The Cock-House at Fellsgarth Part 11

"Choked him off," said Wally, fanning himself. "Jolly hard work. But he came round."

Percy, meanwhile, having suddenly remembered his errand, hastened back to the house. As he did so he observed notices of the fifteen for the Rendlesham match posted on Wakefield's door, on the school-board, and at Forder's. He solaced himself by writing in bold characters the word "beast" against each of the names which belonged to a Cla.s.sic boy, and discovered, when his task was done, that he had inscribed the word nine times out of fifteen on each notice. Whereupon he made off at a run to his senior's.

"Well," said Clapperton, evidently anxious, "didn't I tell you to come back at once! Any answer?"

"Yes, this," said Percy, producing the captain's letter. "I say, Yorke grinned like anything when he read yours."

"Did he?" replied Clapperton, opening the envelope.

Evidently Yorke in his reply had not been guilty of a joke, for the face of the Modern captain was dark and scowling as he read it.

"Cool cheek," muttered he. "Dangle was right, after all. You can go, youngster."

"All right. I say, they've got the fifteen stuck up on the boards--six of our chaps in it. We ought to lick them this year."

But as Clapperton did not do him the favour of heeding his observations, he retired, and tried vainly to collect his scattered forces to conclude the eight-handed boxing match, which had been so unfeelingly interrupted an hour ago.

Clapperton, to do him justice, could not deny to himself that the team selected by the captain was the best fighting fifteen the School could put into the football field. But, having advanced his claim for half numbers, his pride was hurt at finding it almost contemptuously set aside. It would never do for him to climb down now.

The Moderns, after all, had a right to have their men in; and he had a right to a.s.sume they were better players than some of the selected Cla.s.sics. It was easy to work himself into a rage, and talk about favouritism, and abuse of privilege, and all that. His popularity in his own house depended on his fighting their battles, and he must do it now. So he wrote a reply to Yorke.

"Dear Yorke,--I do not agree with you about the fifteen. I consider the men on our side whom you have omitted are better than the three I have marked on your list. If we are to make the clubs a success, we ought to pull together, and let there be no suspicion, however groundless, of favouritism.

"Yours truly, Geo. Clapperton."

To this letter, which he sent over by another junior, more expeditious than his last, he received the following reply:--

"Dear Clapperton,--Sides have nothing to do with it. If the best fifteen names were all on your side, I should have to select them. But they are not. The fifteen I have chosen are undoubtedly the best men we have, and the team most likely to win the match. I suppose that is what we play for.

"Yours truly,--

"Cecil Yorke."

This polite correspondence Clapperton laid before his friends. The general feeling was that the Moderns were being unfairly and disrespectfully used.

"It's the old story over again," said Dangle. "If we don't look after ourselves, n.o.body else will."

"At any rate, as long as he's captain, I suppose he has the right to pick the team," said Fullerton. "_I_ shouldn't be particularly sorry if he were to leave me out. It wouldn't matter to me."

"Who cares whether it matters to you? It matters to our side," said Brinkman, "and we oughtn't to stand it."

CHAPTER SIX.

ROLLITT.

Rollitt of Wakefield's was a standing mystery at Fellsgarth. Though he had been three years at the school, and worked his way up from the junior form to one of the first six, no one knew him. He had no friends, and did not want any. He rarely spoke when not obliged to do so; and when he did, he said either what was unexpected or disagreeable.

He scarcely ever played in the matches, but when he did he played tremendously. Although a Cla.s.sic, he was addicted to scientific research and long country walks. His study was a spectacle for untidiness and grime. He abjured his privilege of having a f.a.g. No one dared to take liberties with him, for he had an arm like an oak branch, and a back as broad as the door.

All sorts of queer stories were afloat about him. It was generally whispered that his father was a common workman, and that the son was being kept at school by charity. Any reference to his poverty was the one way of exciting Rollitt. But it was too risky an amus.e.m.e.nt to be popular.

His absence of mind, however, was his great enemy at school. Of him the story was current that once in the Fourth, when summoned to the front to call-over the register, he called his own name among the rest, and receiving no reply, looked to his place, and seeing the desk vacant, marked Rollitt down as absent. Another time, having gone to his room after morning school to change into his flannels for cricket, he had gone to bed by mistake, and slept soundly till call-bell next morning.

"Have you heard Rollitt's last?" came to be the common way of prefacing any unlikely story at Fellsgarth; and what with fact and fiction, the hero had come to be quite a mythical celebrity at Fellsgarth.

His thrift was another of his characteristics. He had never been seen to spend a penny, unless it was to save twopence. If fellows had dared, they would have liked now and then to pay his subscriptions to the clubs; or even hand on an old pair of cricket shoes or part of the contents of a hamper for his benefit. But woe betide them if they ever tried it! The only extravagance he had ever been known to commit was some months ago, when he bought a book of trout-flies, which rumour said must have cost him as much as an ordinary Cla.s.sic's pocket-money for a whole term.

To an impressionable youth like Fisher minor it was only natural that Rollitt should be an object of awe. For a day or two after his arrival, when the stories he had heard were fresh in his memory, the junior was wont to change his walk to a tip-toe as he pa.s.sed the queer boy's door.

If ever he met him face to face, he started and quaked like one who has encountered a ghost or a burglar. After a week this excess of deference toned down. Finding that Rollitt neither hurt nor heeded him, he abandoned his fears, and, instead of running away, stood and stared at his man, as if by keeping his eye hard on him he could discover his mystery.

It was two or three days after Elections that Fisher minor, having discovered by the absence of everybody from their ordinary haunts that it was a half-holiday, took it into his head to explore a little way down the Shargle Valley. He believed the other fellows had gone up; and he thought it a little unfriendly that they should have left him in the lurch.

He was not particularly fond of woods, unless there were nuts in them; or of rivers, unless there were stones on the banks to shy in. Still, it seemed to be half-holiday form at Fellsgarth to go down valleys, so he went, quite indifferent to the beauties of Nature, and equally indifferent as to where this walk brought him.

A mile below Fellsgarth, as everybody knows, the Shargle tumbles wildly into the Shayle, with a great fuss of rapids and cataracts and "narrows"

to celebrate the fact; and a mile further, the united streams flow tamely out among reeds and gravel islands into Hawkswater.

Fisher minor had nearly reached the junction, and was proceeding to speculate on the possibility of picking his way among the stones towards the lake, when he caught sight of a boat in the middle of the rapid stream. It was tied somewhat carelessly to the overhanging branch of a tree, which bent and creaked with every lurch of the boat in the pa.s.sing rapids. Standing in the stern as unconcerned as if he was on an island in a duck-pond, was Rollitt with his fishing-rod, casting diligently into the troubled waters.

For the first time the junior enjoyed an uninterrupted view of the object of his curiosity. He found it hard to recognise at first in the eager, sportsmanlike figure, with his animated face, the big shambling fellow whom he had so often eyed askance in the pa.s.sages at Wakefield's.

But there was no mistaking the shabby clothes, the powerful arms, the broad, square back. Rollitt the sportsman was another creature from Rollitt the Cla.s.sic, and Fisher minor was critic enough to see that the advantage was with the former.

There was no chance of being detected. Rollitt was far too busy to heed anything but the six-pounder that struggled and plunged and tore away with his line to the end of the reel. Had all Fellsgarth stood congregated on the banks, he would never have noticed them.

Ah! he was beginning to wind in now, gingerly and artfully, and the fish, sulking desperately among the stones, was beginning to find his master. It was a keen battle between those two. Now the captive would dive behind a rock and force the line out a yard or two; now the captor would coax it on from one hiding-place to the next, and by a cunning flank movement cut off its retreat. Then, yielding little by little, the fish would feign surrender, till just as it seemed within reach, tw.a.n.g would go the line and the rod bend almost double beneath the sudden plunge. Then the patient work would begin again. The man's temper was more than a match for that of the victim, and, exhausted and despondent, the fish would, sooner or later, have to submit to the inexorable.

How long it might have gone on Fisher could never tell; for once, when victory seemed on the point of declaring for the angler, and the shining fins of the fish floundered despairingly almost within his reach, a downward dash nearly wrenched the rod from his hands and sent him sprawling on to the thwarts. The sudden lurch of the boat was too much for the ill-tied rope, and to Fisher's horror the noose gave way and sent boat and fisherman spinning down the rapids at five miles an hour.

Rollitt either did not notice the accident or was too engrossed to heed it. He still had his fish, though as far off as before, and once more the tedious task of coaxing him out of his tantrums was to begin over again. It was useless to shout. The roar of the water among the stones above and over the rocks below was deafening, and Fisher's piping voice could never make itself heard above it. He tried to throw a stone, but its little splash was lost in the hurly-burly of the rapids. It was hopeless to expect that Rollitt would see him. He had no eyes but for his rod.

The last glimpse Fisher minor caught of him as the boat, side-on, swirled round the turn towards the falls below, he was standing on the seat, craning his neck for a glimpse of his prize, and winding in gingerly on the reel as he did so. Then he disappeared.

With a groan of panic the small boy started to follow. The boulders were big and rough, and it was hard work to go at ordinary rate, still more to run. Happily, however, after a few steps he stumbled upon a path which, though it seemed to lead from the river, would take him, he calculated, back to it above the falls at the end of the bend in which the boat was. It was a tolerable path, and Fisher minor never got over ground so fast before or after. A few seconds brought him out of the wood on to the river-bank, where the stream, deepening and hushing, gathers itself for its great leap over the falls.

Had the boat already pa.s.sed, and was he too late! No; there it came, sidling along on the swift waters, the angler still at his post, leaning over with his landing-net, within reach at last of his hard-earned prize. What could Fisher minor do! The stream was fairly narrow, and the boat, sweeping round the bend, was, if anything, nearer the other side, where the banks were high. His one chance was to attract the anglers attention. Had that angler been any one but Rollitt, it might have been easy.

Arming himself with a handful of stones, Fisher minor waited till the boat came within a few yards. Then with a great shout he flung with all his might at the boat.

The sudden fusillade might have been unheeded, had not one stone struck the angler's hand just as he was manoeuvring his landing-net under the fish. In the sudden start he missed his aim and looked up.

"Look out!" screamed Fisher. "You're adrift! Catch the branch!"

And he pointed wildly to the branch of an ash which straggled out over the water just above the fall.

Rollitt took in the situation at last. He cast a regretful glance at the fish as it gave its last victorious leap and vanished. Then, standing on the gunwale and measuring his distance from the tree, he jumped. For a moment Fisher minor thought he had missed; for the branch yielded and went under with his weight. But in a moment, just as the boat with a swoop plunged over the fall, he rose, clutching securely and hauling himself inch by inch out of the torrent. To Fisher, who watched breathlessly, it seemed as if every moment the branch would snap and send the senior back to his fate. But it held out bravely and supported him as he gradually drew himself up and finally perched high and dry above the water.

Fisher minor's difficulties now began. Having seen his man safe he would have liked to run away; for he was not at all sure how Rollitt would take it. Besides, he wouldn't much care to be seen by fellows like Wally or D'Arcy walking back in his company to Fellsgarth. On the other hand, it seemed rather low to desert a fellow just when he was half-drowned and might be hurt. What had he better do? Rollitt decided for him.

He came along the bough to where the boy stood, and dropped to the ground in front of him.