM


Your real, devastating row has many points of resemblance with a
prairie fire. A man on a prairie lights his pipe, and throws away the
match. The flame catches a bunch of dry grass, and, before any one can
realise what is happening, sheets of fire are racing over the country;
and the interested neighbours are following their example. (I have
already compared a row with a thunderstorm; but both comparisons may
stand. In dealing with so vast a matter as a row there must be no
stint.)

The tomato which hit Wyatt in the face was the thrown-away match. But
for the unerring aim of the town marksman great events would never
have happened. A tomato is a trivial thing (though it is possible that
the man whom it hits may not think so), but in the present case, it
was the direct cause of epoch-making trouble.

The tomato hit Wyatt. Wyatt, with others, went to look for the
thrower. The remnants of the thrower’s friends were placed in the
pond, and “with them,” as they say in the courts of law, Police
Constable Alfred Butt.

Following the chain of events, we find Mr. Butt, having prudently
changed his clothes, calling upon the headmaster.

The headmaster was grave and sympathetic; Mr. Butt fierce and
revengeful.

The imagination of the force is proverbial. Nurtured on motor-cars and
fed with stop-watches, it has become world-famous. Mr. Butt gave free
rein to it.

“Threw me in, they did, sir. Yes, sir.”

“Threw you in!”

“Yes, sir. _Plop_!” said Mr. Butt, with a certain sad relish.

“Really, really!” said the headmaster. “Indeed! This is--dear me! I
shall certainly--They threw you in!--Yes, I shall--certainly----”

Encouraged by this appreciative reception of his story, Mr. Butt
started it again, right from the beginning.

“I was on my beat, sir, and I thought I heard a disturbance. I says to
myself, ‘’Allo,’ I says, ‘a frakkus. Lots of them all gathered
together, and fighting.’ I says, beginning to suspect something,
‘Wot’s this all about, I wonder?’ I says. ‘Blow me if I don’t think
it’s a frakkus.’ And,” concluded Mr. Butt, with the air of one
confiding a secret, “and it _was_ a frakkus!”

“And these boys actually threw you into the pond?”

“_Plop_, sir! Mrs. Butt is drying my uniform at home at this very
moment as we sit talking here, sir. She says to me, ‘Why, whatever
_’ave_ you been a-doing? You’re all wet.’ And,” he added, again
with the confidential air, “I _was_ wet, too. Wringin’ wet.”

The headmaster’s frown deepened.

“And you are certain that your assailants were boys from the school?”

“Sure as I am that I’m sitting here, sir. They all ’ad their caps on
their heads, sir.”

“I have never heard of such a thing. I can hardly believe that it is
possible. They actually seized you, and threw you into the water----”

“_Splish_, sir!” said the policeman, with a vividness of imagery
both surprising and gratifying.

The headmaster tapped restlessly on the floor with his foot.

“How many boys were there?” he asked.

“Couple of ’undred, sir,” said Mr. Butt promptly.

“Two hundred!”

“It was dark, sir, and I couldn’t see not to say properly; but if you
ask me my frank and private opinion I should say couple of ’undred.”

“H’m--Well, I will look into the matter at once. They shall be
punished.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ye-e-s--H’m--Yes--Most severely.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes--Thank you, constable. Good-night.”

“Good-night, sir.”

The headmaster of Wrykyn was not a motorist. Owing to this
disadvantage he made a mistake. Had he been a motorist, he would have
known that statements by the police in the matter of figures must be
divided by any number from two to ten, according to discretion. As it
was, he accepted Constable Butt’s report almost as it stood. He
thought that he might possibly have been mistaken as to the exact
numbers of those concerned in his immersion; but he accepted the
statement in so far as it indicated that the thing had been the work
of a considerable section of the school, and not of only one or two
individuals. And this made all the difference to his method of dealing
with the affair. Had he known how few were the numbers of those
responsible for the cold in the head which subsequently attacked
Constable Butt, he would have asked for their names, and an extra
lesson would have settled the entire matter.

As it was, however, he got the impression that the school, as a whole,
was culpable, and he proceeded to punish the school as a whole.

It happened that, about a week before the pond episode, a certain
member of the Royal Family had recovered from a dangerous illness,
which at one time had looked like being fatal. No official holiday had
been given to the schools in honour of the recovery, but Eton and
Harrow had set the example, which was followed throughout the kingdom,
and Wrykyn had come into line with the rest. Only two days before the
O.W.’s matches the headmaster had given out a notice in the hall that
the following Friday would be a whole holiday; and the school, always
ready to stop work, had approved of the announcement exceedingly.

The step which the headmaster decided to take by way of avenging Mr.
Butt’s wrongs was to stop this holiday.

He gave out a notice to that effect on the Monday.

The school was thunderstruck. It could not understand it. The pond
affair had, of course, become public property; and those who had had
nothing to do with it had been much amused. “There’ll be a frightful
row about it,” they had said, thrilled with the pleasant excitement of
those who see trouble approaching and themselves looking on from a
comfortable distance without risk or uneasiness. They were not
malicious. They did not want to see their friends in difficulties. But
there is no denying that a row does break the monotony of a school
term. The thrilling feeling that something is going to happen is the
salt of life....

And here they were, right in it after all. The blow had fallen, and
crushed guilty and innocent alike.

       *       *       *       *       *

The school’s attitude can be summed up in three words. It was one
vast, blank, astounded “Here, I say!”

Everybody was saying it, though not always in those words. When
condensed, everybody’s comment on the situation came to that.

       *       *       *       *       *

There is something rather pathetic in the indignation of a school. It
must always, or nearly always, expend itself in words, and in private
at that. Even the consolation of getting on to platforms and shouting
at itself is denied to it. A public school has no Hyde Park.

There is every probability--in fact, it is certain--that, but for one
malcontent, the school’s indignation would have been allowed to simmer
down in the usual way, and finally become a mere vague memory.

The malcontent was Wyatt. He had been responsible for the starting of
the matter, and he proceeded now to carry it on till it blazed up into
the biggest thing of its kind ever known at Wrykyn--the Great Picnic.

       *       *       *       *       *

Any one who knows the public schools, their ironbound conservatism,
and, as a whole, intense respect for order and authority, will
appreciate the magnitude of his feat, even though he may not approve
of it. Leaders of men are rare. Leaders of boys are almost unknown. It
requires genius to sway a school.

It would be an absorbing task for a psychologist to trace the various
stages by which an impossibility was changed into a reality. Wyatt’s
coolness and matter-of-fact determination were his chief weapons. His
popularity and reputation for lawlessness helped him. A conversation
which he had with Neville-Smith, a day-boy, is typical of the way in
which he forced his point of view on the school.

Neville-Smith was thoroughly representative of the average Wrykynian.
He could play his part in any minor “rag” which interested him, and
probably considered himself, on the whole, a daring sort of person.
But at heart he had an enormous respect for authority. Before he came
to Wyatt, he would not have dreamed of proceeding beyond words in his
revolt. Wyatt acted on him like some drug.

Neville-Smith came upon Wyatt on his way to the nets. The notice
concerning the holiday had only been given out that morning, and he
was full of it. He expressed his opinion of the headmaster freely and
in well-chosen words. He said it was a swindle, that it was all rot,
and that it was a beastly shame. He added that something ought to be
done about it.

“What are you going to do?” asked Wyatt.

“Well,” said Neville-Smith a little awkwardly, guiltily conscious that
he had been frothing, and scenting sarcasm, “I don’t suppose one can
actually _do_ anything.”

“Why not?” said Wyatt.

“What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you take the holiday?”

“What? Not turn up on Friday!”

“Yes. I’m not going to.”

Neville-Smith stopped and stared. Wyatt was unmoved.

“You’re what?”

“I simply sha’n’t go to school.”

“You’re rotting.”

“All right.”

“No, but, I say, ragging barred. Are you just going to cut off, though
the holiday’s been stopped?”

“That’s the idea.”

“You’ll get sacked.”

“I suppose so. But only because I shall be the only one to do it. If
the whole school took Friday off, they couldn’t do much. They couldn’t
sack the whole school.”

“By Jove, nor could they! I say!”

They walked on, Neville-Smith’s mind in a whirl, Wyatt whistling.

“I say,” said Neville-Smith after a pause. “It would be a bit of a
rag.”

“Not bad.”

“Do you think the chaps would do it?”

“If they understood they wouldn’t be alone.”

Another pause.

“Shall I ask some of them?” said Neville-Smith.

“Do.”

“I could get quite a lot, I believe.”

“That would be a start, wouldn’t it? I could get a couple of dozen
from Wain’s. We should be forty or fifty strong to start with.”

“I say, what a score, wouldn’t it be?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll speak to the chaps to-night, and let you know.”

“All right,” said Wyatt. “Tell them that I shall be going anyhow. I
should be glad of a little company.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The school turned in on the Thursday night in a restless, excited way.
There were mysterious whisperings and gigglings. Groups kept forming
in corners apart, to disperse casually and innocently on the approach
of some person in authority.

An air of expectancy permeated each of the houses.




CHAPTER X

THE GREAT PICNIC


Morning school at Wrykyn started at nine o’clock. At that hour there
was a call-over in each of the form-rooms. After call-over the forms
proceeded to the Great Hall for prayers.

A strangely desolate feeling was in the air at nine o’clock on the
Friday morning. Sit in the grounds of a public school any afternoon in
the summer holidays, and you will get exactly the same sensation of
being alone in the world as came to the dozen or so day-boys who
bicycled through the gates that morning. Wrykyn was a boarding-school
for the most part, but it had its leaven of day-boys. The majority of
these lived in the town, and walked to school. A few, however, whose
homes were farther away, came on bicycles. One plutocrat did the
journey in a motor-car, rather to the scandal of the authorities, who,
though unable to interfere, looked askance when compelled by the
warning toot of the horn to skip from road to pavement. A form-master
has the strongest objection to being made to skip like a young ram by
a boy to whom he has only the day before given a hundred lines for
shuffling his feet in form.

It seemed curious to these cyclists that there should be nobody about.
Punctuality is the politeness of princes, but it was not a leading
characteristic of the school; and at three minutes to nine, as a
general rule, you might see the gravel in front of the buildings
freely dotted with sprinters, trying to get in in time to answer their
names.

It was curious that there should be nobody about to-day. A wave of
reform could scarcely have swept through the houses during the night.

And yet--where was everybody?

Time only deepened the mystery. The form-rooms, like the gravel, were
empty.

The cyclists looked at one another in astonishment. What could it
mean?

It was an occasion on which sane people wonder if their brains are not
playing them some unaccountable trick.

“I say,” said Willoughby, of the Lower Fifth, to Brown, the only other
occupant of the form-room, “the old man _did_ stop the holiday
to-day, didn’t he?”

“Just what I was going to ask you,” said Brown. “It’s jolly rum. I
distinctly remember him giving it out in hall that it was going to be
stopped because of the O.W.’s day row.”

“So do I. I can’t make it out. Where _is_ everybody?”

“They can’t _all_ be late.”

“Somebody would have turned up by now. Why, it’s just striking.”

“Perhaps he sent another notice round the houses late last night,
saying it was on again all right. I say, what a swindle if he did.
Some one might have let us know. I should have got up an hour later.”

“So should I.”

“Hullo, here _is_ somebody.”

It was the master of the Lower Fifth, Mr. Spence. He walked briskly
into the room, as was his habit. Seeing the obvious void, he stopped
in his stride, and looked puzzled.

“Willoughby. Brown. Are you the only two here? Where is everybody?”

“Please, sir, we don’t know. We were just wondering.”

“Have you seen nobody?”

“No, sir.”

“We were just wondering, sir, if the holiday had been put on again,
after all.”

“I’ve heard nothing about it. I should have received some sort of
intimation if it had been.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you mean to say that you have seen _nobody_, Brown?”

“Only about a dozen fellows, sir. The usual lot who come on bikes,
sir.”

“None of the boarders?”

“No, sir. Not a single one.”

“This is extraordinary.”

Mr. Spence pondered.

“Well,” he said, “you two fellows had better go along up to Hall. I
shall go to the Common Room and make inquiries. Perhaps, as you say,
there is a holiday to-day, and the notice was not brought to me.”

Mr. Spence told himself, as he walked to the Common Room, that
this might be a possible solution of the difficulty. He was not a
house-master, and lived by himself in rooms in the town. It was
just conceivable that they might have forgotten to tell him of the
change in the arrangements.

But in the Common Room the same perplexity reigned. Half a dozen
masters were seated round the room, and a few more were standing. And
they were all very puzzled.

A brisk conversation was going on. Several voices hailed Mr. Spence as
he entered.

“Hullo, Spence. Are you alone in the world too?”

“Any of your boys turned up, Spence?”

“You in the same condition as we are, Spence?”

Mr. Spence seated himself on the table.

“Haven’t any of your fellows turned up, either?” he said.

“When I accepted the honourable post of Lower Fourth master in this
abode of sin,” said Mr. Seymour, “it was on the distinct understanding
that there was going to be a Lower Fourth. Yet I go into my form-room
this morning, and what do I find? Simply Emptiness, and Pickersgill II.
whistling ‘The Church Parade,’ all flat. I consider I have been hardly
treated.”

“I have no complaint to make against Brown and Willoughby, as
individuals,” said Mr. Spence; “but, considered as a form, I call them
short measure.”

“I confess that I am entirely at a loss,” said Mr. Shields precisely.
“I have never been confronted with a situation like this since I
became a schoolmaster.”

“It is most mysterious,” agreed Mr. Wain, plucking at his beard.
“Exceedingly so.”

The younger masters, notably Mr. Spence and Mr. Seymour, had begun to
look on the thing as a huge jest.

“We had better teach ourselves,” said Mr. Seymour. “Spence, do a
hundred lines for laughing in form.”

The door burst open.

“Hullo, here’s another scholastic Little Bo-Peep,” said Mr. Seymour.
“Well, Appleby, have you lost your sheep, too?”

“You don’t mean to tell me----” began Mr. Appleby.

“I do,” said Mr. Seymour. “Here we are, fifteen of us, all good men
and true, graduates of our Universities, and, as far as I can see, if
we divide up the boys who have come to school this morning on fair
share-and-share-alike lines, it will work out at about two-thirds of a
boy each. Spence, will you take a third of Pickersgill II.?”

“I want none of your charity,” said Mr. Spence loftily. “You don’t
seem to realise that I’m the best off of you all. I’ve got two in my
form. It’s no good offering me your Pickersgills. I simply haven’t
room for them.”

“What does it all mean?” exclaimed Mr. Appleby.

“If you ask me,” said Mr. Seymour, “I should say that it meant that
the school, holding the sensible view that first thoughts are best,
have ignored the head’s change of mind, and are taking their holiday
as per original programme.”

“They surely cannot----!”

“Well, where are they then?”

“Do you seriously mean that the entire school has--has _rebelled_?”

“‘Nay, sire,’” quoted Mr. Spence, “‘a revolution!’”

“I never heard of such a thing!”

“We’re making history,” said Mr. Seymour.

“It will be rather interesting,” said Mr. Spence, “to see how the head
will deal with a situation like this. One can rely on him to do the
statesman-like thing, but I’m bound to say I shouldn’t care to be in
his place. It seems to me these boys hold all the cards. You can’t
expel a whole school. There’s safety in numbers. The thing is
colossal.”

“It is deplorable,” said Mr. Wain, with austerity. “Exceedingly so.”

“I try to think so,” said Mr. Spence, “but it’s a struggle. There’s a
Napoleonic touch about the business that appeals to one. Disorder on a
small scale is bad, but this is immense. I’ve never heard of anything
like it at any public school. When I was at Winchester, my last year
there, there was pretty nearly a revolution because the captain of
cricket was expelled on the eve of the Eton match. I remember making
inflammatory speeches myself on that occasion. But we stopped on the
right side of the line. We were satisfied with growling. But this----!”

Mr. Seymour got up.

“It’s an ill wind,” he said. “With any luck we ought to get the day
off, and it’s ideal weather for a holiday. The head can hardly ask us
to sit indoors, teaching nobody. If I have to stew in my form-room all
day, instructing Pickersgill II., I shall make things exceedingly
sultry for that youth. He will wish that the Pickersgill progeny had
stopped short at his elder brother. He will not value life. In the
meantime, as it’s already ten past, hadn’t we better be going up to
Hall to see what the orders of the day _are_?”

“Look at Shields,” said Mr. Spence. “He might be posing for a statue
to be called ‘Despair!’ He reminds me of Macduff. _Macbeth_, Act
iv., somewhere near the end. ‘What, all my pretty chickens, at one
fell swoop?’ That’s what Shields is saying to himself.”

“It’s all very well to make a joke of it, Spence,” said Mr. Shields
querulously, “but it is most disturbing. Most.”

“Exceedingly,” agreed Mr. Wain.

The bereaved company of masters walked on up the stairs that led to
the Great Hall.




CHAPTER XI

THE CONCLUSION OF THE PICNIC


If the form-rooms had been lonely, the Great Hall was doubly, trebly,
so. It was a vast room, stretching from side to side of the middle
block, and its ceiling soared up into a distant dome. At one end was a
dais and an organ, and at intervals down the room stood long tables.
The panels were covered with the names of Wrykynians who had won
scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge, and of Old Wrykynians who had
taken first in Mods or Greats, or achieved any other recognised
success, such as a place in the Indian Civil Service list. A silent
testimony, these panels, to the work the school had done in the world.

Nobody knew exactly how many the Hall could hold, when packed to its
fullest capacity. The six hundred odd boys at the school seemed to
leave large gaps unfilled.

This morning there was a mere handful, and the place looked worse than
empty.

The Sixth Form were there, and the school prefects. The Great Picnic
had not affected their numbers. The Sixth stood by their table in a
solid group. The other tables were occupied by ones and twos. A buzz
of conversation was going on, which did not cease when the masters
filed into the room and took their places. Every one realised by this
time that the biggest row in Wrykyn history was well under way; and
the thing had to be discussed.

In the Masters’ library Mr. Wain and Mr. Shields, the spokesmen of the
Common Room, were breaking the news to the headmaster.

The headmaster was a man who rarely betrayed emotion in his public
capacity. He heard Mr. Shields’s rambling remarks, punctuated by Mr.
Wain’s “Exceedinglys,” to an end. Then he gathered up his cap and
gown.

“You say that the whole school is absent?” he remarked quietly.

Mr. Shields, in a long-winded flow of words, replied that that was
what he did say.

“Ah!” said the headmaster.

There was a silence.

“’M!” said the headmaster.

There was another silence.

“Ye--e--s!” said the headmaster.

He then led the way into the Hall.

Conversation ceased abruptly as he entered. The school, like an
audience at a theatre when the hero has just appeared on the stage,
felt that the serious interest of the drama had begun. There was a
dead silence at every table as he strode up the room and on to the
dais.

There was something Titanic in his calmness. Every eye was on his face
as he passed up the Hall, but not a sign of perturbation could the
school read. To judge from his expression, he might have been unaware
of the emptiness around him.

The master who looked after the music of the school, and incidentally
accompanied the hymn with which prayers at Wrykyn opened, was waiting,
puzzled, at the foot of the dais. It seemed improbable that things
would go on as usual, and he did not know whether he was expected to
be at the organ, or not. The headmaster’s placid face reassured him.
He went to his post.

The hymn began. It was a long hymn, and one which the school liked for
its swing and noise. As a rule, when it was sung, the Hall re-echoed.
To-day, the thin sound of the voices had quite an uncanny effect. The
organ boomed through the deserted room.

The school, or the remnants of it, waited impatiently while the
prefect whose turn it was to read stammered nervously through the
lesson. They were anxious to get on to what the Head was going to say
at the end of prayers. At last it was over. The school waited, all
ears.

The headmaster bent down from the dais and called to Firby-Smith, who
was standing in his place with the Sixth.

The Gazeka, blushing warmly, stepped forward.

“Bring me a school list, Firby-Smith,” said the headmaster.

The Gazeka was wearing a pair of very squeaky boots that morning. They
sounded deafening as he walked out of the room.

The school waited.

Presently a distant squeaking was heard, and Firby-Smith returned,
bearing a large sheet of paper.

The headmaster thanked him, and spread it out on the reading-desk.

Then, calmly, as if it were an occurrence of every day, he began to
call the roll.

“Abney.”

No answer.

“Adams.”

No answer.

“Allenby.”

“Here, sir,” from a table at the end of the room. Allenby was a
prefect, in the Science Sixth.

The headmaster made a mark against his name with a pencil.

“Arkwright.”

No answer.

He began to call the names more rapidly.

“Arlington. Arthur. Ashe. Aston.”

“Here, sir,” in a shrill treble from the rider in motorcars.

The headmaster made another tick.

The list came to an end after what seemed to the school an
unconscionable time, and he rolled up the paper again, and stepped to
the edge of the dais.

“All boys not in the Sixth Form,” he said, “will go to their
form-rooms and get their books and writing-materials, and return
to the Hall.”

(“Good work,” murmured Mr. Seymour to himself. “Looks as if we
should get that holiday after all.”)

“The Sixth Form will go to their form-room as usual. I should like
to speak to the masters for a moment.”

He nodded dismissal to the school.

The masters collected on the daïs.

“I find that I shall not require your services to-day,” said the
headmaster. “If you will kindly set the boys in your forms some work
that will keep them occupied, I will look after them here. It is a
lovely day,” he added, with a smile, “and I am sure you will all enjoy
yourselves a great deal more in the open air.”

“That,” said Mr. Seymour to Mr. Spence, as they went downstairs, “is
what I call a genuine sportsman.”

“My opinion neatly expressed,” said Mr. Spence. “Come on the river. Or
shall we put up a net, and have a knock?”

“River, I think. Meet you at the boat-house.”

“All right. Don’t be long.”

“If every day were run on these lines, school-mastering wouldn’t be
such a bad profession. I wonder if one could persuade one’s form to
run amuck as a regular thing.”

“Pity one can’t. It seems to me the ideal state of things. Ensures the
greatest happiness of the greatest number.”

“I say! Suppose the school has gone up the river, too, and we meet
them! What shall we do?”

“Thank them,” said Mr. Spence, “most kindly. They’ve done us well.”

The school had not gone up the river. They had marched in a solid
body, with the school band at their head playing Sousa, in the
direction of Worfield, a market town of some importance, distant about
five miles. Of what they did and what the natives thought of it all,
no very distinct records remain. The thing is a tradition on the
countryside now, an event colossal and heroic, to be talked about in
the tap-room of the village inn during the long winter evenings. The
papers got hold of it, but were curiously misled as to the nature of
the demonstration. This was the fault of the reporter on the staff of
the _Worfield Intelligencer and Farmers’ Guide_, who saw in the
thing a legitimate “march-out,” and, questioning a straggler as to the
reason for the expedition and gathering foggily that the restoration
to health of the Eminent Person was at the bottom of it, said so in
his paper. And two days later, at about the time when Retribution had
got seriously to work, the _Daily Mail_ reprinted the account,
with comments and elaborations, and headed it “Loyal Schoolboys.” The
writer said that great credit was due to the headmaster of Wrykyn for
his ingenuity in devising and organising so novel a thanksgiving
celebration. And there was the usual conversation between “a
rosy-cheeked lad of some sixteen summers” and “our representative,”
in which the rosy-cheeked one spoke most kindly of the head-master,
who seemed to be a warm personal friend of his.

The remarkable thing about the Great Picnic was its orderliness.
Considering that five hundred and fifty boys were ranging the country
in a compact mass, there was wonderfully little damage done to
property. Wyatt’s genius did not stop short at organising the march.
In addition, he arranged a system of officers which effectually
controlled the animal spirits of the rank and file. The prompt and
decisive way in which rioters were dealt with during the earlier
stages of the business proved a wholesome lesson to others who would
have wished to have gone and done likewise. A spirit of martial law
reigned over the Great Picnic. And towards the end of the day fatigue
kept the rowdy-minded quiet.

At Worfield the expedition lunched. It was not a market-day,
fortunately, or the confusion in the narrow streets would have been
hopeless. On ordinary days Worfield was more or less deserted. It is
astonishing that the resources of the little town were equal to
satisfying the needs of the picnickers. They descended on the place
like an army of locusts.

Wyatt, as generalissimo of the expedition, walked into the
“Grasshopper and Ant,” the leading inn of the town.

“Anything I can do for you, sir?” inquired the landlord politely.

“Yes, please,” said Wyatt, “I want lunch for five hundred and fifty.”

That was the supreme moment in mine host’s life. It was his big
subject of conversation ever afterwards. He always told that as his
best story, and he always ended with the words, “You could ha’ knocked
me down with a feather!”

The first shock over, the staff of the “Grasshopper and Ant” bustled
about. Other inns were called upon for help. Private citizens rallied
round with bread, jam, and apples. And the army lunched sumptuously.

In the early afternoon they rested, and as evening began to fall, the
march home was started.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the school, net practice was just coming to an end when, faintly,
as the garrison of Lucknow heard the first skirl of the pipes of the
relieving force, those on the grounds heard the strains of the school
band and a murmur of many voices. Presently the sounds grew more
distinct, and up the Wrykyn road came marching the vanguard of the
column, singing the school song. They looked weary but cheerful.

As the army drew near to the school, it melted away little by little,
each house claiming its representatives. At the school gates only a
handful were left.

Bob Jackson, walking back to Donaldson’s, met Wyatt at the gate, and
gazed at him, speechless.

“Hullo,” said Wyatt, “been to the nets? I wonder if there’s time for a
ginger-beer before the shop shuts.”




CHAPTER XII

MIKE GETS HIS CHANCE


The headmaster was quite bland and business-like about it all. There
were no impassioned addresses from the dais. He did not tell the
school that it ought to be ashamed of itself. Nor did he say that he
should never have thought it of them. Prayers on the Saturday morning
were marked by no unusual features. There was, indeed, a stir of
excitement when he came to the edge of the dais, and cleared his
throat as a preliminary to making an announcement. Now for it, thought
the school.

This was the announcement.

“There has been an outbreak of chicken-pox in the town. All streets
except the High Street will in consequence be out of bounds till
further notice.”

He then gave the nod of dismissal.

The school streamed downstairs, marvelling.

The less astute of the picnickers, unmindful of the homely proverb
about hallooing before leaving the wood, were openly exulting. It
seemed plain to them that the headmaster, baffled by the magnitude of
the thing, had resolved to pursue the safe course of ignoring it
altogether. To lie low is always a shrewd piece of tactics, and there
seemed no reason why the Head should not have decided on it in the
present instance.

Neville-Smith was among these premature rejoicers.

“I say,” he chuckled, overtaking Wyatt in the cloisters, “this is all
right, isn’t it! He’s funked it. I thought he would. Finds the job too
big to tackle.”

Wyatt was damping.

“My dear chap,” he said, “it’s not over yet by a long chalk. It hasn’t
started yet.”

“What do you mean? Why didn’t he say anything about it in Hall, then?”

“Why should he? Have you ever had tick at a shop?”

“Of course I have. What do you mean? Why?”

“Well, they didn’t send in the bill right away. But it came all
right.”

“Do you think he’s going to do something, then?”

“Rather. You wait.”

Wyatt was right.

Between ten and eleven on Wednesdays and Saturdays old Bates, the
school sergeant, used to copy out the names of those who were in extra
lesson, and post them outside the school shop. The school inspected
the list during the quarter to eleven interval.

To-day, rushing to the shop for its midday bun, the school was aware
of a vast sheet of paper where usually there was but a small one. They
surged round it. Buns were forgotten. What was it?

Then the meaning of the notice flashed upon them. The headmaster had
acted. This bloated document was the extra lesson list, swollen with
names as a stream swells with rain. It was a comprehensive document.
It left out little.

“The following boys will go in to extra lesson this afternoon and next
Wednesday,” it began. And “the following boys” numbered four hundred.

“Bates must have got writer’s cramp,” said Clowes, as he read the huge
scroll.

       *       *       *       *       *

Wyatt met Mike after school, as they went back to the house.

“Seen the ‘extra’ list?” he remarked. “None of the kids are in it, I
notice. Only the bigger fellows. Rather a good thing. I’m glad you got
off.”

“Thanks,” said Mike, who was walking a little stiffly. “I don’t know
what you call getting off. It seems to me you’re the chaps who got
off.”

“How do you mean?”

“We got tanned,” said Mike ruefully.

“What!”

“Yes. Everybody below the Upper Fourth.”

Wyatt roared with laughter.

“By Gad,” he said, “he is an old sportsman. I never saw such a man. He
lowers all records.”

“Glad you think it funny. You wouldn’t have if you’d been me. I was
one of the first to get it. He was quite fresh.”

“Sting?”

“Should think it did.”

“Well, buck up. Don’t break down.”

“I’m not breaking down,” said Mike indignantly.

“All right, I thought you weren’t. Anyhow, you’re better off than I
am.”

“An extra’s nothing much,” said Mike.

“It is when it happens to come on the same day as the M.C.C. match.”

“Oh, by Jove! I forgot. That’s next Wednesday, isn’t it? You won’t be
able to play!”

“No.”

“I say, what rot!”

“It is, rather. Still, nobody can say I didn’t ask for it. If one goes
out of one’s way to beg and beseech the Old Man to put one in extra,
it would be a little rough on him to curse him when he does it.”

“I should be awfully sick, if it were me.”

“Well, it isn’t you, so you’re all right. You’ll probably get my place
in the team.”

Mike smiled dutifully at what he supposed to be a humorous sally.

“Or, rather, one of the places,” continued Wyatt, who seemed to be
sufficiently in earnest. “They’ll put a bowler in instead of me.
Probably Druce. But there’ll be several vacancies. Let’s see. Me.
Adams. Ashe. Any more? No, that’s the lot. I should think they’d give
you a chance.”

“You needn’t rot,” said Mike uncomfortably. He had his day-dreams,
like everybody else, and they always took the form of playing for the
first eleven (and, incidentally, making a century in record time). To
have to listen while the subject was talked about lightly made him hot
and prickly all over.

“I’m not rotting,” said Wyatt seriously, “I’ll suggest it to Burgess
to-night.”

“You don’t think there’s any chance of it, really, do you?” said Mike
awkwardly.

“I don’t see why not? Buck up in the scratch game this afternoon.
Fielding especially. Burgess is simply mad on fielding. I don’t blame
him either, especially as he’s a bowler himself. He’d shove a man into
the team like a shot, whatever his batting was like, if his fielding
was something extra special. So you field like a demon this afternoon,
and I’ll carry on the good work in the evening.”

“I say,” said Mike, overcome, “it’s awfully decent of you, Wyatt.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Billy Burgess, captain of Wrykyn cricket, was a genial giant, who
seldom allowed himself to be ruffled. The present was one of the rare
occasions on which he permitted himself that luxury. Wyatt found him
in his study, shortly before lock-up, full of strange oaths, like the
soldier in Shakespeare.

“You rotter! You rotter! You _worm_!” he observed crisply, as
Wyatt appeared.

“Dear old Billy!” said Wyatt. “Come on, give me a kiss, and let’s be
friends.”

“You----!”

“William! William!”

“If it wasn’t illegal, I’d like to tie you and Ashe and that
blackguard Adams up in a big sack, and drop you into the river. And
I’d jump on the sack first. What do you mean by letting the team down
like this? I know you were at the bottom of it all.”

He struggled into his shirt--he was changing after a bath--and his
face popped wrathfully out at the other end.

“I’m awfully sorry, Bill,” said Wyatt. “The fact is, in the excitement
of the moment the M.C.C. match went clean out of my mind.”

“You haven’t got a mind,” grumbled Burgess. “You’ve got a cheap brown
paper substitute. That’s your trouble.”

Wyatt turned the conversation tactfully.

“How many wickets did you get to-day?” he asked.

“Eight. For a hundred and three. I was on the spot. Young Jackson
caught a hot one off me at third man. That kid’s good.”

“Why don’t you play him against the M.C.C. on Wednesday?” said Wyatt,
jumping at his opportunity.

“What? Are you sitting on my left shoe?”

“No. There it is in the corner.”

“Right ho!... What were you saying?”

“Why not play young Jackson for the first?”

“Too small.”

“Rot. What does size matter? Cricket isn’t footer. Besides, he isn’t
small. He’s as tall as I am.”

“I suppose he is. Dash, I’ve dropped my stud.”

Wyatt waited patiently till he had retrieved it. Then he returned to
the attack.

“He’s as good a bat as his brother, and a better field.”

“Old Bob can’t field for toffee. I will say that for him. Dropped a
sitter off me to-day. Why the deuce fellows can’t hold catches when
they drop slowly into their mouths I’m hanged if I can see.”

“You play him,” said Wyatt. “Just give him a trial. That kid’s a
genius at cricket. He’s going to be better than any of his brothers,
even Joe. Give him a shot.”

Burgess hesitated.

“You know, it’s a bit risky,” he said. “With you three lunatics out of
the team we can’t afford to try many experiments. Better stick to the
men at the top of the second.”

Wyatt got up, and kicked the wall as a vent for his feelings.

“You rotter,” he said. “Can’t you _see_ when you’ve got a good
man? Here’s this kid waiting for you ready made with a style like
Trumper’s, and you rave about top men in the second, chaps who play
forward at everything, and pat half-volleys back to the bowler! Do you
realise that your only chance of being known to Posterity is as the
man who gave M. Jackson his colours at Wrykyn? In a few years he’ll be
playing for England, and you’ll think it a favour if he nods to you in
the pav. at Lord’s. When you’re a white-haired old man you’ll go
doddering about, gassing to your grandchildren, poor kids, how you
‘discovered’ M. Jackson. It’ll be the only thing they’ll respect you
for.”

Wyatt stopped for breath.

“All right,” said Burgess, “I’ll think it over. Frightful gift of the
gab you’ve got, Wyatt.”

“Good,” said Wyatt. “Think it over. And don’t forget what I said about
the grandchildren. You would like little Wyatt Burgess and the other
little Burgesses to respect you in your old age, wouldn’t you? Very
well, then. So long. The bell went ages ago. I shall be locked out.”

       *       *       *       *       *

On the Monday morning Mike passed the notice-board just as Burgess
turned away from pinning up the list of the team to play the M.C.C. He
read it, and his heart missed a beat. For, bottom but one, just above
the W. B. Burgess, was a name that leaped from the paper at him. His
own name.




CHAPTER XIII

THE M.C.C. MATCH


If the day happens to be fine, there is a curious, dream-like
atmosphere about the opening stages of a first eleven match.
Everything seems hushed and expectant. The rest of the school have
gone in after the interval at eleven o’clock, and you are alone on the
grounds with a cricket-bag. The only signs of life are a few
pedestrians on the road beyond the railings and one or two blazer and
flannel-clad forms in the pavilion. The sense of isolation is trying
to the nerves, and a school team usually bats 25 per cent. better
after lunch, when the strangeness has worn off.

Mike walked across from Wain’s, where he had changed, feeling quite
hollow. He could almost have cried with pure fright. Bob had shouted
after him from a window as he passed Donaldson’s, to wait, so that
they could walk over together; but conversation was the last thing
Mike desired at that moment.

He had almost reached the pavilion when one of the M.C.C. team came
down the steps, saw him, and stopped dead.

“By Jove, Saunders!” cried Mike.

“Why, Master Mike!”

The professional beamed, and quite suddenly, the lost, hopeless
feeling left Mike. He felt as cheerful as if he and Saunders had met
in the meadow at home, and were just going to begin a little quiet
net-practice.

“Why, Master Mike, you don’t mean to say you’re playing for the school
already?”

Mike nodded happily.

“Isn’t it ripping,” he said.

Saunders slapped his leg in a sort of ecstasy.

“Didn’t I always say it, sir,” he chuckled. “Wasn’t I right? I used to
say to myself it ’ud be a pretty good school team that ’ud leave you
out.”

“Of course, I’m only playing as a sub., you know. Three chaps are in
extra, and I got one of the places.”

“Well, you’ll make a hundred to-day, Master Mike, and then they’ll
have to put you in.”

“Wish I could!”

“Master Joe’s come down with the Club,” said Saunders.

“Joe! Has he really? How ripping! Hullo, here he is. Hullo, Joe?”

The greatest of all the Jacksons was descending the pavilion steps
with the gravity befitting an All England batsman. He stopped short,
as Saunders had done.

“Mike! You aren’t playing!”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m hanged! Young marvel, isn’t he, Saunders?”

“He is, sir,” said Saunders. “Got all the strokes. I always said it,
Master Joe. Only wants the strength.”

Joe took Mike by the shoulder, and walked him off in the direction of
a man in a Zingari blazer who was bowling slows to another of the
M.C.C. team. Mike recognised him with awe as one of the three best
amateur wicket-keepers in the country.

“What do you think of this?” said Joe, exhibiting Mike, who grinned
bashfully. “Aged ten last birthday, and playing for the school. You
are only ten, aren’t you, Mike?”

“Brother of yours?” asked the wicket-keeper.

“Probably too proud to own the relationship, but he is.”

“Isn’t there any end to you Jacksons?” demanded the wicket-keeper in
an aggrieved tone. “I never saw such a family.”

“This is our star. You wait till he gets at us to-day. Saunders is our
only bowler, and Mike’s been brought up on Saunders. You’d better win
the toss if you want a chance of getting a knock and lifting your
average out of the minuses.”

“I _have_ won the toss,” said the other with dignity. “Do you
think I don’t know the elementary duties of a captain?”

       *       *       *       *       *

The school went out to field with mixed feelings. The wicket was hard
and true, which would have made it pleasant to be going in first. On
the other hand, they would feel decidedly better and fitter for
centuries after the game had been in progress an hour or so. Burgess
was glad as a private individual, sorry as a captain. For himself, the
sooner he got hold of the ball and began to bowl the better he liked
it. As a captain, he realised that a side with Joe Jackson on it, not
to mention the other first-class men, was not a side to which he would
have preferred to give away an advantage. Mike was feeling that by no
possibility could he hold the simplest catch, and hoping that nothing
would come his way. Bob, conscious of being an uncertain field, was
feeling just the same.

The M.C.C. opened with Joe and a man in an Oxford Authentic cap. The
beginning of the game was quiet. Burgess’s yorker was nearly too much
for the latter in the first over, but he contrived to chop it away,
and the pair gradually settled down. At twenty, Joe began to open his
shoulders. Twenty became forty with disturbing swiftness, and Burgess
tried a change of bowling.

It seemed for one instant as if the move had been a success, for Joe,
still taking risks, tried to late-cut a rising ball, and snicked
it straight into Bob’s hands at second slip. It was the easiest
of slip-catches, but Bob fumbled it, dropped it, almost held it a
second time, and finally let it fall miserably to the ground. It was
a moment too painful for words. He rolled the ball back to the bowler
in silence.

One of those weary periods followed when the batsman’s defence seems
to the fieldsmen absolutely impregnable. There was a sickening
inevitableness in the way in which every ball was played with the very
centre of the bat. And, as usual, just when things seemed most
hopeless, relief came. The Authentic, getting in front of his wicket,
to pull one of the simplest long-hops ever seen on a cricket field,
missed it, and was l.b.w. And the next ball upset the newcomer’s leg
stump.

The school revived. Bowlers and field were infused with a new life.
Another wicket--two stumps knocked out of the ground by Burgess--helped
the thing on. When the bell rang for the end of morning school, five
wickets were down for a hundred and thirteen.

But from the end of school till lunch things went very wrong indeed.
Joe was still in at one end, invincible; and at the other was the
great wicket-keeper. And the pair of them suddenly began to force the
pace till the bowling was in a tangled knot. Four after four, all
round the wicket, with never a chance or a mishit to vary the
monotony. Two hundred went up, and two hundred and fifty. Then Joe
reached his century, and was stumped next ball. Then came lunch.

The rest of the innings was like the gentle rain after the
thunderstorm. Runs came with fair regularity, but wickets fell at
intervals, and when the wicket-keeper was run out at length for a
lively sixty-three, the end was very near. Saunders, coming in last,
hit two boundaries, and was then caught by Mike. His second hit had
just lifted the M.C.C. total over the three hundred.

       *       *       *       *       *

Three hundred is a score that takes some making on any ground, but on
a fine day it was not an unusual total for the Wrykyn eleven. Some
years before, against Ripton, they had run up four hundred and
sixteen; and only last season had massacred a very weak team of Old
Wrykynians with a score that only just missed the fourth hundred.

Unfortunately, on the present occasion, there was scarcely time,
unless the bowling happened to get completely collared, to make the
runs. It was a quarter to four when the innings began, and stumps were
to be drawn at a quarter to seven. A hundred an hour is quick work.

Burgess, however, was optimistic, as usual. “Better have a go for
them,” he said to Berridge and Marsh, the school first pair.

Following out this courageous advice, Berridge, after hitting three
boundaries in his first two overs, was stumped half-way through the
third.

After this, things settled down. Morris, the first-wicket man, was a
thoroughly sound bat, a little on the slow side, but exceedingly hard
to shift. He and Marsh proceeded to play themselves in, until it
looked as if they were likely to stay till the drawing of stumps.

A comfortable, rather somnolent feeling settled upon the school. A
long stand at cricket is a soothing sight to watch. There was an
absence of hurry about the batsmen which harmonised well with the
drowsy summer afternoon. And yet runs were coming at a fair pace. The
hundred went up at five o’clock, the hundred and fifty at half-past.
Both batsmen were completely at home, and the M.C.C. third-change
bowlers had been put on.

Then the great wicket-keeper took off the pads and gloves, and the
fieldsmen retired to posts at the extreme edge of the ground.

“Lobs,” said Burgess. “By Jove, I wish I was in.”

It seemed to be the general opinion among the members of the Wrykyn
eleven on the pavilion balcony that Morris and Marsh were in luck. The
team did not grudge them their good fortune, because they had earned
it; but they were distinctly envious.

Lobs are the most dangerous, insinuating things in the world.
Everybody knows in theory the right way to treat them. Everybody knows
that the man who is content not to try to score more than a single
cannot get out to them. Yet nearly everybody does get out to them.

It was the same story to-day. The first over yielded six runs, all
through gentle taps along the ground. In the second, Marsh hit an
over-pitched one along the ground to the terrace bank. The next ball
he swept round to the leg boundary. And that was the end of Marsh. He
saw himself scoring at the rate of twenty-four an over. Off the last
ball he was stumped by several feet, having done himself credit by
scoring seventy.

The long stand was followed, as usual, by a series of disasters.
Marsh’s wicket had fallen at a hundred and eighty. Ellerby left at a
hundred and eighty-six. By the time the scoring-board registered two
hundred, five wickets were down, three of them victims to the lobs.
Morris was still in at one end. He had refused to be tempted. He was
jogging on steadily to his century.

Bob Jackson went in next, with instructions to keep his eye on the
lob-man.

For a time things went well. Saunders, who had gone on to bowl again
after a rest, seemed to give Morris no trouble, and Bob put him
through the slips with apparent ease. Twenty runs were added, when the
lob-bowler once more got in his deadly work. Bob, letting alone a ball
wide of the off-stump under the impression that it was going to break
away, was disagreeably surprised to find it break in instead, and hit
the wicket. The bowler smiled sadly, as if he hated to have to do
these things.

Mike’s heart jumped as he saw the bails go. It was his turn next.

“Two hundred and twenty-nine,” said Burgess, “and it’s ten past six.
No good trying for the runs now. Stick in,” he added to Mike. “That’s
all you’ve got to do.”

All!... Mike felt as if he was being strangled. His heart was racing
like the engines of a motor. He knew his teeth were chattering. He
wished he could stop them. What a time Bob was taking to get back to
the pavilion! He wanted to rush out, and get the thing over.

At last he arrived, and Mike, fumbling at a glove, tottered out into
the sunshine. He heard miles and miles away a sound of clapping, and a
thin, shrill noise as if somebody were screaming in the distance. As a
matter of fact, several members of his form and of the junior day-room
at Wain’s nearly burst themselves at that moment.

At the wickets, he felt better. Bob had fallen to the last ball of the
over, and Morris, standing ready for Saunders’s delivery, looked so
calm and certain of himself that it was impossible to feel entirely
without hope and self-confidence. Mike knew that Morris had made
ninety-eight, and he supposed that Morris knew that he was very near
his century; yet he seemed to be absolutely undisturbed. Mike drew
courage from his attitude.

Morris pushed the first ball away to leg. Mike would have liked to
have run two, but short leg had retrieved the ball as he reached the
crease.

The moment had come, the moment which he had experienced only in
dreams. And in the dreams he was always full of confidence, and
invariably hit a boundary. Sometimes a drive, sometimes a cut, but
always a boundary.

“To leg, sir,” said the umpire.

“Don’t be in a funk,” said a voice. “Play straight, and you can’t get
out.”

It was Joe, who had taken the gloves when the wicket-keeper went on to
bowl.

Mike grinned, wryly but gratefully.

Saunders was beginning his run. It was all so home-like that for a
moment Mike felt himself again. How often he had seen those two little
skips and the jump. It was like being in the paddock again, with
Marjory and the dogs waiting by the railings to fetch the ball if he
made a drive.

Saunders ran to the crease, and bowled.

Now, Saunders was a conscientious man, and, doubtless, bowled the very
best ball that he possibly could. On the other hand, it was Mike’s
first appearance for the school, and Saunders, besides being
conscientious, was undoubtedly kind-hearted. It is useless to
speculate as to whether he was trying to bowl his best that ball. If
so, he failed signally. It was a half-volley, just the right distance
away from the off-stump; the sort of ball Mike was wont to send nearly
through the net at home....

The next moment the dreams had come true. The umpire was signalling to
the scoring-box, the school was shouting, extra-cover was trotting to
the boundary to fetch the ball, and Mike was blushing and wondering
whether it was bad form to grin.

From that ball onwards all was for the best in this best of all
possible worlds. Saunders bowled no more half-volleys; but Mike
played everything that he did bowl. He met the lobs with a bat like
a barn-door. Even the departure of Morris, caught in the slips off
Saunders’s next over for a chanceless hundred and five, did not disturb
him. All nervousness had left him. He felt equal to the situation.
Burgess came in, and began to hit out as if he meant to knock off the
runs. The bowling became a shade loose. Twice he was given full tosses
to leg, which he hit to the terrace bank. Half-past six chimed, and two
hundred and fifty went up on the telegraph board. Burgess continued to
hit. Mike’s whole soul was concentrated on keeping up his wicket.
There was only Reeves to follow him, and Reeves was a victim to the
first straight ball. Burgess had to hit because it was the only game
he knew; but he himself must simply stay in.

The hands of the clock seemed to have stopped. Then suddenly he heard
the umpire say “Last over,” and he settled down to keep those six
balls out of his wicket.

The lob bowler had taken himself off, and the Oxford Authentic had
gone on, fast left-hand.

The first ball was short and wide of the off-stump. Mike let it alone.
Number two: yorker. Got him! Three: straight half-volley. Mike played
it back to the bowler. Four: beat him, and missed the wicket by an
inch. Five: another yorker. Down on it again in the old familiar way.

All was well. The match was a draw now whatever happened to him. He
hit out, almost at a venture, at the last ball, and mid-off, jumping,
just failed to reach it. It hummed over his head, and ran like a
streak along the turf and up the bank, and a great howl of delight
went up from the school as the umpire took off the bails.

Mike walked away from the wickets with Joe and the wicket-keeper.

“I’m sorry about your nose, Joe,” said the wicket-keeper in tones of
grave solicitude.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“At present,” said the wicket-keeper, “nothing. But in a few years I’m
afraid it’s going to be put badly out of joint.”




CHAPTER XIV

A SLIGHT IMBROGLIO


Mike got his third eleven colours after the M.C.C. match. As he had
made twenty-three not out in a crisis in a first eleven match, this
may not seem an excessive reward. But it was all that he expected. One
had to take the rungs of the ladder singly at Wrykyn. First one was
given one’s third eleven cap. That meant, “You are a promising man,
and we have our eye on you.” Then came the second colours. They might
mean anything from “Well, here you are. You won’t get any higher, so
you may as well have the thing now,” to “This is just to show that we
still have our eye on you.”

Mike was a certainty now for the second. But it needed more than one
performance to secure the first cap.

“I told you so,” said Wyatt, naturally, to Burgess after the match.

“He’s not bad,” said Burgess. “I’ll give him another shot.”

But Burgess, as has been pointed out, was not a person who ever became
gushing with enthusiasm.

       *       *       *       *       *

So Wilkins, of the School House, who had played twice for the first
eleven, dropped down into the second, as many a good man had done
before him, and Mike got his place in the next match, against the
Gentlemen of the County. Unfortunately for him, the visiting team,
however gentlemanly, were not brilliant cricketers, at any rate as far
as bowling was concerned. The school won the toss, went in first, and
made three hundred and sixteen for five wickets, Morris making another
placid century. The innings was declared closed before Mike had a
chance of distinguishing himself. In an innings which lasted for
one over he made two runs, not out; and had to console himself for
the cutting short of his performance by the fact that his average
for the school was still infinity. Bob, who was one of those lucky
enough to have an unabridged innings, did better in this match, making
twenty-five. But with Morris making a hundred and seventeen, and
Berridge, Ellerby, and Marsh all passing the half-century, this score
did not show up excessively.

We now come to what was practically a turning-point in Mike’s career
at Wrykyn. There is no doubt that his meteor-like flights at cricket
had an unsettling effect on him. He was enjoying life amazingly, and,
as is not uncommon with the prosperous, he waxed fat and kicked.
Fortunately for him--though he did not look upon it in that light at
the time--he kicked the one person it was most imprudent to kick. The
person he selected was Firby-Smith. With anybody else the thing might
have blown over, to the detriment of Mike’s character; but Firby-Smith,
having the most tender affection for his dignity, made a fuss.

It happened in this way. The immediate cause of the disturbance was a
remark of Mike’s, but the indirect cause was the unbearably
patronising manner which the head of Wain’s chose to adopt towards
him. The fact that he was playing for the school seemed to make no
difference at all. Firby-Smith continued to address Mike merely as the
small boy.

The following, _verbatim_, was the tactful speech which he
addressed to him on the evening of the M.C.C. match, having summoned
him to his study for the purpose.

“Well,” he said, “you played a very decent innings this afternoon, and
I suppose you’re frightfully pleased with yourself, eh? Well, mind you
don’t go getting swelled head. See? That’s all. Run along.”

Mike departed, bursting with fury.

The next link in the chain was forged a week after the Gentlemen of
the County match. House matches had begun, and Wain’s were playing
Appleby’s. Appleby’s made a hundred and fifty odd, shaping badly for
the most part against Wyatt’s slows. Then Wain’s opened their innings.
The Gazeka, as head of the house, was captain of the side, and he and
Wyatt went in first. Wyatt made a few mighty hits, and was then caught
at cover. Mike went in first wicket.

For some ten minutes all was peace. Firby-Smith scratched away at his
end, getting here and there a single and now and then a two, and Mike
settled down at once to play what he felt was going to be the innings
of a lifetime. Appleby’s bowling was on the feeble side, with Raikes,
of the third eleven, as the star, supported by some small change. Mike
pounded it vigorously. To one who had been brought up on Saunders,
Raikes possessed few subtleties. He had made seventeen, and was
thoroughly set, when the Gazeka, who had the bowling, hit one in the
direction of cover-point. With a certain type of batsman a single is a
thing to take big risks for. And the Gazeka badly wanted that single.

“Come on,” he shouted, prancing down the pitch.

Mike, who had remained in his crease with the idea that nobody even
moderately sane would attempt a run for a hit like that, moved forward
in a startled and irresolute manner. Firby-Smith arrived, shouting
“Run!” and, cover having thrown the ball in, the wicket-keeper removed
the bails.

These are solemn moments.

The only possible way of smoothing over an episode of this kind is for
the guilty man to grovel.

Firby-Smith did not grovel.

“Easy run there, you know,” he said reprovingly.

The world swam before Mike’s eyes. Through the red mist he could see
Firby-Smith’s face. The sun glinted on his rather prominent teeth. To
Mike’s distorted vision it seemed that the criminal was amused.

“Don’t _laugh_, you grinning ape!” he cried. “It isn’t funny.”

[Illustration: “DON’T _LAUGH_, YOU GRINNING APE”]

He then made for the trees where the rest of the team were sitting.

Now Firby-Smith not only possessed rather prominent teeth; he was also
sensitive on the subject. Mike’s shaft sank in deeply. The fact that
emotion caused him to swipe at a straight half-volley, miss it, and be
bowled next ball made the wound rankle.

He avoided Mike on his return to the trees. And Mike, feeling now a
little apprehensive, avoided him.

The Gazeka brooded apart for the rest of the afternoon, chewing the
insult. At close of play he sought Burgess.

Burgess, besides being captain of the eleven, was also head of the
school. He was the man who arranged prefects’ meetings. And only a
prefects’ meeting, thought Firby-Smith, could adequately avenge his
lacerated dignity.

“I want to speak to you, Burgess,” he said.

“What’s up?” said Burgess.

“You know young Jackson in our house.”

“What about him?”

“He’s been frightfully insolent.”

“Cheeked you?” said Burgess, a man of simple speech.

“I want you to call a prefects’ meeting, and lick him.”

Burgess looked incredulous.

“Rather a large order, a prefects’ meeting,” he said. “It has to be a
pretty serious sort of thing for that.”

“Frightful cheek to a school prefect is a serious thing,” said
Firby-Smith, with the air of one uttering an epigram.

“Well, I suppose--What did he say to you?”

Firby-Smith related the painful details.

Burgess started to laugh, but turned the laugh into a cough.

“Yes,” he said meditatively. “Rather thick. Still, I mean--A prefects’
meeting. Rather like crushing a thingummy with a what-d’you-call-it.
Besides, he’s a decent kid.”

“He’s frightfully conceited.”

“Oh, well--Well, anyhow, look here, I’ll think it over, and let you
know to-morrow. It’s not the sort of thing to rush through without
thinking about it.”

And the matter was left temporarily at that.




CHAPTER XV

MIKE CREATES A VACANCY


Burgess walked off the ground feeling that fate was not using him
well.

Here was he, a well-meaning youth who wanted to be on good terms with
all the world, being jockeyed into slaughtering a kid whose batting he
admired and whom personally he liked. And the worst of it was that he
sympathised with Mike. He knew what it felt like to be run out just
when one had got set, and he knew exactly how maddening the Gazeka’s
manner would be on such an occasion. On the other hand, officially he
was bound to support the head of Wain’s. Prefects must stand together
or chaos will come.

He thought he would talk it over with somebody. Bob occurred to him.
It was only fair that Bob should be told, as the nearest of kin.

And here was another grievance against fate. Bob was a person he did
not particularly wish to see just then. For that morning he had posted
up the list of the team to play for the school against Geddington, one
of the four schools which Wrykyn met at cricket; and Bob’s name did
not appear on that list. Several things had contributed to that
melancholy omission. In the first place, Geddington, to judge from the
weekly reports in the _Sportsman_ and _Field_, were strong this
year at batting. In the second place, the results of the last few
matches, and particularly the M.C.C. match, had given Burgess the
idea that Wrykyn was weak at bowling. It became necessary, therefore,
to drop a batsman out of the team in favour of a bowler. And either
Mike or Bob must be the man.

Burgess was as rigidly conscientious as the captain of a school eleven
should be. Bob was one of his best friends, and he would have given
much to be able to put him in the team; but he thought the thing over,
and put the temptation sturdily behind him. At batting there was not
much to choose between the two, but in fielding there was a great deal.
Mike was good. Bob was bad. So out Bob had gone, and Neville-Smith, a
fair fast bowler at all times and on his day dangerous, took his place.

These clashings of public duty with private inclination are the
drawbacks to the despotic position of captain of cricket at a public
school. It is awkward having to meet your best friend after you have
dropped him from the team, and it is difficult to talk to him as if
nothing had happened.

Burgess felt very self-conscious as he entered Bob’s study, and was
rather glad that he had a topic of conversation ready to hand.

“Busy, Bob?” he asked.

“Hullo,” said Bob, with a cheerfulness rather over-done in his anxiety
to show Burgess, the man, that he did not hold him responsible in
any way for the distressing acts of Burgess, the captain. “Take a
pew. Don’t these studies get beastly hot this weather. There’s some
ginger-beer in the cupboard. Have some?”

“No, thanks. I say, Bob, look here, I want to see you.”

“Well, you can, can’t you? This is me, sitting over here. The tall,
dark, handsome chap.”

“It’s awfully awkward, you know,” continued Burgess gloomily; “that
ass of a young brother of yours--Sorry, but he _is_ an ass,
though he’s your brother----”

“Thanks for the ‘though,’ Billy. You know how to put a thing nicely.
What’s Mike been up to?”

“It’s that old fool the Gazeka. He came to me frothing with rage, and
wanted me to call a prefects’ meeting and touch young Mike up.”

Bob displayed interest and excitement for the first time.

“Prefects’ meeting! What the dickens is up? What’s he been doing?
Smith must be drunk. What’s all the row about?”

Burgess repeated the main facts of the case as he had them from
Firby-Smith.

“Personally, I sympathise with the kid,” he added, “Still, the Gazeka
_is_ a prefect----”

Bob gnawed a pen-holder morosely.

“Silly young idiot,” he said.

“Sickening thing being run out,” suggested Burgess.

“Still----”

“I know. It’s rather hard to see what to do. I suppose if the Gazeka
insists, one’s bound to support him.”

“I suppose so.”

“Awful rot. Prefects’ lickings aren’t meant for that sort of thing.
They’re supposed to be for kids who steal buns at the shop or muck
about generally. Not for a chap who curses a fellow who runs him out.
I tell you what, there’s just a chance Firby-Smith won’t press the
thing. He hadn’t had time to get over it when he saw me. By now he’ll
have simmered down a bit. Look here, you’re a pal of his, aren’t you?
Well, go and ask him to drop the business. Say you’ll curse your
brother and make him apologise, and that I’ll kick him out of the team
for the Geddington match.”

It was a difficult moment for Bob. One cannot help one’s thoughts, and
for an instant the idea of going to Geddington with the team, as he
would certainly do if Mike did not play, made him waver. But he
recovered himself.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “I don’t see there’s a need for anything of
that sort. You must play the best side you’ve got. I can easily talk
the old Gazeka over. He gets all right in a second if he’s treated the
right way. I’ll go and do it now.”

Burgess looked miserable.

“I say, Bob,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Oh, nothing--I mean, you’re not a bad sort.” With which glowing
eulogy he dashed out of the room, thanking his stars that he had won
through a confoundedly awkward business.

Bob went across to Wain’s to interview and soothe Firby-Smith.

He found that outraged hero sitting moodily in his study like Achilles
in his tent.

Seeing Bob, he became all animation.

“Look here,” he said, “I wanted to see you. You know, that frightful
young brother of yours----”

“I know, I know,” said Bob. “Burgess was telling me. He wants
kicking.”

“He wants a frightful licking from the prefects,” emended the
aggrieved party.

“Well, I don’t know, you know. Not much good lugging the prefects into
it, is there? I mean, apart from everything else, not much of a catch
for me, would it be, having to sit there and look on. I’m a prefect,
too, you know.”

Firby-Smith looked a little blank at this. He had a great admiration
for Bob.

“I didn’t think of you,” he said.

“I thought you hadn’t,” said Bob. “You see it now, though, don’t you?”

Firby-Smith returned to the original grievance.

“Well, you know, it was frightful cheek.”

“Of course it was. Still, I think if I saw him and cursed him, and
sent him up to you to apologise--How would that do?”

“All right. After all, I did run him out.”

“Yes, there’s that, of course. Mike’s all right, really. It isn’t as
if he did that sort of thing as a habit.”

“No. All right then.”

“Thanks,” said Bob, and went to find Mike.

       *       *       *       *       *

The lecture on deportment which he read that future All-England
batsman in a secluded passage near the junior day-room left the latter
rather limp and exceedingly meek. For the moment all the jauntiness
and exuberance had been drained out of him. He was a punctured
balloon. Reflection, and the distinctly discouraging replies of those
experts in school law to whom he had put the question, “What d’you
think he’ll do?” had induced a very chastened frame of mind.

He perceived that he had walked very nearly into a hornets’ nest, and
the realisation of his escape made him agree readily to all the
conditions imposed. The apology to the Gazeka was made without
reserve, and the offensively forgiving, say-no-more-about-it-but-take
care-in-future air of the head of the house roused no spark of
resentment in him, so subdued was his fighting spirit. All he wanted
was to get the thing done with. He was not inclined to be critical.

And, most of all, he felt grateful to Bob. Firby-Smith, in the course
of his address, had not omitted to lay stress on the importance of
Bob’s intervention. But for Bob, he gave him to understand, he, Mike,
would have been prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law. Mike
came away with a confused picture in his mind of a horde of furious
prefects bent on his slaughter, after the manner of a stage “excited
crowd,” and Bob waving them back. He realised that Bob had done him a
good turn. He wished he could find some way of repaying him.

Curiously enough, it was an enemy of Bob’s who suggested the
way--Burton, of Donaldson’s. Burton was a slippery young gentleman,
fourteen years of age, who had frequently come into contact with
Bob in the house, and owed him many grudges. With Mike he had always
tried to form an alliance, though without success.

He happened to meet Mike going to school next morning, and unburdened
his soul to him. It chanced that Bob and he had had another small
encounter immediately after breakfast, and Burton felt revengeful.

“I say,” said Burton, “I’m jolly glad you’re playing for the first
against Geddington.”

“Thanks,” said Mike.

“I’m specially glad for one reason.”

“What’s that?” inquired Mike, without interest.

“Because your beast of a brother has been chucked out. He’d have been
playing but for you.”

At any other time Mike would have heard Bob called a beast without
active protest. He would have felt that it was no business of his to
fight his brother’s battles for him. But on this occasion he deviated
from his rule.

He kicked Burton. Not once or twice, but several times, so that
Burton, retiring hurriedly, came to the conclusion that it must be
something in the Jackson blood, some taint, as it were. They were
_all_ beasts.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mike walked on, weighing this remark, and gradually made up his mind.
It must be remembered that he was in a confused mental condition, and
that the only thing he realised clearly was that Bob had pulled him
out of an uncommonly nasty hole. It seemed to him that it was
necessary to repay Bob. He thought the thing over more fully during
school, and his decision remained unaltered.

On the evening before the Geddington match, just before lock-up, Mike
tapped at Burgess’s study door. He tapped with his right hand, for his
left was in a sling.

“Come in!” yelled the captain. “Hullo!”

“I’m awfully sorry, Burgess,” said Mike. “I’ve crocked my wrist a
bit.”

“How did you do that? You were all right at the nets?”

“Slipped as I was changing,” said Mike stolidly.

“Is it bad?”

“Nothing much. I’m afraid I shan’t be able to play to-morrow.”

“I say, that’s bad luck. Beastly bad luck. We wanted your batting,
too. Be all right, though, in a day or two, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes, rather.”

“Hope so, anyway.”

“Thanks. Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

And Burgess, with the comfortable feeling that he had managed to
combine duty and pleasure after all, wrote a note to Bob at
Donaldson’s, telling him to be ready to start with the team for
Geddington by the 8.54 next morning.




CHAPTER XVI

AN EXPERT EXAMINATION


Mike’s Uncle John was a wanderer on the face of the earth. He had been
an army surgeon in the days of his youth, and, after an adventurous
career, mainly in Afghanistan, had inherited enough money to keep him
in comfort for the rest of his life. He had thereupon left the
service, and now spent most of his time flitting from one spot of
Europe to another. He had been dashing up to Scotland on the day when
Mike first became a Wrykynian, but a few weeks in an uncomfortable
hotel in Skye and a few days in a comfortable one in Edinburgh had
left him with the impression that he had now seen all that there was
to be seen in North Britain and might reasonably shift his camp again.

Coming south, he had looked in on Mike’s people for a brief space,
and, at the request of Mike’s mother, took the early express to Wrykyn
in order to pay a visit of inspection.

His telegram arrived during morning school. Mike went down to the
station to meet him after lunch.

Uncle John took command of the situation at once.

“School playing anybody to-day, Mike? I want to see a match.”

“They’re playing Geddington. Only it’s away. There’s a second match
on.”

“Why aren’t you--Hullo, I didn’t see. What have you been doing to
yourself?”

“Crocked my wrist a bit. It’s nothing much.”

“How did you do that?”

“Slipped while I was changing after cricket.”

“Hurt?”

“Not much, thanks.”

“Doctor seen it?”

“No. But it’s really nothing. Be all right by Monday.”

“H’m. Somebody ought to look at it. I’ll have a look later on.”

Mike did not appear to relish this prospect.

“It isn’t anything, Uncle John, really. It doesn’t matter a bit.”

“Never mind. It won’t do any harm having somebody examine it who knows
a bit about these things. Now, what shall we do. Go on the river?”

“I shouldn’t be able to steer.”

“I could manage about that. Still, I think I should like to see the
place first. Your mother’s sure to ask me if you showed me round. It’s
like going over the stables when you’re stopping at a country-house.
Got to be done, and better do it as soon as possible.”

It is never very interesting playing the part of showman at school.
Both Mike and his uncle were inclined to scamp the business. Mike
pointed out the various landmarks without much enthusiasm--it is only
after one has left a few years that the school buildings take to
themselves romance--and Uncle John said, “Ah yes, I see. Very nice,”
two or three times in an absent voice; and they passed on to the
cricket field, where the second eleven were playing a neighbouring
engineering school. It was a glorious day. The sun had never seemed to
Mike so bright or the grass so green. It was one of those days when
the ball looks like a large vermilion-coloured football as it leaves
the bowler’s hand. If ever there was a day when it seemed to Mike that
a century would have been a certainty, it was this Saturday. A sudden,
bitter realisation of all he had given up swept over him, but he
choked the feeling down. The thing was done, and it was no good
brooding over the might-have-beens now. Still--And the Geddington
ground was supposed to be one of the easiest scoring grounds of all
the public schools!

“Well hit, by George!” remarked Uncle John, as Trevor, who had gone in
first wicket for the second eleven, swept a half-volley to leg round
to the bank where they were sitting.

“That’s Trevor,” said Mike. “Chap in Donaldson’s. The fellow at the
other end is Wilkins. He’s in the School House. They look as if they
were getting set. By Jove,” he said enviously, “pretty good fun
batting on a day like this.”

Uncle John detected the envious note.

“I suppose you would have been playing here but for your wrist?”

“No, I was playing for the first.”

“For the first? For the school! My word, Mike, I didn’t know that. No
wonder you’re feeling badly treated. Of course, I remember your father
saying you had played once for the school, and done well; but I
thought that was only as a substitute. I didn’t know you were a
regular member of the team. What bad luck. Will you get another
chance?”

“Depends on Bob.”

“Has Bob got your place?”

Mike nodded.

“If he does well to-day, they’ll probably keep him in.”

“Isn’t there room for both of you?”

“Such a lot of old colours. There are only three vacancies, and
Henfrey got one of those a week ago. I expect they’ll give one of the
other two to a bowler, Neville-Smith, I should think, if he does well
against Geddington. Then there’ll be only the last place left.”

“Rather awkward, that.”

“Still, it’s Bob’s last year. I’ve got plenty of time. But I wish I
could get in this year.”

After they had watched the match for an hour, Uncle John’s restless
nature asserted itself.

“Suppose we go for a pull on the river now?” he suggested.

They got up.

“Let’s just call at the shop,” said Mike. “There ought to be a
telegram from Geddington by this time. I wonder how Bob’s got on.”

Apparently Bob had not had a chance yet of distinguishing himself. The
telegram read, “Geddington 151 for four. Lunch.”

“Not bad that,” said Mike. “But I believe they’re weak in bowling.”

They walked down the road towards the school landing-stage.

“The worst of a school,” said Uncle John, as he pulled up-stream with
strong, unskilful stroke, “is that one isn’t allowed to smoke on the
grounds. I badly want a pipe. The next piece of shade that you see,
sing out, and we’ll put in there.”

“Pull your left,” said Mike. “That willow’s what you want.”

Uncle John looked over his shoulder, caught a crab, recovered himself,
and steered the boat in under the shade of the branches.

“Put the rope over that stump. Can you manage with one hand? Here, let
me--Done it? Good. A-ah!”

He blew a great cloud of smoke into the air, and sighed contentedly.

“I hope you don’t smoke, Mike?”

“No.”

“Rotten trick for a boy. When you get to my age you need it. Boys
ought to be thinking about keeping themselves fit and being good at
games. Which reminds me. Let’s have a look at the wrist.”

A hunted expression came into Mike’s eyes.

“It’s really nothing,” he began, but his uncle had already removed the
sling, and was examining the arm with the neat rapidity of one who has
been brought up to such things.

To Mike it seemed as if everything in the world was standing still and
waiting. He could hear nothing but his own breathing.

His uncle pressed the wrist gingerly once or twice, then gave it a
little twist.

“That hurt?” he asked.

“Ye--no,” stammered Mike.

Uncle John looked up sharply. Mike was crimson.

“What’s the game?” inquired Uncle John.

Mike said nothing.

There was a twinkle in his uncle’s eyes.

“May as well tell me. I won’t give you away. Why this wounded warrior
business when you’ve no more the matter with you than I have?”

Mike hesitated.

“I only wanted to get out of having to write this morning. There was an
exam on.”

The idea had occurred to him just before he spoke. It had struck him
as neat and plausible.

To Uncle John it did not appear in the same light.

“Do you always write with your left hand? And if you had gone with the
first eleven to Geddington, wouldn’t that have got you out of your
exam? Try again.”

When in doubt, one may as well tell the truth. Mike told it.

“I know. It wasn’t that, really. Only----”

“Well?”

“Oh, well, dash it all then. Old Bob got me out of an awful row the
day before yesterday, and he seemed a bit sick at not playing for the
first, so I thought I might as well let him. That’s how it was. Look
here, swear you won’t tell him.”

Uncle John was silent. Inwardly he was deciding that the five
shillings which he had intended to bestow on Mike on his departure
should become a sovereign. (This, it may be mentioned as an
interesting biographical fact, was the only occasion in his life
on which Mike earned money at the rate of fifteen shillings a
half-minute.)

“Swear you won’t tell him. He’d be most frightfully sick if he knew.”

“I won’t tell him.”

Conversation dwindled to vanishing-point. Uncle John smoked on in
weighty silence, while Mike, staring up at the blue sky through the
branches of the willow, let his mind wander to Geddington, where his
fate was even now being sealed. How had the school got on? What had
Bob done? If he made about twenty, would they give him his cap?
Supposing....

A faint snore from Uncle John broke in on his meditations. Then there
was a clatter as a briar pipe dropped on to the floor of the boat, and
his uncle sat up, gaping.

“Jove, I was nearly asleep. What’s the time? Just on six? Didn’t know
it was so late.”

“I ought to be getting back soon, I think. Lock-up’s at half-past.”

“Up with the anchor, then. You can tackle that rope with two hands
now, eh? We are not observed. Don’t fall overboard. I’m going to shove
her off.”

“There’ll be another telegram, I should think,” said Mike, as they
reached the school gates.

“Shall we go and look?”

They walked to the shop.

A second piece of grey paper had been pinned up under the first. Mike
pushed his way through the crowd. It was a longer message this time.

It ran as follows:

   “Geddington 247 (Burgess six wickets, Neville-Smith four).
   Wrykyn 270 for nine (Berridge 86, Marsh 58, Jackson 48).”

Mike worked his way back through the throng, and rejoined his uncle.

“Well?” said Uncle John.

“We won.”

He paused for a moment.

“Bob made forty-eight,” he added carelessly.

Uncle John felt in his pocket, and silently slid a sovereign into
Mike’s hand.

It was the only possible reply.




CHAPTER XVII

ANOTHER VACANCY


Wyatt got back late that night, arriving at the dormitory as Mike was
going to bed.

“By Jove, I’m done,” he said. “It was simply baking at Geddington. And
I came back in a carriage with Neville-Smith and Ellerby, and they
ragged the whole time. I wanted to go to sleep, only they wouldn’t let
me. Old Smith was awfully bucked because he’d taken four wickets. I
should think he’d go off his nut if he took eight ever. He was singing
comic songs when he wasn’t trying to put Ellerby under the seat. How’s
your wrist?”

“Oh, better, thanks.”

Wyatt began to undress.

“Any colours?” asked Mike after a pause. First eleven colours were
generally given in the pavilion after a match or on the journey home.

“No. Only one or two thirds. Jenkins and Clephane, and another chap,
can’t remember who. No first, though.”

“What was Bob’s innings like?”

“Not bad. A bit lucky. He ought to have been out before he’d scored,
and he was out when he’d made about sixteen, only the umpire didn’t
seem to know that it’s l-b-w when you get your leg right in front of
the wicket and the ball hits it. Never saw a clearer case in my life.
I was in at the other end. Bit rotten for the Geddington chaps. Just
lost them the match. Their umpire, too. Bit of luck for Bob. He didn’t
give the ghost of a chance after that.”

“I should have thought they’d have given him his colours.”

“Most captains would have done, only Burgess is so keen on fielding
that he rather keeps off it.”

“Why, did he field badly?”

“Rottenly. And the man always will choose Billy’s bowling to drop
catches off. And Billy would cut his rich uncle from Australia if he
kept on dropping them off him. Bob’s fielding’s perfectly sinful. He
was pretty bad at the beginning of the season, but now he’s got so
nervous that he’s a dozen times worse. He turns a delicate green when
he sees a catch coming. He let their best man off twice in one over,
off Billy, to-day; and the chap went on and made a hundred odd.
Ripping innings bar those two chances. I hear he’s got an average of
eighty in school matches this season. Beastly man to bowl to. Knocked
me off in half a dozen overs. And, when he does give a couple of easy
chances, Bob puts them both on the floor. Billy wouldn’t have given
him his cap after the match if he’d made a hundred. Bob’s the sort of
man who wouldn’t catch a ball if you handed it to him on a plate, with
watercress round it.”

Burgess, reviewing the match that night, as he lay awake in his
cubicle, had come to much the same conclusion. He was very fond of
Bob, but two missed catches in one over was straining the bonds of
human affection too far. There would have been serious trouble between
David and Jonathan if either had persisted in dropping catches off the
other’s bowling. He writhed in bed as he remembered the second of the
two chances which the wretched Bob had refused. The scene was
indelibly printed on his mind. Chap had got a late cut which he
fancied rather. With great guile he had fed this late cut. Sent down a
couple which he put to the boundary. Then fired a third much faster
and a bit shorter. Chap had a go at it, just as he had expected: and
he felt that life was a good thing after all when the ball just
touched the corner of the bat and flew into Bob’s hands. And Bob
dropped it!

The memory was too bitter. If he dwelt on it, he felt, he would get
insomnia. So he turned to pleasanter reflections: the yorker which had
shattered the second-wicket man, and the slow head-ball which had led
to a big hitter being caught on the boundary. Soothed by these
memories, he fell asleep.

Next morning he found himself in a softened frame of mind. He thought
of Bob’s iniquities with sorrow rather than wrath. He felt towards him
much as a father feels towards a prodigal son whom there is still a
chance of reforming. He overtook Bob on his way to chapel.

Directness was always one of Burgess’s leading qualities.

“Look here, Bob. About your fielding. It’s simply awful.”

Bob was all remorse.

“It’s those beastly slip catches. I can’t time them.”

“That one yesterday was right into your hands. Both of them were.”

“I know. I’m frightfully sorry.”

“Well, but I mean, why _can’t_ you hold them? It’s no good being
a good bat--you’re that all right--if you’re going to give away runs
in the field.”

“Do you know, I believe I should do better in the deep. I could get
time to watch them there. I wish you’d give me a shot in the deep--for
the second.”

“Second be blowed! I want your batting in the first. Do you think
you’d really do better in the deep?”

“I’m almost certain I should. I’ll practise like mad. Trevor’ll hit me
up catches. I hate the slips. I get in the dickens of a funk directly
the bowler starts his run now. I know that if a catch does come, I
shall miss it. I’m certain the deep would be much better.”

“All right then. Try it.”

The conversation turned to less pressing topics.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the next two matches, accordingly, Bob figured on the boundary,
where he had not much to do except throw the ball back to the bowler,
and stop an occasional drive along the carpet. The beauty of fielding
in the deep is that no unpleasant surprises can be sprung upon one.
There is just that moment or two for collecting one’s thoughts which
makes the whole difference. Bob, as he stood regarding the game from
afar, found his self-confidence returning slowly, drop by drop.

As for Mike, he played for the second, and hoped for the day.

       *       *       *       *       *

His opportunity came at last. It will be remembered that on the
morning after the Great Picnic the headmaster made an announcement in
Hall to the effect that, owing to an outbreak of chicken-pox in the
town, all streets except the High Street would be out of bounds. This
did not affect the bulk of the school, for most of the shops to which
any one ever thought of going were in the High Street. But there were
certain inquiring minds who liked to ferret about in odd corners.

Among these was one Leather-Twigg, of Seymour’s, better known in
criminal circles as Shoeblossom.

Shoeblossom was a curious mixture of the Energetic Ragger and the
Quiet Student. On a Monday evening you would hear a hideous uproar
proceeding from Seymour’s junior day-room; and, going down with a
swagger-stick to investigate, you would find a tangled heap of
squealing humanity on the floor, and at the bottom of the heap,
squealing louder than any two others, would be Shoeblossom, his collar
burst and blackened and his face apoplectically crimson. On the
Tuesday afternoon, strolling in some shady corner of the grounds you
would come upon him lying on his chest, deep in some work of fiction
and resentful of interruption. On the Wednesday morning he would be in
receipt of four hundred lines from his housemaster for breaking three
windows and a gas-globe. Essentially a man of moods, Shoeblossom.

It happened about the date of the Geddington match that he took out
from the school library a copy of “The Iron Pirate,” and for the next
day or two he wandered about like a lost spirit trying to find a
sequestered spot in which to read it. His inability to hit on such a
spot was rendered more irritating by the fact that, to judge from the
first few chapters (which he had managed to get through during prep.
one night under the eye of a short-sighted master), the book was
obviously the last word in hot stuff. He tried the junior day-room,
but people threw cushions at him. He tried out of doors, and a ball
hit from a neighbouring net nearly scalped him. Anything in the nature
of concentration became impossible in these circumstances.

Then he recollected that in a quiet backwater off the High Street
there was a little confectioner’s shop, where tea might be had at a
reasonable sum, and also, what was more important, peace.

He made his way there, and in the dingy back shop, all amongst the
dust and bluebottles, settled down to a thoughtful perusal of chapter
six.

Upstairs, at the same moment, the doctor was recommending that Master
John George, the son of the house, be kept warm and out of draughts
and not permitted to scratch himself, however necessary such an action
might seem to him. In brief, he was attending J. G. for chicken-pox.

Shoeblossom came away, entering the High Street furtively, lest
Authority should see him out of bounds, and returned to the school,
where he went about his lawful occasions as if there were no such
thing as chicken-pox in the world.

But all the while the microbe was getting in some unostentatious but
clever work. A week later Shoeblossom began to feel queer. He had
occasional headaches, and found himself oppressed by a queer distaste
for food. The professional advice of Dr. Oakes, the school doctor, was
called for, and Shoeblossom took up his abode in the Infirmary, where
he read _Punch_, sucked oranges, and thought of Life.

Two days later Barry felt queer. He, too, disappeared from Society.

Chicken-pox is no respecter of persons. The next victim was Marsh, of
the first eleven. Marsh, who was top of the school averages. Where
were his drives now, his late cuts that were wont to set the pavilion
in a roar. Wrapped in a blanket, and looking like the spotted marvel
of a travelling circus, he was driven across to the Infirmary in a
four-wheeler, and it became incumbent upon Burgess to select a
substitute for him.

And so it came about that Mike soared once again into the ranks of the
elect, and found his name down in the team to play against the
Incogniti.




CHAPTER XVIII

BOB HAS NEWS TO IMPART


Wrykyn went down badly before the Incogs. It generally happens at
least once in a school cricket season that the team collapses
hopelessly, for no apparent reason. Some schools do it in nearly every
match, but Wrykyn so far had been particularly fortunate this year.
They had only been beaten once, and that by a mere twenty odd runs in
a hard-fought game. But on this particular day, against a not
overwhelmingly strong side, they failed miserably. The weather may
have had something to do with it, for rain fell early in the morning,
and the school, batting first on the drying wicket, found themselves
considerably puzzled by a slow left-hander. Morris and Berridge left
with the score still short of ten, and after that the rout began. Bob,
going in fourth wicket, made a dozen, and Mike kept his end up, and
was not out eleven; but nobody except Wyatt, who hit out at everything
and knocked up thirty before he was stumped, did anything to
distinguish himself. The total was a hundred and seven, and the
Incogniti, batting when the wicket was easier, doubled this.

The general opinion of the school after this match was that either
Mike or Bob would have to stand down from the team when it was
definitely filled up, for Neville-Smith, by showing up well with the
ball against the Incogniti when the others failed with the bat, made
it practically certain that he would get one of the two vacancies.

“If I do” he said to Wyatt, “there will be the biggest bust of modern
times at my place. My pater is away for a holiday in Norway, and I’m
alone, bar the servants. And I can square them. Will you come?”

“Tea?”

“Tea!” said Neville-Smith scornfully.

“Well, what then?”

“Don’t you ever have feeds in the dorms. after lights-out in the
houses?”

“Used to when I was a kid. Too old now. Have to look after my
digestion. I remember, three years ago, when Wain’s won the footer
cup, we got up and fed at about two in the morning. All sorts of
luxuries. Sardines on sugar-biscuits. I’ve got the taste in my mouth
still. Do you remember Macpherson? Left a couple of years ago. His
food ran out, so he spread brown-boot polish on bread, and ate that.
Got through a slice, too. Wonderful chap! But what about this thing of
yours? What time’s it going to be?”

“Eleven suit you?”

“All right.”

“How about getting out?”

“I’ll do it as quickly as the team did to-day. I can’t say more than
that.”

“You were all right.”

“I’m an exceptional sort of chap.”

“What about the Jacksons?”

“It’s going to be a close thing. If Bob’s fielding were to improve
suddenly, he would just do it. But young Mike’s all over him as a bat.
In a year or two that kid’ll be a marvel. He’s bound to get in next
year, of course, so perhaps it would be better if Bob got the place as
it’s his last season. Still, one wants the best man, of course.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Mike avoided Bob as much as possible during this anxious period; and
he privately thought it rather tactless of the latter when, meeting
him one day outside Donaldson’s, he insisted on his coming in and
having some tea.

Mike shuffled uncomfortably as his brother filled the kettle and lit
the Etna. It required more tact than he had at his disposal to carry
off a situation like this.

Bob, being older, was more at his ease. He got tea ready, making
desultory conversation the while, as if there were no particular
reason why either of them should feel uncomfortable in the other’s
presence. When he had finished, he poured Mike out a cup, passed him
the bread, and sat down.

“Not seen much of each other lately, Mike, what?”

Mike murmured unintelligibly through a mouthful of bread-and-jam.

“It’s no good pretending it isn’t an awkward situation,” continued
Bob, “because it is. Beastly awkward.”

“Awful rot the pater sending us to the same school.”

“Oh, I don’t know. We’ve all been at Wrykyn. Pity to spoil the record.
It’s your fault for being such a young Infant Prodigy, and mine for not
being able to field like an ordinary human being.”

“You get on much better in the deep.”

“Bit better, yes. Liable at any moment to miss a sitter, though. Not
that it matters much really whether I do now.”

Mike stared.

“What! Why?”

“That’s what I wanted to see you about. Has Burgess said anything to
you yet?”

“No. Why? What about?”

“Well, I’ve a sort of idea our little race is over. I fancy you’ve
won.”

“I’ve not heard a word----”

“I have. I’ll tell you what makes me think the thing’s settled. I
was in the pav. just now, in the First room, trying to find a
batting-glove I’d mislaid. There was a copy of the _Wrykynian_
lying on the mantelpiece, and I picked it up and started reading it.
So there wasn’t any noise to show anybody outside that there was some
one in the room. And then I heard Burgess and Spence jawing on the
steps. They thought the place was empty, of course. I couldn’t help
hearing what they said. The pav.’s like a sounding-board. I heard every
word. Spence said, ‘Well, it’s about as difficult a problem as any
captain of cricket at Wrykyn has ever had to tackle.’ I had a sort of
idea that old Billy liked to boss things all on his own, but apparently
he does consult Spence sometimes. After all, he’s cricket-master, and
that’s what he’s there for. Well, Billy said, ‘I don’t know what to
do. What do you think, sir?’ Spence said, ‘Well, I’ll give you my
opinion, Burgess, but don’t feel bound to act on it. I’m simply saying
what I think.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said old Bill, doing a big Young Disciple
with Wise Master act. ‘_I_ think M.,’ said Spence. ‘Decidedly M.
He’s a shade better than R. now, and in a year or two, of course,
there’ll be no comparison.’”

“Oh, rot,” muttered Mike, wiping the sweat off his forehead. This was
one of the most harrowing interviews he had ever been through.

“Not at all. Billy agreed with him. ‘That’s just what I think, sir,’
he said. ‘It’s rough on Bob, but still----’ And then they walked down
the steps. I waited a bit to give them a good start, and then sheered
off myself. And so home.”

Mike looked at the floor, and said nothing.

There was nothing much to _be_ said.

“Well, what I wanted to see you about was this,” resumed Bob. “I don’t
propose to kiss you or anything; but, on the other hand, don’t let’s
go to the other extreme. I’m not saying that it isn’t a bit of a brick
just missing my cap like this, but it would have been just as bad for
you if you’d been the one dropped. It’s the fortune of war. I don’t
want you to go about feeling that you’ve blighted my life, and so on,
and dashing up side-streets to avoid me because you think the sight of
you will be painful. As it isn’t me, I’m jolly glad it’s you; and I
shall cadge a seat in the pavilion from you when you’re playing for
England at the Oval. Congratulate you.”

It was the custom at Wrykyn, when you congratulated a man on getting
colours, to shake his hand. They shook hands.

“Thanks, awfully, Bob,” said Mike. And after that there seemed to be
nothing much to talk about. So Mike edged out of the room, and tore
across to Wain’s.

He was sorry for Bob, but he would not have been human (which he
certainly was) if the triumph of having won through at last into the
first eleven had not dwarfed commiseration. It had been his one
ambition, and now he had achieved it.

The annoying part of the thing was that he had nobody to talk to about
it. Until the news was official he could not mention it to the common
herd. It wouldn’t do. The only possible confidant was Wyatt. And Wyatt
was at Bisley, shooting with the School Eight for the Ashburton. For
bull’s-eyes as well as cats came within Wyatt’s range as a marksman.
Cricket took up too much of his time for him to be captain of the
Eight and the man chosen to shoot for the Spencer, as he would
otherwise almost certainly have been; but even though short of
practice he was well up in the team.

Until he returned, Mike could tell nobody. And by the time he returned
the notice would probably be up in the Senior Block with the other
cricket notices.

In this fermenting state Mike went into the house.

The list of the team to play for Wain’s _v_. Seymour’s on the
following Monday was on the board. As he passed it, a few words
scrawled in pencil at the bottom caught his eye.

   “All the above will turn out for house-fielding at 6.30 to-morrow
   morning.--W. F.-S.”

“Oh, dash it,” said Mike, “what rot! Why on earth can’t he leave us
alone!”

For getting up an hour before his customary time for rising was not
among Mike’s favourite pastimes. Still, orders were orders, he felt.
It would have to be done.




CHAPTER XIX

MIKE GOES TO SLEEP AGAIN


Mike was a stout supporter of the view that sleep in large quantities
is good for one. He belonged to the school of thought which holds that
a man becomes plain and pasty if deprived of his full spell in bed. He
aimed at the peach-bloom complexion.

To be routed out of bed a clear hour before the proper time, even on a
summer morning, was not, therefore, a prospect that appealed to him.

When he woke it seemed even less attractive than it had done when
he went to sleep. He had banged his head on the pillow six times
over-night, and this silent alarm proved effective, as it always
does. Reaching out a hand for his watch, he found that it was five
minutes past six.

This was to the good. He could manage another quarter of an hour
between the sheets. It would only take him ten minutes to wash and get
into his flannels.

He took his quarter of an hour, and a little more. He woke from a sort
of doze to find that it was twenty-five past.

Man’s inability to get out of bed in the morning is a curious thing.
One may reason with oneself clearly and forcibly without the slightest
effect. One knows that delay means inconvenience. Perhaps it may spoil
one’s whole day. And one also knows that a single resolute heave will
do the trick. But logic is of no use. One simply lies there.

Mike thought he would take another minute.

And during that minute there floated into his mind the question, Who
_was_ Firby-Smith? That was the point. Who _was_ he, after all?

This started quite a new train of thought. Previously Mike had firmly
intended to get up--some time. Now he began to waver.

The more he considered the Gazeka’s insignificance and futility and
his own magnificence, the more outrageous did it seem that he should
be dragged out of bed to please Firby-Smith’s vapid mind. Here was he,
about to receive his first eleven colours on this very day probably,
being ordered about, inconvenienced--in short, put upon by a worm who
had only just scraped into the third.

Was this right, he asked himself. Was this proper?

And the hands of the watch moved round to twenty to.

What was the matter with his fielding? _It_ was all right. Make
the rest of the team fag about, yes. But not a chap who, dash it all,
had got his first _for_ fielding!

It was with almost a feeling of self-righteousness that Mike turned
over on his side and went to sleep again.

And outside in the cricket-field, the massive mind of the Gazeka was
filled with rage, as it was gradually borne in upon him that this was
not a question of mere lateness--which, he felt, would be bad enough,
for when he said six-thirty he meant six-thirty--but of actual
desertion. It was time, he said to himself, that the foot of Authority
was set firmly down, and the strong right hand of Justice allowed to
put in some energetic work. His comments on the team’s fielding that
morning were bitter and sarcastic. His eyes gleamed behind their
pince-nez.

The painful interview took place after breakfast. The head of the
house despatched his fag in search of Mike, and waited. He paced up
and down the room like a hungry lion, adjusting his pince-nez (a
thing, by the way, which lions seldom do) and behaving in other
respects like a monarch of the desert. One would have felt, looking at
him, that Mike, in coming to his den, was doing a deed which would
make the achievement of Daniel seem in comparison like the tentative
effort of some timid novice.

And certainly Mike was not without qualms as he knocked at the door,
and went in in response to the hoarse roar from the other side of it.

Firby-Smith straightened his tie, and glared.

“Young Jackson,” he said, “look here, I want to know what it all
means, and jolly quick. You weren’t at house-fielding this morning.
Didn’t you see the notice?”

Mike admitted that he had seen the notice.

“Then you frightful kid, what do you mean by it? What?”

Mike hesitated. Awfully embarrassing, this. His real reason for not
turning up to house-fielding was that he considered himself above such
things, and Firby-Smith a toothy weed. Could he give this excuse? He
had not his Book of Etiquette by him at the moment, but he rather
fancied not. There was no arguing against the fact that the head of
the house _was_ a toothy weed; but he felt a firm conviction that
it would not be politic to say so.

Happy thought: over-slept himself.

He mentioned this.

“Over-slept yourself! You must jolly well not over-sleep yourself.
What do you mean by over-sleeping yourself?”

Very trying this sort of thing.

“What time did you wake up?”

“Six,” said Mike.

It was not according to his complicated, yet intelligible code of
morality to tell lies to save himself. When others were concerned he
could suppress the true and suggest the false with a face of brass.

“Six!”

“Five past.”

“Why didn’t you get up then?”

“I went to sleep again.”

“Oh, you went to sleep again, did you? Well, just listen to me. I’ve
had my eye on you for some time, and I’ve seen it coming on. You’ve
got swelled head, young man. That’s what you’ve got. Frightful swelled
head. You think the place belongs to you.”

“I don’t,” said Mike indignantly.

“Yes, you do,” said the Gazeka shrilly. “You think the whole frightful
place belongs to you. You go siding about as if you’d bought it. Just
because you’ve got your second, you think you can do what you like;
turn up or not, as you please. It doesn’t matter whether I’m only in
the third and you’re in the first. That’s got nothing to do with it.
The point is that you’re one of the house team, and I’m captain of it,
so you’ve jolly well got to turn out for fielding with the others when
I think it necessary. See?”

Mike said nothing.

“Do--you--see, you frightful kid?”

[Illustration: “DO--YOU--SEE, YOU FRIGHTFUL KID?”]

Mike remained stonily silent. The rather large grain of truth in what
Firby-Smith had said had gone home, as the unpleasant truth about
ourselves is apt to do; and his feelings were hurt. He was determined
not to give in and say that he saw even if the head of the house
invoked all the majesty of the prefects’ room to help him, as he had
nearly done once before. He set his teeth, and stared at a photograph
on the wall.

Firby-Smith’s manner became ominously calm. He produced a
swagger-stick from a corner.

“Do you see?” he asked again.

Mike’s jaw set more tightly.

What one really wants here is a row of stars.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mike was still full of his injuries when Wyatt came back. Wyatt was
worn out, but cheerful. The school had finished sixth for the
Ashburton, which was an improvement of eight places on their last
year’s form, and he himself had scored thirty at the two hundred and
twenty-seven at the five hundred totals, which had put him in a very
good humour with the world.

“Me ancient skill has not deserted me,” he said, “That’s the cats. The
man who can wing a cat by moonlight can put a bullet where he likes on
a target. I didn’t hit the bull every time, but that was to give the
other fellows a chance. My fatal modesty has always been a hindrance
to me in life, and I suppose it always will be. Well, well! And what
of the old homestead? Anything happened since I went away? Me old
father, is he well? Has the lost will been discovered, or is there a
mortgage on the family estates? By Jove, I could do with a stoup of
Malvoisie. I wonder if the moke’s gone to bed yet. I’ll go down and
look. A jug of water drawn from the well in the old courtyard where my
ancestors have played as children for centuries back would just about
save my life.”

He left the dormitory, and Mike began to brood over his wrongs once
more.

Wyatt came back, brandishing a jug of water and a glass.

“Oh, for a beaker full of the warm south, full of the true, the
blushful Hippocrene! Have you ever tasted Hippocrene, young Jackson?
Rather like ginger-beer, with a dash of raspberry-vinegar. Very heady.
Failing that, water will do. A-ah!”

He put down the glass, and surveyed Mike, who had maintained a moody
silence throughout this speech.

“What’s your trouble?” he asked. “For pains in the back try Ju-jar. If
it’s a broken heart, Zam-buk’s what you want. Who’s been quarrelling
with you?”

“It’s only that ass Firby-Smith.”

“Again! I never saw such chaps as you two. Always at it. What was the
trouble this time? Call him a grinning ape again? Your passion for the
truth’ll be getting you into trouble one of these days.”

“He said I stuck on side.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean, did he buttonhole you on your way to school, and say,
‘Jackson, a word in your ear. You stick on side.’ Or did he lead up to
it in any way? Did he say, ‘Talking of side, you stick it on.’ What
had you been doing to him?”

“It was the house-fielding.”

“But you can’t stick on side at house-fielding. I defy any one to.
It’s too early in the morning.”

“I didn’t turn up.”

“What! Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“No, but, look here, really. Did you simply bunk it?”

“Yes.”

Wyatt leaned on the end of Mike’s bed, and, having observed its
occupant thoughtfully for a moment, proceeded to speak wisdom for the
good of his soul.

“I say, I don’t want to jaw--I’m one of those quiet chaps with
strong, silent natures; you may have noticed it--but I must put in
a well-chosen word at this juncture. Don’t pretend to be dropping
off to sleep. Sit up and listen to what your kind old uncle’s got to
say to you about manners and deportment. Otherwise, blood as you are
at cricket, you’ll have a rotten time here. There are some things you
simply can’t do; and one of them is bunking a thing when you’re put
down for it. It doesn’t matter who it is puts you down. If he’s
captain, you’ve got to obey him. That’s discipline, that ’ere is. The
speaker then paused, and took a sip of water from the carafe which
stood at his elbow. Cheers from the audience, and a voice ‘Hear!
Hear!’”

Mike rolled over in bed and glared up at the orator. Most of his face
was covered by the water-jug, but his eyes stared fixedly from above
it. He winked in a friendly way, and, putting down the jug, drew a
deep breath.

“Nothing like this old ’87 water,” he said. “Such body.”

“I like you jawing about discipline,” said Mike morosely.

“And why, my gentle che-ild, should I not talk about discipline?”

“Considering you break out of the house nearly every night.”

“In passing, rather rum when you think that a burglar would get it
hot for breaking in, while I get dropped on if I break out. Why
should there be one law for the burglar and one for me? But you were
saying--just so. I thank you. About my breaking out. When you’re a
white-haired old man like me, young Jackson, you’ll see that there
are two sorts of discipline at school. One you can break if you feel
like taking the risks; the other you mustn’t ever break. I don’t know
why, but it isn’t done. Until you learn that, you can never hope to
become the Perfect Wrykynian like,” he concluded modestly, “me.”

Mike made no reply. He would have perished rather than admit it, but
Wyatt’s words had sunk in. That moment marked a distinct epoch in his
career. His feelings were curiously mixed. He was still furious with
Firby-Smith, yet at the same time he could not help acknowledging to
himself that the latter had had the right on his side. He saw and
approved of Wyatt’s point of view, which was the more impressive to
him from his knowledge of his friend’s contempt for, or, rather,
cheerful disregard of, most forms of law and order. If Wyatt, reckless
though he was as regarded written school rules, held so rigid a
respect for those tha

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