The Dozen from Lakerim Part 11

"What bell is that?" Reddy had asked Heady, and Heady had asked Reddy, at the same instant.

"It's that all-fired fire-bell!" both exclaimed, each answering the other's question and his own.

"Jee-minetly! but this is a pretty time for that old thing to break out!" wailed Reddy.

"It ought to be ashamed of itself," moaned Heady.

"It's too bad," said Reddy; "but a fireman mustn't mind the wind or the weather."

"That's so," sighed Heady, "but I'm sorry for you."

"What!" cried Reddy, "you're sorry for _me_! What's the matter with yourself?"

"Why, I couldn't possibly think of going out such a night as this,"

explained Heady; "you know I haven't been at all well for the last few days."

"Oh, haven't you!" complained Reddy. "Well, you're twice as well as I am, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself to shirk your duty this way."

"Duty! Humph! There's nothing the matter with you! It would be criminal for me, though, to go out a night like this, feeling as I do.

Mother would never forgive me. But you had better hurry, or you'll be late," urged Heady.

"Hurry nothing!" said Reddy. "I'm surprised, though, to see you trying to pretend that you're sick, and trying to send me out on a terrible night like this when you _know_ I'm really sick."

Then the quarrel waxed fiercer and fiercer, until they quit using words and began to apply hands and feet. It was not many minutes before each had kicked the other out of bed, and each had carried half of the bedclothing with him.

Neither of them remained any longer than was necessary on the cold floor, but each grabbed up his half of the bedding, and rolled himself up in it, and lay down with great dignity as far away from the other as he could get, even though he hung far over the edge.

But the covers had been none too warm all together, and now, divided into half, the Twins were soon shivering in misery. They stood it as long as they could, and then, as if by a silent agreement, they decided to declare a peace, and each remarked:

"I guess we're both too sick to go out such a night as this." And they were soon asleep again.

When Punk heard the fire-bell, his heart grew bitter at the thought of the still bitterer night. He did not think it proper for one of his conservative nature to violate all the rules of health and self-respect by going out in such rowdy weather.

He peeked over the edge of his coverlet, and saw that his stove was still glowing, and that his own room was not on fire.

Then he reached out one quick arm and pulled his slippers into bed with him, and when they were warm enough put them on his feet, wrapped himself up well, and, running to the window, raised it quickly, thrust his head out, and looked up and down the campus. This quick glance satisfied him of two things: first, that none of the beloved Academy buildings were on fire; and second, that he was never much interested in the old village, anyway.

So he toddled back to his cozy bed.

B.J. was sleeping so soundly that the fire-bell could not wake him; it simply rang in his ears and mingled with his dreams. In the land of dreams he went to all sorts of fires, and saved thirty or forty lives, mainly of beautiful maidens in top stories of blazing palaces. His dreamland rescues were as heroic as any one could desire, but that was as near as he came to answering the call of the Kingston alarm.

As for Sleepy, it is doubtful if the bell would have awakened him if it had been suspended from his bed-post; but from where it was it never reached even to his dreams, if, indeed, even dreams could have wormed their way into his solid slumbers.

Tug's conscience, however, was giving him a sharper pain than he suffered at the thought of the night outside. At length he could stand the thought of being found wanting in his duty, no longer.

He flung himself out of bed and into his clothes, his teeth beating a tattoo, his knees fighting a boxing-match, and his hands all thumbs with the cold. Then he put on two pairs of trousers, three coats, and an overcoat, two caps, several m.u.f.flers, and a pair of heavy mittens over a pair of gloves, and flew down the stairs and dived out into the storm like a Russian taking a plunge-bath in an icy stream. Fairly plowing through the freezing winds, along the cinder paths he hurried, and down the clattering board walks of the village to the building of the fire department.

He met never a soul upon the arctic streets, and he found never a soul at the meeting-place of the all-faithful Volunteers. What amazed him most was that he found not even a man there to ring the bell. The rope, however, was flouncing about in the wind, and the bell itself was still thundering alarums over the town.

Tug's first thought at this discovery was--spooks! As is usual with people who do not believe in ghosts, they were the first things he thought of as an explanation of a mysterious performance.

His second thought was the right one. The hurricane had ripped off the boarding about the bell, and the wind itself was the bell-ringer.

With a sigh of the utmost tragedy, Tug turned back toward his room. He was colder now than ever, and by the time he reached the dormitory he was too nearly frozen to stop and upbraid Punk and the other derelicts who had proved false at a crisis that also proved false.

The next morning, however, he gathered them all in his room and read them a severe lecture. They had been a disgrace to the Lakerim ideal, he insisted, and they had only luck, and not themselves, to credit for the fact that they were not made the laughing-stock of the town and the Academy.

And that day the half-dozen sent in its resignation from the volunteer fire department of the village of Kingston.

XVII

It was not long after this that the Christmas vacation hove in sight, and the Dozen forgot the blot upon its escutcheon in the thought of the delight that awaited it in renewing acquaintance with its mothers and other best girls at Lakerim, not to mention the cronies in the club-house. Each had his plans for making fourteen red-letter days out of the two weeks they were to spend at home. Peaceful thoughts filled the hearts of most of them, but B.J. dreamed chiefly of the furious conflicts that awaited him on the lake, which had been the scene of many an adventure in his mettlesome ice-boat.

The last days crawled painfully by for all of them, and the Dozen grew more and more meek as they became more and more homesick for their mothers. They were boys indeed now, and until they reached the old town; but there there was such a cordial reception for them from the whole village--fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, best girls, cronies, and even dogs--that by the time they had reached the club-house which had been built by their own efforts, and in which they were recorded on a beautiful panel as the charter members, they felt that they were aged, white-haired veterans returning to some battle-field where they were indeed famous.

A reception was given in their honor at the club-house, and Tug made a speech, and the others gave various more or less ridiculous and impressive exhibitions of their grandeur.

After a day or two of this glory, however, they became fellow-citizens with the rest of the villagers, and were content to sit around the club-room and tell stories of the grand old days when the Lakerim Athletic Club had no club-house to cover its head--the days when they fought so hard for admission to the Tri-State Interscholastic League of Academies. They were, to tell the truth, though, just a little disappointed, in the inside of their hearts, that the successors left behind to carry on the club were doing prosperously, winning athletic victories, and paying off the debt in fine style--quite as well as if they themselves had been there.

The most popular of the story-tellers was B.J., whose favorite and most successful yarn was the account of the great ice-boat adventure, when the hockey team was wrecked upon Buzzard's Rock, and spent the night in the snow-drifts, with the blizzard howling outside. The memory of that terrible escape made the blood run cold in the veins of the other members of the club; but it aroused in B.J. only a new and irresistible desire to be off again upon the same adventure-hunt.

Now, B.J.'s father was an enthusiastic sailor--fortunately, not so rash a sailor as his son, but quite as great a lover of a "flowing sail." Wind-lover as he was, he could not spend a winter idly, and turned his attention to ice-boating.

He owned a beautiful modern vessel made of ba.s.swood, b.u.t.ternut, and pine, with rigging all of steel, and a runner-plank as springy as an umbrella frame. She carried no more than four hundred square feet of sail; but when he gave her the whip, and let her take to her heels, she outran the fleetest wind that ever swept the lake.

And she skipped and sported along near the railroad track, where the express-train raced in vain with her; for she could make her sixty miles an hour or more without gasping for breath.

She was named _Greased Lightning_.

Now, B.J.'s father had ample cause to be suspicious of that young man's discretion, and he never permitted him to take the boat out alone, good sailor as he knew his son to be; so B.J. had to content himself with parties of boys and girls hilarious with the cold and speed, and wrapped up tamely in great blankets, under the charge of his father, who was a more than cautious sailor, being as wise as he was old, and seeing the foolishness of those pleasures which depend only on risking bone and body.

But B.J. was wretched, and chafed under the restraint of such respectable amus.e.m.e.nt--with girls, too!

And when, in the midst of the holidays, his father was called out of town, B.J. went to bed, and could hardly fall asleep under the conspiracies he began to form for eloping on one last escapade with the ice-boat.

He woke soon after daybreak, the next morning, and hurried to his window. There he found a gale of wind blowing and lashing the earth with a furious rain. The wind he received with welcoming heart, but the rain sent terror there; for it told him that the ice would soon disappear, and he would be sent back to Kingston Academy, with never a chance to let loose the _Greased Lightning_.

"It is now or never!" mumbled B.J., clenching his teeth after the manner of all well-regulated desperados.