Chapter Three.
The Bully
Haviland’s gloomy prediction proved in so far correct, in that when, after nearly a weary week of toil during his spare moments, he handed in his imposition, his insatiable taskmaster insisted on his re-writing two hundred of the lines. Then with lightened heart he found himself free to resume his all-engrossing and gloriously healthy pursuit.
There is, or used to be, a superstition that a boy who didn’t care for cricket or football must necessarily be an ass, a loafer, and to be regarded with some suspicion. Yet in point of fact such by no means follows, and our friend Haviland was a case in point. He could cover as many miles of ground in the limited time allowed as any one in the school, and more than most. He could climb anything, could pick his way delicately through the most forbidden ground, quartering it exhaustively every yard, what time his natural enemy the keeper, his suspicions roused, was on the watch in the very same covert, and return safe and sound with his pearly treasures – to excite the envy and admiration of the egg-collecting fraternity; yet though this represented his pet hobby, he was something of an all-round naturalist, and his wanderings in field and wood were by no means confined to the nesting season.
He might have liked cricket could he have been always in, but fielding out he pronounced beastly slow. As for football he declared he couldn’t see any fun in having his nose jammed an inch and a half deep into liquid mud, with ten or a dozen fellows on top of him trying to jam it in still deeper: and in the result he always wanted to hit some one when he got up again. Besides, a game you were obliged to play whether you wanted to or not, ceased to be a game at all – and during its season football was compulsory on half-holidays, at any rate for the juniors. Now, as a prefect, he was exempt, and he appreciated his exemption. But, his distaste for the two great games notwithstanding, there was nothing of the loafer or the muff about Haviland. He was always in the pink of hard training, clear-eyed, clean-skinned, thoroughly sound in wind and limb.
In the matter of his school work we regret to say that our friend cut a less creditable figure; for in it indeed he shone in no particular branch. His sole object was to get through his work as quickly and as easily as possible, thereby to have more time for his favourite pursuit, wherefore his ambition soared no higher than a respectable middle of the fifth form. The ethics of Saint Kirwin’s held “cribs” to be perfectly justifiable – needless to say not from the masters’ point of view – and a large proportion generously availed themselves of such dubious aid, being of course careful to avoid all the stock catches. Even a certain amount of cribbing in form was held not to be unlawful, although perilous; and when the Reverend Joseph Wilmot – an absent and star-gazing type of master – gravely and impressively warned his Greek Testament form one Sunday, à propos of some suspiciously technical construing, that he should, detect in a moment if any one used the English version, the form was simply dying to roar; the point of the joke being that every fellow composing it had got his English version concealed beneath his locker, and was surreptitiously reading up the part where he would be put on, this having been the practice of the form from time immemorial, and, we grieve to say, destined to continue so indefinitely.
“Serve ’em right,” pronounced Haviland, who was one of the offenders. “They’ve no business to make us work on Sundays. It’s smashing up the fourth commandment. So if we take the English in to form with us it saves us from working, and we get out of smashing the fourth commandment. See?”
They did see, for a shout of acclamation hailed this young casuist’s special pleading. “Besides,” he added, “Old Joe is such an ass. Detect in a moment if any one used the English! Faugh! As if any one in this form had ever done anything else?”
It may be thought that by reason of his own delinquencies Haviland’s authority as a prefect would have been partially if not entirely undermined, yet such was not the case, for under the school code they were justified, whereas the terrible crime of “sneaking” was as much the one unpardonable sin at Saint Kirwin’s as elsewhere. And in the enforcement of that authority he was pitiless, hence his unpopularity – but it answered – and whether he presided over preparation, or in the dormitory, or elsewhere, order reigned. The spirits of misrule were laid.
Once indeed an offender thought to round on him. He had unearthed a smoking case, and the use of tobacco was of course a capital offence. One of the offenders – three biggish fellows by the way – had said meaningly:
“If you do anything in this, Haviland, we can hand you up. We saw you in Needham’s Copse only last week, and other places besides.”
“All right, Starford. You must go before the next prefects’ council, all three of you. This’ll mean a licking I’m afraid, but you’ll have an appeal to the Doctor. You can give me away then if you think it’ll do yourselves any good, but I believe you know Nick better than that.”
He was right, except that the headmaster took the matter out of the prefectorial hands and soundly flogged the culprits himself. But no word did these utter with regard to any delinquency on the part of him who was instrumental in bringing them to justice.
Meanwhile the Zulu boy, Anthony, otherwise Mpukuza, was not finding life at Saint Kirwin’s exactly a bed of roses, the more so that Jarnley and a few other choice spirits were making it their especial business that he should not. Deprived of the protection of his first and accidental defender, he was very much at their mercy. Haviland was gated, and would so remain for some days to come, and so long as they could catch their victim outside, this rough element promised itself plenty of fun. There was no fear of the victim himself giving it away, for although complaining to a prefect was immeasurably less heinous than complaining to a master, still it was not held justifiable except in very extreme cases.
“Come down and have a bathe with us, Snowball,” cried Jarnley, catching sight of his intended victim, while proceeding with a group of his followers to one of the school bathing-places.
“Can you swim, Cetchy?” cried another of the group – that being the Zulu boy’s nickname as the nearest they could get to Cetywayo.
“Swim – eh? Well, I dunno.”
“Come along then, and we’ll teach you,” and grins of malignant delight went round the group. They anticipated no end of fun. They were going to duck this somewhat unusual specimen until they nearly drowned him. Jarnley, in particular, was radiant.
Mpukuza grinned too. There was no escape. They had hedged him about too completely for that. He might as well accept the situation good-humouredly. And – he did.
About half a mile from the school buildings there flowed an insignificant sluggish river, opening here and there into broad deep pools. One of these, screened off, and fitted with a diving board, constituted the bathing-place of those who had passed a certain swimming test, and thus were entitled to disport themselves aquatically when they listed. It was not a good bathing-place, far from it, for the bottom was coated thickly with slimy mud. Still, it was the best obtainable under the circumstances.
Jarnley and Co. unvested in a trice, nor did their intended victim take any longer.
“Come along, Cetchy,” laughed Jarnley, grabbing the other by the scruff of the neck, and leaping out into deep water with him. “Now I’ll teach you, you black beast,” he snarled, between the panting and puffing extracted by the coldness of the water as they both rose to the surface. “I’m going to duck you till you’re nearly dead. Take that first though,” hitting him a smart smack on the side of the face. Those still on the bank yelled with delight, and hastened to spring into the water in order to get their share of the fun.
They got it. The African boy uttered an exclamation of dismay, broke away from his tormentors, and in a few swift strokes splashed across to the furthest and deepest side of the pool. This was what they wanted. With more yells of delight all hands swam in pursuit.
Mpukuza was holding on to a trailing bough, his copper-coloured face above water, showing every indication of alarm, as his assailants drew near.
“Now we’ll duck him!” yelled Jarnley. “It’s jolly deep here.”
But as they swooped towards him something strange happened – something strange and utterly unexpected. The round head and dark scared countenance had disappeared. So, too, at that moment did Jarnley, but not before he had found time to utter a yell – a loud yell – indicative of surprise and scare – drowned the next second in bubble and splash.
What on earth did it mean? That Jarnley was playing the fool, was the first idea that occurred to the spectators as they swam around or trod water – the next that he had been seized with cramp. But what about Cetchy? He too, was under water, and they hadn’t gone down together, for Jarnley hadn’t touched him yet.
No – he hadn’t. But Mpukuza knew a trick worth two of waiting for that. These confiding youths had overlooked the possibility that this descendant of many generations of savage warriors might be far more at home in the water than they were themselves. But such in fact was the case. Watching his opportunity, as his would-be tormentors bore down upon him, the Zulu boy had simply dived, and grabbing Jarnley by both ankles dragged him under water. And there he held him – and all the bully’s frantic attempts to escape were in vain. The grasp on his ankles was that of a vice; and when at last it did relax, Jarnley rose to the surface only to sink again, so exhausted was he. He was in fact drowning, and but for his intended victim – who rose unruffled, unwinded, even smiling, and at once seized him and towed him to the bank – he would actually have lost his life. For the African boy could remain under water a vast deal longer than they could, and that with the most perfect ease.
“What’s all this about?”
The voice – sharp, clear, rather high-pitched – had the effect of a sort of electric shock on the streaming and now shivering group gathered round the gasping and prostrate Jarnley, as it started round, not a little guiltily, to confront a master.
The aspect of the latter was not reassuring, being decidedly hostile. With his head thrown back he gazed on the dumb-foundered group with a stony stare.
“Umph! Bathing before permission has been given?” he said.
“That black beast! I’ll kill him,” muttered the muddled and confused Jarnley.
“Eh? What’s the fellow saying?” cried the new arrival sharply, who, by the way, was dressed in clerical black himself, and was now inspired with the idea that the speaker was suffering from sunstroke, and was off his head. For all its apprehensiveness, a sickly grin ran round the group.
“He’s talking about Cetchy – er – I mean Anthony, sir,” explained some one.
Now the Reverend Alfred Augustus Sefton was endowed with a vast fund of humour, but it was of the dry quality, and he was sharp withal. He had seen more than they knew, and now, looking from one to the other, the situation suddenly dawned upon him, and it amused him beyond words. But he was a rigid disciplinarian.
“What have you been doing to him?” he said, fixing the African boy with his straight glance.
“Doing? Nothing, sir. We play in the water. He try how long he keep me under. I try how long I keep him under. That all. That all, sir.” And a dazzling stripe of white leaped in a broad grin across the speaker’s face – while all the other boys tittered. Mr Sefton gave a suspicious choke.
“That all!” he echoed. “But that isn’t all,” and extracting an envelope and a pencil from his pocket, he began to take down their names. “No, that isn’t all by any means. Each of you will do four hundred lines for bathing before permission has been given, except Anthony, who will do one hundred only because he’s a new boy. Now get into your clothes sharp and go straight back and begin, and if you’re not in the big schoolroom by the time I am, I’ll double it.”
There was a wholesome straightforwardness about Mr Sefton’s methods that admitted of no argument, and it was a very crestfallen group that overtook and hurried past that disciplinarian as he made his way along the field-path, swinging his stick, his head thrown back, and his soft felt hat very much on the back of it. And on the outskirts of the group at a respectful distance came Anthony, keen-eyed and quick to dodge more than one vengeful smack on the head which had been aimed at him – for these fairplay-loving young Britons must wreak their resentment on something – and dire and deep were the sinister promises thrown at the African boy, to be fulfilled when time and opportunity should serve.
Chapter Four.
Concerning an Adventure
Mr Sefton did not immediately repair to the big schoolroom. When he did, however, the half-dozen delinquents were at work on their imposition. He strolled round apparently aimlessly, then peered into the fifth form room, where sat Haviland, writing his.
Haviland was not at first aware of the master’s presence. An ugly frown was on his face, for he was in fact beginning the extra two hundred lines of which we have made mention. It was a half-holiday, and a lovely afternoon, and but for this he would have been out and away over field and down. He felt that he had been treated unfairly, and it was with no amiable expression of countenance that he looked up, and with something of a start became aware of the master’s presence.
“Sit still, Haviland,” said the latter kindly, strolling over to the desks. “Have you nearly done your imposition?”
“I’ve done it quite, sir, but you can always reckon on having to do a third of it over again when it’s for the Doctor,” he added with intense bitterness.
“Look here, you mustn’t talk like that,” rejoined Mr Sefton briskly, but there was a kindliness underlying his sharp tones which the other’s ear was quick to perceive. They were great friends these two, and many an informal chat had they had together. It involved no favouritism either. Let Haviland break any rule, accidentally or not, within Mr Sefton’s jurisdiction, and the imposition entailed was not one line shorter than that set to anybody else under like circumstances, as he had reason to know by experience. Yet that made no difference in his regard for this particular master.
“Well, it’s hard luck all the same, sir,” he now replied. “However, this time I’ve got off cheap with only a couple of hundred over again. But it has done me out of this afternoon.”
Mr Sefton had hoisted himself on to one of the long desks and sat swinging his legs and his stick.
“What d’you think?” he said. “I’ve caught half a dozen fellows bathing just now. The new boy Anthony was among ’em. And he’d nearly drowned Jarnley – the beggar! What d’you think of that?”
“What, sir? Nearly drowned him?”
“I should think so,” pursued the master, chuckling with glee. “Jarnley lay there gasping like a newly caught fish. It seems he’d been trying to duck Cetchy, and Cetchy ducked him instead. Nearly drowned him too. Ha – ha!”
Haviland roared too.
“That chap’ll be able to take care of himself, I believe, sir,” he said. “I need hardly have smacked Jarnley’s head for bullying him the other day.”
“I know you did,” said the other dryly, causing Haviland to stop short with a half grin, as he reflected how precious little went on in the school that Sefton didn’t know.
“Well, he’s got four hundred lines to get through now,” went on the latter. “I let Cetchy off with a hundred.”
“I expect the other fellows made him go with them, sir,” said Haviland. “And he’s hardly been here a week yet.”
“If I let him off them, the other fellows’ll take it out of him,” said Mr Sefton, who understood the drift of this remark.
“They’ll do that anyhow, sir. But I’ve a notion they’ll tire of it before long.”
So Anthony was called and made to give his version of the incident, which he did in such manner as to convulse both master and prefect – and, to his great delight, the imposition was remitted altogether.
“He’s no end of an amusing chap that, sir,” said Haviland when the African boy had gone out. “He has all sorts of yarns about Zululand – can remember about the war too. He’s in my dormitory, you know, sir, and he yarns away by the hour – ”
The speaker broke off short and somewhat confusedly – as a certain comical twinkle in Mr Sefton’s eyes reminded him how guilelessly he was giving himself away: for talking in the dormitories after a certain time, and that rather brief, was strictly forbidden. Mr Sefton, secretly enjoying his confusion, coughed dryly, but made no remark. After all, he was not Haviland’s dormitory master.
“What a big fellow you’re getting, Haviland!” he said presently. “I suppose you’ll be leaving us soon?”
“I hope not, sir, at least not for another couple of terms. Then I expect I’ll have to.”
“You’re not eager to, then?” eyeing him curiously.
“Not in the least.”
“H’m! What are they going to make of you when you do leave?”
The young fellow’s face clouded.
“Goodness only knows, sir. I suppose I’ll have to go out and split rails in the bush, or something about as inviting, or as paying.”
“Well, I don’t know that you’ll be doing such a bad thing in that, Haviland,” rejoined Mr Sefton, “if by ‘splitting rails’ you mean launching out into some form of colonial life. But whatever it is you’ve got to throw yourself into it heart and soul, but I should think you’d do that from what I’ve seen of you here. At any rate, life and its chances are all in front of you instead of half behind you, and you’ve got to determine not to make a mess of it, as so many fellows do. Well, I didn’t come in here to preach you a sermon, so get along with your lines and start clear again.” And the kind-hearted disciplinarian swung himself off the desk and departed, and with him nearly all the rankling bitterness which had been corroding Haviland’s mind. The latter scribbled away with a will, and at length threw down his pen with an ejaculation of relief.
Even then he could not go out until the lines had been shown up. The next best thing was to look out, and so he climbed up to sit in the open window. The fair English landscape stretched away green and golden in the afternoon sunlight. The shrill screech of swifts wheeling overhead mingled with the twittering of the many sparrows which rendered the creepers clinging to the wall of the school buildings untidy with their nests. Then the clear song of larks soaring above mead and fallow, and farther afield the glad note of the cuckoo from some adjoining copse. Boys were passing by twos and threes, and now and then a master going for his afternoon stroll. Haviland, gazing out from his perch in the window, found himself thinking over Mr Sefton’s words. He supposed he should soon be leaving all this, but didn’t want to. He liked the school: he liked the masters, except the Head perhaps, who seemed for no reason at all to have a “down” on him. He liked the freedom allowed by the rules outside school hours, and thoroughly appreciated his own post of authority, and the substantial privileges it carried with it. A voice from outside hailed him.
“Hi – Haviland! Done your impos yet?”
“Yes.”
“Come with me after call-over. I’ve got a good thing. Owl’s nest. Must have two to get at it.”
The speaker was one Corbould major, a most enthusiastic egg-hunter, and, though not a prefect, a great friend of Haviland’s by reason of being a brother sportsman.
“Can’t. I’m gated. Won’t be able to take the lines up to Nick till to-morrow.”
“Why not try him in his study now? He’s there, for I saw him go in – and he’s in a good humour, for he was grinning and cracking jokes with Laughton and Medlicott. Try him, any way.”
“All right,” said Haviland, feeling dubious but desperate, as he climbed down from the window.
It required some intrepidity to invade the redoubtable Head in his private quarters, instead of waiting until he appeared officially in public; however, as Corbould had divined, the great Panjandrum happened to be in high good humour, and was graciously pleased to accept the uttermost farthing, and release the prisoner then and there.
Half an hour later two enthusiastic collectors might have been seen, speeding along a narrow lane at a good swinging, staying trot. A quick glance all round, then over a stile and along a dry ditch skirting a long high hedge. Another quick look round, and both were in a small hazel copse. On the further side of this, in a field just outside it, stood a barn. This was their objective.
Now, before leaving cover, they reconnoitred carefully and exhaustively. The farmhouse to which the barn belonged stood but two fields off, and they could distinctly hear the cackling of the fowls around it – and in another direction they could see men working in the fields at no great distance. Needless to say, the pair were engaged in an act of flagrant trespass.
“That’s all right so far,” whispered Corbould major, as they stood within the gloom of the interior, feebly illuminated by streaks of light through the chinks. “There’s the nest, up there, in that corner, and you’ll have to give me a hoist up to the beam from the other end. We can’t take it from this because there’s a hen squatting on a lot of eggs right underneath, and she’ll kick up such a beastly row if we disturb her.”
A warning “cluck-cluck” proceeding from the fowl in question had already caused Haviland something of a start. However, they were careful not to alarm her, and she sat on. Meanwhile, Corbould had reached the beam, and with some difficulty had drawn himself up and was now creeping along it.
Haviland’s heart was pulsating with excitement as he stood there in the semi-gloom, watching his companion’s progress, for the adventure was a bold one, and the penalty of detection condign. Now a weird hissing arose from the dark corner overhead, as Corbould, worming his way along the beam, drew nearer and nearer to it, and then, and then, to him above and to him below, it seemed that there came a hissing as of a thousand serpents, a whirlwind of flapping wings, a gasp, a heavy fall, a crash, and he who had been aloft on yonder beam now lay sprawling beneath it, while the hen, which had saved itself as though by a miracle, was dashing round and round the barn, uttering raucous shrieks of terror.
“You ass! You’ve done it now!” exclaimed Haviland, horror-stricken, as he surveyed his chum, who, half-stupefied, was picking himself up gingerly. And he had. For what he had “done” was to lose his hold and tumble right slap on top of the sitting hen, or rather where that nimble fowl had been a moment before, namely on the nest of eggs; and these being in a state of semi-incubation, it followed that the whole back of his jacket and trousers was in the most nauseous mess imaginable.
This was too much for Haviland, and, the peril of the situation notwithstanding, he laughed himself into a condition that was abjectly helpless.
“Shut up, Haviland, and don’t be an ass, for heaven’s sake! We must get out of this!” cried Corbould. “Scrag that beastly fowl. It’s giving away the whole show!” And indeed such was likely to be the result, for what with the owl hissing like a fury overhead, and the hen yelling below, it seemed that the din should be heard for miles.
A hedge stake, deftly shied, silenced the latter, and this first act of stern self-preservation accomplished, the second followed, viz.: to slip cautiously forth, and make themselves remarkably scarce. This they succeeded in doing. Luck favoured them, miraculously as it seemed, and, having put a respectable distance between themselves and the scene of the adventure, they made for a safe hiding-place where they could decide on the next move, for it was manifestly impossible for Corbould to show up in that state.
Snugly ensconced in a dry ditch, well overhung with brambles, they soon regained wind after their exertions and excitement. But Haviland, lying on the ground, laughed till he cried.
“If you could only have seen yourself, Corbould,” he stuttered between each paroxysm, “rising like Phoenix from the ashes! And that infernal fowl waltzing round and round the barn squawking like mad, and the jolly owl flapping and hissing up top there! O Lord, you’d have died!”
“We didn’t get the eggs, though. Wouldn’t have minded if we’d got the eggs.”
“Well, we won’t get them now, for I don’t suppose either of us’ll be such asses as to go near the place again this season after the to-do there’ll be when old Siggles discovers the smash up. It’s a pity to have done all that damage though, gets us a rottener name than ever.”
“It couldn’t. These beasts of farmers, it doesn’t hurt them if we hunt for nests. Yet they’re worse than the keepers. They have some excuse, the brutes.”
“How on earth were you such an ass as to come that cropper, Corbould?” said the other, going off into a paroxysm again.
“Oh, it’s all jolly fine, but what’d you have done with that beastly owl flapping around your ears and trying to peck your eyes out? But I say. What are we going to do about this?” showing the horrible mess his clothes were in.
Both looked blank for a few moments. Then Haviland brightened.
“Eureka!” he cried. “We’ll plaster you up with dry mud, and it you’re asked, you can swear you had a fall on your back. You did too, so that’ll be no lie.”
The idea was a good one. By dint of rubbing in handfuls of dry earth, every trace of the eggs, half-incubated as they were, was hidden. But as far as further disturbance at the hands of these two counted for anything the owl was allowed to hatch out its brood in peace. Not for any consideration would they have attempted further interference with it that season.