CHAPTER VII.A SURPRISE.
There were two passenger trains that passed through Bridgeport every afternoon going toward Hamilton, one being the regular mail, which was due at five o’clock, and returning, left the city at four in the morning. This was the train the graduating class intended to take, the committee having chartered two extra cars to accommodate the members. The other was the lightning express, which passed through the village at one o’clock, and returned at four in the morning. This was the train on which they were to come back. We mention these facts to assist us in explaining some unexpected and astounding incidents which happened in connection with this particular dinner.
The boys in the first class were impatient, as live boys always are when they are waiting forsomething, and after they had got into their best uniforms, they hardly knew what to do with themselves. Some of the very uneasy ones strolled about the buildings and grounds in companies of twos and threes, while others, and these were the fellows who had the most self-control, read away the time in the library. Here and there, as far away from his companions as he could get, might have been seen a student who was walking about with rather an abstracted air, now and then giving his hand a flourish, and all unconscious of the fact that every one of his movements was observed and commented upon by interested spectators, who would be sure to laugh at him afterward. These were the boys who were expected to propose and reply to some of the toasts of the evening.
The hours dragged their weary length away, and at last a sergeant appeared upon the steps and roared out the command for the first company to fall in. Almost before he opened his lips there was a rush made for the armory, and when Captain Walker led his company into it, with Colonel Mack marching in the ranks like any private, he found all the students assembled to see him off—thatis, all those about the building who were not on duty. Eighty or more boys were out on leaves of absence for the day.
There were no pale and anxious faces among the young soldiers now as there were the last time a company was marched out of that same armory to go to Hamilton; for these boys were not armed, and neither were they going to the city to encounter an infuriated mob who would welcome them with a shower of coupling-pins and brickbats. They were going to—well, they expected a very different sort of reception. They got it, too, but after all it was not just such a one as they had confidently looked for.
Everything being in readiness, the company moved out of the armory, and, led by the band, took up its line of march for the depot, the four dignified professors, who were to represent the faculty at the coming banquet, riding sedately at a respectful distance in a close carriage. When the ponderous iron gates closed behind the company, Don Gordon, for the first time, found himself in command of the academy battalion. Before twenty-four hours more had passed over his head, he declared, with much gesticulation and manyexpletives, that if he had possessed the full powers of a military commander he would have court-martialed and hanged a score or more of fellows, who that night performed an exploit that astonished everybody. It did more; it struck everybody motionless and speechless with amazement, and, what was rather singular, the particulars of it had the same effect upon all who heard them. The listener first looked and acted as if he could not believe the evidence of his senses, and then threw back his head and gave expression to his feelings in a hearty peal of merriment. Even Don Gordon, angry as he was, rolled on his bed and laughed until his sides ached and his eyes were filled with tears.
The students enjoyed their ride to Hamilton, and made noise enough for so many veteran soldiers. When the train approached the city limits they quieted down, drew on their white gloves, picked up their valises, and held themselves in readiness to disembark as soon as they received the word of command.
“Dayton,” said Captain Walker to his first lieutenant, “you get the boys out of the cars, and I will go with Mack and the president to hunt upBlake and see where the music is. As soon as I find it, I will come back to you.”
“It seems to me that it would have been the right thing for that band to pipe up as soon as our train came within sight of the depot,” observed Dayton. “We pay them for blowing for us, and we want to get all the music we can out of them. They ought to give us our money’s worth; doesn’t it strike you that way?”
Captain Walker said it did, adding that he thought there was something strange about it. Colonel Mack and the anxious president thought and said the same. Looking out at the car windows as the train moved slowly into the depot, they could see that there were many people moving about, but there was not a cadet gray or a union blue overcoat in sight; and the big building, which ought to have been resounding to the enlivening strains of martial music, echoed only to the murmur of voices and the tread of hurrying feet.
“I don’t understand this matter at all,” exclaimed the president, as he and his two companions sprang from the car and looked around for the faithful and energetic chairman of the committee of arrangements.
“There’s something wrong,” observed Mack, who had a way of looking disagreeable things in the face.
“For goodness sake, don’t say that,” replied Captain Walker, whose countenance had assumed a very serious expression during the last few minutes.
“Well, then, where is Blake?” demanded Mack. “You never knew him to slip up like this before, did you? It is true that committees and bands of music have been behind time before to-day, but somehow——”
Mack did not finish the sentence, but what he didn’t say was much more expressive than what hedidsay. With one accord the three boys hurried toward the waiting-room. The first familiar face they saw as they entered it was that of one of the “nobby” staff officers of the Sixty-first—one of the hundred and fifty who had returned a favorable reply to their invitation. The boys thought it high time he was in uniform if he intended to help them eat their dinner, but here he was in citizen’s clothes! And the papers and blank-books he carried in his hand seemed to indicate that he was attending to business. When hesaw Mack and his companions approaching, he stopped and looked at them in the greatest astonishment.
“How does this come, colonel?” said he, as he took Mack’s outstretched hand, and shook it cordially. “You’re left, as sure as the world.”
“Left!” repeated Mack. “I don’t know what you mean?”
“Why, I mean that you won’t eat any class dinner to-night,” answered the staff-officer, glancing at his watch. “It is set for seven o’clock, and here it is half-past six already.”
“You mean that it was set for eight o’clock,” the president ventured to suggest, while a very dim conception of the situation began to creep into Mack’s mind.
“No, seven,” insisted the officer, “and that’s the reason I couldn’t attend as I had hoped to do. Your committee didn’t notify me of the change in the time until it was too late for me to make arrangements.”
An expression of the greatest consternation overspread the faces of Mack’s two companions. The latter shut his teeth hard, and spoke with a calmness that surprised himself.
“What kind of a looking crowd was it who notified you of a change in our programme?” he asked.
“Oh, it was a good-looking committee—sharp, bright fellows; and I think, on the whole, that they would compare very favorably with the cadets I see before me,” answered the officer, with a smile. “They got the dinner to the transfer-depot all right, and made a very pretty appearance as they marched through the city, led by our favorite cornet band. But how in the world are you boys going to get to Bordentown? There’s no train before midnight, and the fastest horse in Hamilton could not take you over there in time to—Why, colonel, what’s the trouble?” exclaimed the officer; for Mack had darted away at the top of his speed toward the telegraph office. “I declare I believe it’s a beat.”
“You may well say that,” replied Captain Walker, as he and the president ran after Mack. “If the Sixty-first is sent for to-morrow to quell a riot at the academy you need not be at all surprised.”
“I want to send off a dispatch,” shouted Colonel Mack, as he rushed into the telegraph office,and stamped up and down the floor, swinging his fists in the air. “Hurry up. I’ll write it out afterward.”
The boy, who happened to be in charge of the office, no doubt thought that the intruder had gone crazy all on a sudden; but he sat down to his desk without making any comments, and told the excited young colonel to go ahead.
“J. H. Taylor, Bordentown,” shrieked the telegraph, following Mack’s hurried and rather incoherent dictation. “Stop that dinner; it is a fraud. Choke off those boys. Kick them out of doors. The whole thing is an outrageous swindle.”
While Mack was wondering what earthly good it would do him and the rest of the boys if these instructions were obeyed, he dictated another dispatch to his friend Don Gordon, which ran as follows:
“That villain Lester Brigham has got the weather-gauge of us. He and his crowd have stolen our dinner and carried it off to Bordentown with the intention of eating it themselves.”
By this time Mack had so far recovered from his rage and excitement that he could write outand pay for these two dispatches, after which he went down stairs to see what the class thought about it. The members had broken ranks and were gathered in a body around their captain and president, who had just brought them the news. If we were to say that they were amazed and angry, we should not begin to tell how they felt. As they could not say anything that would do the subject justice, the most of them kept still; but they clenched their fists and nodded their heads at one another, and if Lester and his crowd had been within reach at that moment, it is doubtful if their officers could have restrained them.
“I would give up my chances for graduating at the end of the term, if I could have just one minute’s private interview with Lester Brigham,” said one of the students, who was walking about wringing his hands as if he were in great bodily distress. “I don’t think his mother would know him when I got through with him.”
“I wish there was some way for us to get to Bordentown,” exclaimed another. “Wouldn’t we drive those fellows away from that table and out of the windows in short order? Great Scott!Just think how many of our friends have traveled hundreds of miles at our invitation, only to be disappointed!”
These words drove even the cool-headed ones among the students almost frantic. There was no loud talking, no riotous demonstration, and a stranger might have passed close by them without knowing, from their words and actions, that there was anything the matter with them. The military discipline to which they had so long been subjected, restrained them in some measure; and besides, as much as they wanted to fight, they could see nothing to oppose them. If Lester and his company of adherents had entered the depot at that moment, it is probable that the sight would have had a very demoralizing effect upon them. Just then one of their number, who had been holding an earnest conversation with one of the railroad men, came hurrying up.
“I say, fellows,” he exclaimed, “if Lester and his party leave Bordentown at all during the next twelve hours, they will have to take the three o’clock train, which will bring them in here in time for the lightning express.”
“Good!” cried all the boys, in a breath.That was all they said, but it was plain that they understood one another. Their captain, who happened to overhear these remarks, understood them also, and he at once hurried away to lay the matter before his superior officer.
“Look here, Mack,” said he, in a suppressed whisper. “There will be the very mischief to pay if we don’t get out of here before four o’clock. The boys expect Lester and his party to return from Bordentown at that hour, and they have made up their minds to give them a good pounding.”
“That would never do—never in the world,” replied Mack, in a tone of anxiety. “Such a high-handed proceeding on the part of the members of our class would be an everlasting disgrace to them, as well as to the school. We’ll nip that little arrangement in the bud. It will make the boys mad at us at first, but they will thank us for it after they have had time to cool off a little. I, for one, am not half as angry as I was a few minutes ago, and, now that I think of it, it was a pretty sharp trick on Lester’s part, and we have all seen the time when we would have done the same thing, if we had been bright enough to thinkof it. I’ll warrant that Don Gordon is laughing fit to split, and that he feels like punching his own head because he did not propose something of the kind when he was running with Tom Fisher and that crowd. But we can’t have a free fight here in the depot, and we won’t, either. Now, Walker, you stay here, and don’t allow a single boy out of your sight until we come back. The president and I are going up to the hotel to talk to the superintendent about it, and while we are gone, you must be very careful what you say in the hearing of the boys. Some of them are too highly exasperated to be reasonable, and if they should find out that they are not to be allowed the privilege of fighting Lester and his men, they would slip out into the city and lie in wait for them. If they begin to act in a way to arouse your suspicions, order the last one of them into our two cars, and keep them there until we return.”
“Very good, sir,” replied Captain Walker, raising his hand to his cap. “But between you and me,” he added, in a lower tone, “I really wish our boys could interview Lester and his party before we go back to the Academy.”
“It is about the neatest trick I ever heard of,” said Colonel Mack, as he and the president hurried away to pour their sorrows into the sympathizing ear of the superintendent, and to tell him of the plot the first-class boys had entered into to take summary vengeance upon the despoilers of their feast when they came in on the Bordentown train. “Those fellows must be as well posted in our plans as we are.”
“Of course they are,” was the reply. “Otherwise they could not have sent me that telegram which purported to come from Blake, and which assured me that everything was ‘O. K.’”
“That’s so; where in the world is Blake now?” exclaimed Mack; and apparently forgetting that Blake was the very boy they had been wishing for ever since the train came into the depot, he and the president stopped in their hurried walk and looked all around in search of him. “Say,” added Mack, a moment later, “I have my own ideas regarding the manner in which this trick was sprung upon us——”
“So have I,” interrupted the president.
“And I want you to remember what I say,” continued Mack. “When we get to the bottomof this day’s work, you will hear some things that will make you open your eyes. What do you see to interest you so much?”
Receiving no reply from his companion, who, having come to a sudden halt, was shading his eyes with his hand and gazing intently at some object he saw in the distance, Mack also stopped, and looked in the same direction. Before him was the river, along whose banks ran Hamilton’s principal business street. Near the head of it was the hotel toward which they were hastening, and a short distance farther on stood the transfer-depot. All the passengers who came in on the main road, and who were bound for Bordentown or points farther north, were conveyed from one depot to the other by an omnibus line, while the luggage and freight were taken over on drays.
Directly in front of the transfer-depot was the bridge that crossed the river, and beyond it, for three miles at least, the track was almost as straight as an arrow. The boys could plainly see every rod of it from where they stood. As Mack looked up he saw, coming into view around the first bend in the road, a locomotive which seemed to be moving with terrific speed. Mack didn’tsee anything surprising in that, not even after he had taken a second look, and discovered that the engine was drawing a couple of flat cars that were heavily loaded with something; and it did not take him long to tell his companion so.
“I know that a wild-cat train is not an unusual sight,” exclaimed the latter, “but something tells me that we are interested in the one we see before us. Just as you spoke, I saw a momentary flash in the engineer’s cab, and I’ll bet it was the reflection from a breast-buckle.”
“Reflection of what?” demanded Mack.
“Why, light, of course.”
“That’s a good one. Why, man alive, if there was a breast-buckle in the cab, where is the light for it to reflect? The sun was hidden by those clouds an hour ago.”
“I don’t care if it was,” said the president, decidedly. “Isn’t the cab lighted up when the fireman opens the door to replenish the furnace? There! What do you say to that?”
Mack was so bewildered that he did not know what to say regarding some of the extraordinary things that happened during the next few seconds. First, the engineer whistled for the bridge, andthen for the station, but he did not “slow down,” as he would have done under ordinary circumstances. He kept on at full speed, and this seemed to indicate that he was in a hurry. As the train drew nearer, the dense mass on the forward flat began to assume forms and shapes, and then Mack saw that it was composed of many different bodies, and that they were all in motion. Very soon these different bodies began to assume color as well as form, some showing blue and the others gray. Before Mack could give utterance to the words of astonishment that rose to his lips, he heard the warning notes of a bugle, such as the leader of a band gives when he desires to call the attention of his men, and an instant afterward the cheering strains of a triumphal march came floating across the river. If ever a band tried to talk, this one did. Its music gave the listening boys a very fair idea of the situation, and, as they afterwards declared, there was a whole column of good news in every note that came from its instruments.
Mack and his companion looked wonderingly at each other for a moment, and then they looked at the train again. Two objects, which bore someresemblance to huge umbrellas, had been raised from the middle of the crowd on the forward flat, and were now slowly unrolling themselves. The first that was given to the breeze was the Star Spangled Banner, and the one that floated alongside of it was the white silk flag that bore the monogram of the Bridgeport Military Academy.
“What do you say now?” repeated the president, as soon as he could speak. “Blake and the other two members of the committee have stolen a march on Lester as sure as the world.”
Mack thought so too, but he had never dreamed of such good luck, and he wanted somebody to confirm him in his opinion.
“Do you really believe that they have brought our dinner back to us?” he asked.
“I know it,” was the emphatic response.
“And can we serve it up to our guests, and have everything go off just as we planned it?” continued Mack.
“Of course—that’s the very idea,” said the president, encouragingly.
“But how in the name of all that’s wonderful could Blake, with only two men at his back, get the better of Lester and Enoch and such a crowdas they had with them?” inquired Mack, who, although he firmly believed that Blake had done that very thing, could not, for the life of him, imaginehowhe had done it. “There must have been at least thirty or forty fellows in Lester’s party, and I shouldn’t think they would permit themselves to be balked at the very last minute. Having got safely off with the dinner, why didn’t they hold fast to it?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” answered the president. “But that is our dinner on the rear flat, covered up with a tarpaulin, and I am positive of it. Now, what shall we do?”
“Let’s first make sure that we are right in our suppositions, and then we will go to work and carry out our programme,” replied Mack. “It really looks to me as though things were working in our favor, in spite of all Lester’s efforts to prevent it; but if we should be disappointed after all—”
The president hastened to assure his companion that they were not going to be disappointed, and, in order to satisfy himself on that point at the earliest possible moment, he set out for the depot at the top of his speed, Mack following close at his heels. The train had by this time crossed thebridge, and as it disappeared through one of the huge doorways, a shout arose from the inside of the building—a shout so loud that it effectually drowned the music of the band. The boys were greatly astonished at this, but they were so impatient to find some one who could explain everything to them, that they did not stop to ask each other any questions. They kept on with increased speed, and when they dashed into the depot, they found that the noisy greeting they had heard came from a company of railroad men, assisted by a crowd of professional hangers-on—men and boys who always run to the station whenever they hear the whistle of an approaching train.
The Race for the Class Dinner.
The Race for the Class Dinner.
The Race for the Class Dinner.
The most of these men and boys had seen Lester and his company when they marched through the city that morning, led by the band, and, at the time, they thought that everything was just as it should be—that Lester and the rest were first-class boys, as they pretended to be, and that they had a right to the good things which Mr. Taylor had so carefully prepared, and which were following behind them, loaded on drays; and it was not until the afternoon train came in, bringing Captain Walker and his men, that the citizens of Hamilton learned how neatly the members of the graduating class had been outwitted. Some of them laughed, and said that it served the young upstarts just right (the boys in the first classdidthrow on a good deal of style, as a general thing), while others could not have been more exasperated if they had been personally interested in the matter. They knew, too, of the steps that Blake had taken to turn the tables on those who had made off with the dinner (we shall tell all about it presently), and when the triumphant strains of the band told them that the quick-witted fellow had been successful in his endeavors, they could not resist the impulse to cheer him. Blake was the first boy who sprang out of the engineer’s cab to greet Mack and his companion.
“Oh, fellows,” he exclaimed, as he extended a hand to each of them. “Would you believe——”
“We know all about it, and are ready to believe almost anything,” interrupted Mack. “But how did you get the dinner back? That’s what we should like to have you explain.”
“Can’t stop to do it now—story’s too long,” answered Blake, hurriedly, at the same time pulling out his watch. “But this much I can say to you:We’ve not a single instant to lose, but if we work fast and don’t get in one another’s way, we can make the dinner go off as if nothing bad happened.”
“Blake, you deserve a commission,” exclaimed the president.
“That’s what I think,” was the modest reply. “By the way, where is the company?”
“Down to the other depot.”
“All mad, I suppose?”
“That’s not the word to use; they are more than mad. I hope you have not brought Lester or any of his crowd back with you.”
“Not by a long shot,” answered Blake, with a laugh. “We did not want to see them whipped. Now, you two get an omnibus, put the band into it and go down and march up the company. Leave the rest to me. The hall will be ready by the time you get there.”
Blake had given abundant proof that he was equal to any emergency, and consequently Mack and his companion did not linger to offer advice or assistance. They found an omnibus and an express wagon, and as soon as the band had been crowded into them, the vehicles were driven at full speed toward the lower depot.