Follow My leader Part 29

"This knot," said d.i.c.k, slipping the loop, "wouldn't hold against a single lurch. Why, it comes undone in a fellow's hand--"

And the end dropped idly on the floor of the boat as he spoke.

Heathcote nodded.

"Think of the cad having robbed two juniors like us, and collared mother's photograph, too, the brute!" said d.i.c.k, taking his friend's arm and walking on.

They talked no longer of Thomas White, but admired the moonlight, and wondered how soon the tide would be up, and speculated as to whether there wasn't a breeze getting up off the land. Once they turned back, and glanced at the black hull, lying, still aground, with the tide yards away yet. Then they thought a trot would warm them up before they put on their boots, and mounted the cliff to Templeton.

The clock struck half-past eleven as they knocked modestly at the porter's lodge. The porter was up, and evidently expected them.

"Nice goings-on, young gentlemen," said he. "The Doctor wishes to see you after chapel in the morning. In you go. I'm sorry for you."

With fluttering hearts they stole across the moonlit Quadrangle, and gazed round at the grim windows that peered down on them from every side. The housekeeper was up and ready for them, too.

"Bad boys," said she, as she opened the door; "go to bed quietly, and make no noise. The Doctor will be ready for you the moment chapel is over."

They mounted the creaking stairs, and crawled guiltily along the pa.s.sage to their dormitory.

The dormitory monitor was sitting up in bed ready for them, too.

"Oh, you have turned up, have you?" said he. "I hope you'll enjoy yourselves with Winter in the morning. Most of the fellows say it's expulsion; but I rather fancy a licking, myself. Cut into bed, and don't make a noise."

And he curled himself up in his bedclothes, and slept the sleep of the just, which was more than could be said for the fitful slumbers of our heroes, which visions of Tom White's boat, and Ponty's pocket, and the piece of string at the tail of the Eleven's coach, combined to make the reverse of sound.

In the middle of the night d.i.c.k, as he lay awake, felt Heathcote's hand nudging him.

"I say, d.i.c.k!" said the latter, "the wind's got up. Do you hear it?"

"Shut up, Georgie. I'm just asleep."

Nemesis handed in her last cheque to our heroes after chapel next morning in the Doctor's study. I will spare the reader the harrowing details of that serious interview. Suffice it to say that the dormitory f.a.g was right, and that Mrs Partlett was spared the trouble of packing up the two young gentlemen's wardrobes.

But they emerged from the study wiser and sadder men. They knew more about the properties of a certain flexible wood than they had ever dreamed of before. They also felt themselves marked men in high quarters, with a blot on their new boy's scutcheon which it would take a heap of virtue to efface.

"By George!" said d.i.c.k that afternoon, "we got it hot--too hot, Georgie."

"I think Winter might have let us down rather easier, myself," said Georgie.

There was a pause.

"Was it windy last night?" asked d.i.c.k.

"Rather!" said Georgie.

"Anything new down town?"

"Couldn't hear anything."

"Hum! I wonder what that beast's done with mother's photograph? I say, Georgie, what a howling brute he was!"

"He was; he deserves anything."

Strange, if so, that neither of our young heroes went to the police station and informed against their man. On the contrary, they went up on to the cliffs after school, and scanned the bay from headland to headland, doubtless lost in the wonders of the deep, and wis.h.i.+ng very much they could tell what the wild waves were saying as to the whereabouts of the _Martha_.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

'TWIXT SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.

Perhaps no epoch of a schoolboy's life is more critical--especially if he be of the open-hearted nature of d.i.c.k and Heathcote--than that which immediately follows his first punishment at the hands of the law.

On the one hand he has the sense of disgrace which attends personal chastis.e.m.e.nt, as well as the discomfort of a forfeited good name, and the feeling of being down on the black books of the school authorities generally. On the other hand, he is sure to meet with a certain number of companions who, if they do not exactly admire what he has done, sympathise with him in what he has suffered; and sympathy at such a time is sweet and seducing. A little too much sympathy will make him feel a martyr, and a little martyrdom will make him feel a hero, and once a hero on account of his misdeeds, he needs a stout heart and a steady head to keep himself from going one step further and becoming a professional evil-doer, and ending a fool and his own worst enemy.

d.i.c.k and Heathcote ran a serious risk of being shunted on to the road to ruin after the escapade of the Grandcourt match.

The former discovered that his popularity with the Den was by no means impaired by adversity. In fact, he jumped at one bound to the hero stage of his ordeal. He was but a boy of flesh and blood, and sympathy is a sweet salve for smarting flesh and blood.

After the first burst of contrition it pleased him to hear fellows say--

"Hard lines on you, old man. Not another in a hundred would have cheeked it the way you did."

It pleased him, too, to see boys smaller than himself look round as they pa.s.sed him, and whisper something which made their companions turn round too. d.i.c.k grew fond of small boys as the term went on.

It pleased him still more to be taken notice of by a few bigger boys, to find himself claimed by Hooker and Duffield as a crony, to be bantered by the aesthetic Wrangham, and patronised by the stout Bull.

All this made him go over the adventures of that memorable day often in his mind, and think that after all it wasn't a bad day's sport, and that, though he said so who shouldn't, he had managed things fairly well, and got his money's worth.

His money's worth, however, reminded him of his lost half-sovereign and his mother's photograph, and these reflections usually pulled him up short in his reminiscences.

Heathcote, in a more philosophical and dismal way, had his perils, and Pledge gave him no help through his difficulty. On the contrary, he encouraged his growing discontent.

"Dismals again?" said he, one evening. "That cane of Winter's must be a stiff one if it cuts you up like that."

"Winter always does lay it on thick to the kids, though," said Wrangham, who happened to be present. "His lickings are in inverse ratio to the size of the licked."

It did comfort Heathcote to hear his case discussed in such learned and mathematical terms, but that was all the consolation he got.

d.i.c.k was in far too exalted a frame of mind to give much a.s.sistance.

"What does it matter?" said he, recklessly. "I don't mean to fret myself."

And so the matter ended for the present. The two friends were bearing their ordeal in two such different ways that they might almost have parted company, had there not been another common interest of still greater importance to bind them together.

One day Heathcote came up from the "Tub" at a canter and caught his friend at the chapel door.

"d.i.c.k," he said, "it's all out! This bill was sticking on one of the posts by the pier. It was wet, so I took it off."