Captain Jinks, Hero | Page 5

He put the toy carefully back in his breast pocket. It had
become the talisman of his life and the symbol of his ambitions.
The long railway journey to East Point was full of interest to the young
traveler, who had never been away from home before. His mind was
full of military things, but he saw no uniforms, no arms, no
fortifications anywhere. How could people live in such a careless,
unnatural fashion? He blushed with shame as he thought to himself that
a foreigner might apparently journey through the country from one end
to the other without knowing that there was such a thing as a soldier in
the land. What a travesty this was on civilization! How baseless the
proud boasts of national greatness when only an insignificant and
almost invisible few paid any attention to the claims of military glory!
The outlook was indeed dismal, but Sam was no pessimist. Obstacles
were in his dictionary "things to be removed." "I shall have a hand in
changing all this," he muttered aloud. "When I come home a
conquering general with the grateful country at my feet, these wretched
toilers in the field and at the desk will have learned that there is a
nobler activity, and uniforms will spring up like flowers before the
sun." Where Sam acquired his command of the English language and
his poetic sensibility it would be difficult to say. It is enough to know
that these faculties endeavored, not without success, to keep pace with
his growing ambition for glory.
Sam's first weeks at East Point were among the happiest in his life.
Here, at any rate, military affairs were in the ascendant. His ideal of a
country was simply an East Point infinitely enlarged. His neat gray

uniform seemed already to transform him into a hero. When he thought
of the great soldiers who had been educated at this very place, he felt a
proud spirit swelling in his bosom. One night in a lonely part of the
parade-ground he solemnly knelt down and kissed the sod. The military
cemetery aroused his enthusiasm, and the captured cannon, the names
of battles inscribed here and there on the rocks, and the portraits of
generals in the mess-hall, all in turn fascinated him. As a new arrival he
was treated with scant courtesy and drilled very hard, but he did not
care. Tho his squad-fellows were almost overcome with fatigue, he was
always sorry when the drill came to an end. He never had enough of
marching and counter-marching, of shouldering and ordering arms.
Even the "setting-up" exercises filled him with joy. When cavalry drills
began he was still more in his element. His old teamster days now
stood him in good stead. In a week he could do anything with a
horse,--he understood the horse, and the horse trusted him. When he
first emerged from the riding-school on horseback in a squadron and
took part in a drill on the great parade-ground, he was prouder than
ever before. He went through it in a delirium, feeling like a composite
photograph of Washington and Napoleon. When the big flag went up in
the morning to the top of the towering flag-staff, Sam's spirits went up
with it, and they floated there, vibrating, hovering, all day; but when
the flag came down at night, Sam did not come down. He was always
up, living an ecstatic dream-life in the seventh heaven.
One night as Sam lay in his tent dreaming that he had just won the
battle of Waterloo, he heard a voice close to his ears.
"Jinks!"
"Yes, sir."
"Here is an order for you to report at once up in the woods at old Fort
Hut. The password is 'Old Gory'; say that, and the sentinel will let you
out of camp. Go along and report to the colonel at once."
"What is it?" cried Sam. "Is it an attack?"
"Very likely," said the voice. "Now wake up your snoring friend there,

for he's got to go too. What's his name?"
"Cleary," answered Sam, and he proceeded gently to awaken his
tent-mate and break the news to him that the enemy was advancing. It
was not easy to rouse the young man, but finally they both succeeded in
dressing in the dark, and hastened away between the tents across the
most remote sentry beat. They were duly challenged, whispered the
countersign, and in a few moments were climbing the rough and thickly
wooded hill to the fort.
"I wonder who the enemy is," said Sam.
"Enemy? Nonsense," replied Cleary. "They're going to haze us."
"Haze us? Good heavens!" said Sam. He had heard of hazing before,
but he had been living in such a realm of imagination for the past
weeks that the gossip