Snake and Sword Part 14

dared to apply it!....

The infamy of the Coward spread abroad, was talked of in other Houses, and fellows made special excursions to see the cry-baby, who funked a dead snake, a blooming bottled, potted, dead snake, and who had blubbed aloud in his terror.

And Bully Harberth of the Fifth, learning of these matters, revolved in his breast the thought that he who fears dead serpents must, even more, fear living bullies, put Dam upon his list as a safe and pliant client, and thereby (strange instrument of grace!) gave him the chance to rehabilitate himself, clear the cloud of infamy from about his head, and live a bearable life for the rest of his school career....

One wet Wednesday afternoon, as Dam, a wretched, forlorn Ishmael, sat alone in a noisy crowd, reading a "penny horrible" (admirable, stimulating books crammed with brave deeds and n.o.ble sentiments if not with faultless English) the Haddock entered the form-room, followed by Bully Harberth.

"That's him, Harberth, by the window, reading a penny blood," said the Haddock, and went and stood afar off to see the fun.

Harberth, a big clumsy boy, a little inclined to fat, with small eyes, heavy low forehead, thick lips, and amorphous nose, lurched over to where Dam endeavoured to read himself into a better and brighter world inhabited by Deadwood d.i.c.k, Texas Joe, and Red Indians of no manners and nasty customs.

"I want you, Funky Warren. I'm going to torture you," he announced with a truculent scowl and a suggestive licking of blubber lips.

Dam surveyed him coolly.

Of thick build, the bully was of thicker wit and certainly of no proven courage. Four years older than Dam and quite four inches taller, he had never dreamed of molesting him before. Innumerable as were the stories of his brutalities to the smallest "squeakers" and of his cruel practical jokes on new boys, there were no stories of his fighting, such as there were about Ormond Delorme, of Dam's form, whose habit it was to implore bigger boys of their courtesy to fight him, and to trail his coat where there were "chaws" about.

"I'm going to torture you, Funky. Every day you must come to me and _beg_ me to do it. If you don't come and pray for it I'll come to _you_ and you'll get it double and treble. If you sneak you'll get it quadru--er--quadrupedal--and also be known as Sneaky as well as Funky.

See?" he continued.

"How will you torture me, Harberth, please?" asked Dam meekly, as he measured the other with his eye, noted his puffiness, short reach, and inward tendency of knee.

"Oh! lots of ways," was the reply. "Dry shaves, tweaks, scalpers, twisters, choko, tappers, digs, benders, s.h.i.+nners, windos, all sorts."

"I don't even know what they are," moaned Dam.

"Poor Kid!" sympathized the bully, "you soon will, though. Dry shaves are beautiful. You die dotty in about five minutes if I don't see fit to stop. Twisters break your wrists and you yell the roof off--or would do if I didn't gag you first with a cake of soap and a towel.

Tappers are very amusing, too, for me that is--not for you. They are done on the side of your knee with a cricket stump. Wonderful how kids howl when you understand knee-treatment. Choko is good too. Makes you black in the face and your eyes goggle out awful funny. Done with a silk handkerchief and a stick. Windos and benders go together and really want two fellows to do it properly. I hit you in the wind and you double up, and the other fellow un-doubles you from behind--with a cane--so that I can double you up again. Laugh! I nearly died over young Berners. s.h.i.+nners, scalpers, and tweaks are good too--jolly good!... but of course all this comes after lamming and tunding....

Come along with me...."

"Nit," was Dam's firm but gentle reply, and a little pulse began to beat beneath his cheek bone.

"Oh! Ho!" smiled Master Harberth, "then I'll _begin_ here, and when you're broke and blubbing you'll come with me--and get just double for a start."

Dam's spirits rose and he felt almost happy--certainly far better than he had done since the hapless encounter with the bottled adder and his fall from grace. It was a positive, _joy_ to have an enemy he could tackle, a real flesh-and-blood foe and tormentor that came upon him in broad daylight and in mere human form.

After countless thousands of centuries of awful nightmare struggling--in which he was bound hand-and-foot and doomed to failure and torture from the outset, the sport, plaything, and victim of a fearful, intangible Horror--this would be sheer amus.e.m.e.nt and recreation. What could mere man do to _him_, much less mere boy! Why, the most awful torture-chamber of the Holy Inquisition of old was a pleasant recreation-room compared with _any_ place where the Snake could enter.

Oh, if the Snake could only be met and fought in the open with free hands and untrammelled limbs, as Bully Harberth could!

Oh, if it could only inflict mere physical pain instead of such agonies of terror as made the idea of any bodily injury--mere cutting, burning, beating, blinding--a trifling nothing-at-all. Anyhow, he could _imagine_ that Bully Harberth was the Snake or Its emissary and, since he was indirectly brought upon him by the Snake, regard him as a myrmidon--and deal with him accordingly....

"How do you like this?" inquired that young gentleman as he suddenly seized the seated and unsuspecting Dam by the head, crushed him down with his superior weight and dug cruelly into the sides of his neck, below the ears, with his powerful thumb and fingers. "It is called 'grippers'. You'll begin to enjoy it in a minute." ... In a few seconds the pain became acute and after a couple of minutes, excruciating.

Dam kept absolutely still and perfectly silent.

To Harberth this was disappointing and after a time he grew tired.

Releasing his impa.s.sive victim he arose preparatory to introducing the next item of his programme of tortures.

"How do you like _this_?" inquired Dam rising also--and he smote his tormentor with all his strength beneath the point of his chin. Rage, pain, rebellion, and undying hatred (of the Snake) lent such force to the skilful blow--behind which was the weight and upward spring of his body--that Bully Harberth went down like a nine-pin, his big head striking the sharp edge of a desk with great violence.

He lay still and white with closed eyes. "Golly," shrilled the Haddock, "Funky Warren has murdered Bully Harberth. Hooray! Hooray!"

and he capered with joy.

A small crowd quickly collected, and, it being learned from credible eye-witnesses that the smaller boy had neither stabbed the bully in the back nor clubbed him from behind, but had well and truly smitten him on the jaw with his fist, he went at one bound from despised outcast coward to belauded, admired hero.

"You'll be hung, of course, Warren," said Delorme.

"And a jolly good job," replied Dam, fervently and sincerely.

As he spoke, Harberth twitched, moved his arms and legs, and opened his eyes.

Sitting up, he blinked owl-like and inquired as to what was up.

"You are down is what's up," replied Delorme.

"Oh--he's not dead," squeaked the Haddock, and there was a piteous break in his voice.

"What's up?" asked Harberth again.

"Why, Funky--that is to say, Warren--knocked you out, and you've got to give him best and ask for _pax_, or else fight him," said Delorme, adding hopefully, "but of course you'll fight him."

Harberth arose and walked to the nearest seat.

"He hit me a 'coward's poke' when I wasn't looking," quoth he. "It's well known he is a coward."

"You are a liar, Bully Harberth," observed Delorme. "He hit you fair, and anyhow he's not afraid of _you_. If you don't fight him you become Funky Harberth _vice_. Funky Warren--no longer Funky. So you'd better fight. See?" The Harberth bubble was evidently p.r.i.c.ked, for the sentiment was applauded to the echo.

"I don't fight cowards," mumbled Harberth, holding his jaw--and, at this meanness, Dam was moved to go up to Harberth and slap him right hard upon his plump, inviting cheek, a good resounding blow that made his hand tingle with pain and his heart with pleasure.

He still identified him somehow with the Snake, and had a glorious, if pa.s.sing, sensation of successful revolt and some revenge.

He felt as the lashed galley-slave must have felt when, during a lower-deck mutiny, he broke from his oar and sprang at the throat of the cruel overseer, the embodiment and source of the agony, starvation, toil, brutality, and hopeless woe that had thrust him below the level of the beasts (fortunate beasts) that perish.

"Now you've _got_ to fight him, of course," said Delorme, and fled to spread the glad tidings far and wide.

"I--I--don't feel well now," mumbled Harberth. "I'll fight him when I'm better," and shambled away, outraged, puzzled, disgusted. What was the world coming to? The little brute! He had a punch like the kick of a horse. The little cad--to _dare_! Well, he'd show him something if he had the face to stand up to his betters and olders and biggers in the ring....

News of the affair spread like wild-fire, and the incredible conduct of the extraordinary Funky Warren--said to be no longer Funky--became the topic of the hour.

At tea, Dam was solemnly asked if it were true that he had cast Harberth from a lofty window and brought him to death's door, or that of the hospital; whether he had strangled him with the result that he had a permanent squint; if he had so kicked him as to break both his thigh bones; if he had offered to fight him with one hand.

Even certain more or less grave and reverend seniors of the upper school took a well-disguised interest in the matter and pretended that the affair should be allowed to go on, as it would do Harberth a lot of good if de Warrenne could lick him, and do the latter a lot of good to reinstate himself by showing that he was not really a coward in essentials. Of course they took no interest in the fight as a fight.

Certainly not (but it was observed that Flaherty of the Sixth stopped the fight most angrily and peremptorily when it was over, and that no sign of anger or peremptoriness escaped him until it was over--and he happened to pa.s.s behind the gymnasium, curiously enough, just as it started)....

Good advice was showered upon Dam from all sides. He was counselled to live on meat, to be a vegetarian, to rise at 4 a.m. and swim, to avoid all brain-f.a.g, to run twenty miles a day, to rest until the fight, to get up in the night and swing heavy dumb-bells, to eat no pudding, to drink no tea, to give up sugar, avoid ices, and deny himself all "tuck" and everything else that makes life worth living.

He did none of these things--but simply went on as usual, save in one respect.