Captain Jinks, Hero | Page 6

had never really reached his consciousness, and
now that he was confronted with the reality he hardly knew how to face
it.
"Yes," said Cleary, "they're going to haze us, and I wonder why I ever
came to this rotten place anyhow."
"Don't, don't say that," cried Sam. "You were at Hale University for a
year or two, weren't you? Did they do any hazing there?"
"Not a bit. They stopped it all long ago. The professors there say it isn't
manly."
"That can't be true," said Sam, "or they wouldn't do it here. But why
has it kept up here when they've stopped it at all the universities?"
"I don't know," said Cleary, "but perhaps it's wearing uniforms. I feel
sort of different in a uniform from out of it, don't you?"
"Of course I do," exclaimed Sam. "I feel as if I were walking on air and
rising into another plane of being."
"Well--ye-es--perhaps, but I didn't mean that exactly," answered Cleary.

"But somehow I feel more like hitting a fellow over the head when I'm
in uniform than when I'm not, don't you?"
"I hadn't thought of that," said Sam, "but I really think I do. Do you
think they'll hit us over the head?"
"There's no telling. There's Captain Clark of the first class and
Saunders of the third who are running the hazing just now, they say,
and they're pretty tough chaps."
"Is that Captain Clark with the squeaky voice?" asked Sam.
"Yes, he spoiled it taking tabasco sauce when he was hazed three years
ago. They say it took all the mucous membrane off his epiglottis."
There was silence for a time.
"Saunders is that fellow with the crooked nose, isn't he?" asked Sam.
"Yes; when they hazed him last year they made him stand with his nose
in the crack of a door until they came back, and they forgot they had
left him, and somebody shut the door on his nose by mistake. But he's
an awfully plucky chap. He just went on standing there as if nothing
had happened."
"Splendid, wasn't it?" cried Sam, beginning to see the heroic
possibilities of hazing. "Do you suppose that they have always hazed
here?"
"Yes, of course."
"And that General German and General Meriden and all the rest were
hazed here just like this?"
"Yes, to be sure."
Sam felt his spirits soaring again.
"Then I wouldn't miss it for anything," said he. "It has always been

done and by the greatest men, and it must be the right thing to do. Just
think of it. Meriden has walked up this very hill like you and me to be
hazed!" There was exultation in his tone.
"Well, I only hope Meriden looked forward to it with greater joy than I
do," said Cleary, with a dry laugh. "But here we are."
Before them under the ruined walls of the old redoubt called Fort Hut,
stood a small group of cadets, indistinctly lighted by several moving
dark-lanterns. While they were still twenty yards away, two men sprang
out from behind a tree, grasped them by the arms, tied their elbows
behind them, and, leading them off through the woods for a short
distance, bound them to a tree out of sight of the rest, and left them
there with strict injunctions not to move. It never entered into the head
of either of the prisoners that they might disobey this order, and they
waited patiently for events to take their course. As far as they could
make out by listening, some others of their classmates were already
undergoing the ordeal of hazing. They could hear water splashing,
suppressed screams and groans, and continual whispering. The light of
the lanterns flickered through the trees, now and then illuminating the
topmost branches. Presently a man came and sat down near them, and
said:
"Don't get impatient. We're nearly ready for you." It was the voice of
one of their two captors.
"May I ask you a question, sir?" said Sam.
"Blaze away," responded the man.
"Was General Gramp hazed at this same place, do you know?"
"Yes," said the man. "In this very same place. And while he was
waiting he sat on that very log over there."
Sam peered with awe into the darkness.
"May I--do you think I might--just sit on it, too?" asked Sam.

"Certainly," said the cadet affably, untying the rope from the tree and
leading Sam over to the log, where he tied him again.
Sam sat down reverently.
"How well preserved the log is," said Sam.
"Yes," said the guard; "of course they wouldn't let it decay. It's a sort of
historical monument. They overhaul it every year. Anyway it's
ironwood."
Sam thought to himself that perhaps some day the log might be noted