Captain Jinks, Hero, Ernest Howard Crosby [free e books to read TXT] 📗

were walking on air and rising into another plane of being.”

“Well⁠—ye-es⁠—perhaps, but I didn’t mean that exactly,” answered Cleary. “But somehow I feel more like hitting a fellow over the head when I’m in uniform than when I’m not, don’t you?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Sam, “but I really think I do. Do you think they’ll hit us over the head?”

“There’s no telling. There’s Captain Clark of the first class and Saunders of the third who are running the hazing just now, they say, and they’re pretty tough chaps.”

“Is that Captain Clark with the squeaky voice?” asked Sam.

“Yes, he spoiled it taking tabasco sauce when he was hazed three years ago. They say it took all the mucous membrane off his epiglottis.”

There was silence for a time.

“Saunders is that fellow with the crooked nose, isn’t he?” asked Sam.

“Yes; when they hazed him last year they made him stand with his nose in the crack of a door until they came back, and they forgot they had left him, and somebody shut the door on his nose by mistake. But he’s an awfully plucky chap. He just went on standing there as if nothing had happened.”

“Splendid, wasn’t it?” cried Sam, beginning to see the heroic possibilities of hazing. “Do you suppose that they have always hazed here?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And that General German and General Meriden and all the rest were hazed here just like this?”

“Yes, to be sure.”

Sam felt his spirits soaring again.

“Then I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” said he. “It has always been done and by the greatest men, and it must be the right thing to do. Just think of it. Meriden has walked up this very hill like you and me to be hazed!” There was exultation in his tone.

“Well, I only hope Meriden looked forward to it with greater joy than I do,” said Cleary, with a dry laugh. “But here we are.”

Before them under the ruined walls of the old redoubt called Fort Hut, stood a small group of cadets, indistinctly lighted by several moving dark-lanterns. While they were still twenty yards away, two men sprang out from behind a tree, grasped them by the arms, tied their elbows behind them, and, leading them off through the woods for a short distance, bound them to a tree out of sight of the rest, and left them there with strict injunctions not to move. It never entered into the head of either of the prisoners that they might disobey this order, and they waited patiently for events to take their course. As far as they could make out by listening, some others of their classmates were already undergoing the ordeal of hazing. They could hear water splashing, suppressed screams and groans, and continual whispering. The light of the lanterns flickered through the trees, now and then illuminating the topmost branches. Presently a man came and sat down near them, and said:

“Don’t get impatient. We’re nearly ready for you.” It was the voice of one of their two captors.

“May I ask you a question, sir?” said Sam.

“Blaze away,” responded the man.

“Was General Gramp hazed at this same place, do you know?”

“Yes,” said the man. “In this very same place. And while he was waiting he sat on that very log over there.”

Sam peered with awe into the darkness.

“May I⁠—do you think I might⁠—just sit on it, too?” asked Sam.

“Certainly,” said the cadet affably, untying the rope from the tree and leading Sam over to the log, where he tied him again.

Sam sat down reverently.

“How well preserved the log is,” said Sam.

“Yes,” said the guard; “of course they wouldn’t let it decay. It’s a sort of historical monument. They overhaul it every year. Anyway it’s ironwood.”

Sam thought to himself that perhaps some day the log might be noted as the spot where the great General Jinks sat while awaiting his hazing, and tears of joy rolled softly down over his freckles. He was still lost in this emotion when steps were heard approaching and the lantern-light drew nearer.

“Come, Smith, bring the prisoners in,” said the same voice that had waked Sam in his tent. He looked at the speaker and recognized the tall, hatchet-faced, crook-nosed Saunders. Two or three cadets unfastened Sam and Cleary, still, however, leaving their arms bound behind them, and brought them to the open place under the wall where Sam had first seen them. Sam now saw nothing; walking in the steps of Generals Gramp and German, he felt the ecstasy of a Christian martyr. He would not have exchanged his lot with anyone in the world. Cleary, however, who possessed a rather mundane spirit, took in the scene. Twenty or thirty cadets were either standing or seated on the ground round a circle which was illuminated by several dark-lanterns placed upon the ground. In the center of the circle were a tub of water, some boards and pieces of rope, and two large baskets whose contents were concealed by a cloth.

“Come, boys,” squeaked Captain Clark, a short, thickset fellow who looked much older than the others and who spoke in a peculiar cracked voice. “Come, let’s begin by bracing them up.”

“Bracing” was a process adopted for the purpose of making the patient assume the position of a soldier, only very much exaggerated⁠—a position which after a few minutes becomes almost intolerable. Cleary and Sam were promptly taken and tied back to back to an upright stake which had escaped their observation. They were tied at the ankle, knee, waist, under the arms, and at the chin and forehead. By tightening these ropes as desired and placing pieces of wood in between, against the back, the hazers made each victim stand with the chest pushed preternaturally forward and the chin and abdomen drawn preternaturally back. Cleary found this position irksome from the start, and soon decidedly painful, but Sam was proof against it. In fact, he had been practising just this position for eight or ten years, and it now came to him