On Guard Part 7

The sentries about the camp march for two hours, and then have four hours off duty, thus having eight hours "on" in the twenty. During this time they speak to no one, except to challenge parties who cross their beats. This last duty is where the yearlings have all the fun with the new plebe.

"Deviling" sentries is an old, old amus.e.m.e.nt at West Point. The plebe goes on duty, solemn and anxious, awed to silence and gravity by the sternness of his superiors. He is proud of his important office and thoroughly resolved to do his duty, come what may, and to die in the last ditch. He seizes his gun resolutely; feels of the bayonet point valiantly; puts on his sternest and most forbidding look; strides forth with a step that is bold and unwavering. And the yearlings "don't do a thing" to him.

What they did to Mark and his friends will be described later on.

CHAPTER VII.

MARK'S COUNTERPLOT.

Mark returned to the camp to find his six friends just returned from drill and enjoying a brief respite until the summons came for their next duty. He gathered them together in solemn conclave, and then in whisper imparted to them the information he had just received from the "angel."

The effects of Mark's announcement upon his friends varied considerably with each.

Indian was terrified beyond measure; the possibility of such tricks being tried upon him, too, made his fat eyes bulge. Texas, on the other hand, was wild with excitement and joy, and a little good-natured envy.

"Wow! Mark," he cried. "Why is it you always have all the fun? Them ole cadets always go fo' you; n.o.body else kin ever do anything. Ef them fellers don't git roun' to me some day I'm goin' off an' raise a rumpus some other way."

"What'll you do?" inquired Mark, laughing.

"I'll go off'n git on a roarin' ole spree!" vowed the other, solemnly.

"An' I'll ride into this yere ole camp an' raise such a rumpus as it ain't ever seen afore. Jes' you watch me now! What you fellers a-laughin' at?"

"I'm sorry I can't let you go on in my place," said Mark, smiling. "Or perhaps I'll let you come out and help me 'do' them when they tackle me."

Texas was somewhat mollified by that; and then the Seven settled down to a serious discussion of the situation.

"Fellows," said Mark, "I want to tell you something. You know I'm getting tired of the notion those yearlings have in their heads, that they can haze us without its costing them anything. Now I've been thinking this business over and I've got an idea. If they try to dump me to-night I'm going to fool them and I'm going to fix it so that they'll be the laughingstock of the corps. After I get through with them then we'll go dump some of their sentries instead. And now, what I want to know is, will you help me?"

"Help you!" gasped the others, excitedly. "Help you! What are we banded for?"

"Oo-oo!" wailed Indian. "I can't. I'll be on duty, too! And suppose they attack me! Bless my soul!"

"You'll have to fight your own battle!" laughed Mark. "They won't try anything very desperate on you. But now let me tell you of my plot."

The six gathered about him to listen to his whispered instructions.

From the contortions their faces went through one would have supposed they liked the scheme. And in the end Mark, finding that it met with approval, sat down and wrote a brief note:

"DEAR MISS FULLER: We have a plan to punish those yearlings, and we want you to help us once more. Ask George, the butler, to go down to Highland Falls and buy us a quart of peroxide of hydrogen. The Parson says it must be very strong, a ninety per cent.

saturated solution. We'll explain to you afterward what we want the stuff for. Please do not fail us.

"Your friend,

"MARK MALLORY."

They sealed that note and put it together with a coin into the hands of a drum orderly. And after that there was nothing to do but wait in suspense and impatience for the momentous hours of evening, when the yearling cla.s.s was to make one more effort to subdue "the B. J.-est plebe that ever struck the place."

Night came, as night always does, no matter how anxiously it is waited for. Mark and his friend Indian went on guard that afternoon from two to four; and soon after that came dress parade and the sunset gun, then supper and finally darkness at last. With eight o'clock the two went on once more.

Though Mark did not once relax his vigilance during the time from then till taps he was inclined to think that the attack upon him would not take place until his next watch, which began at two. For now there were numbers of people strolling about and hazing was decidedly unsafe. So sure was he of this that his allies did not even prepare their plot.

Mark's judgment proved to be correct; he marched back and forth along the path that marked his beat and no one offered to disturb him. What "deviling" was being done at that hour was of a milder sort, a sort that was not intended for such B. J. plebes as he.

Among the victims of this, however, was our unfortunate friend Indian.

What happened to Indian happens to nearly all plebes at the present day.

It is our purpose to describe it in this chapter.

Indian was a gullible, innocent sort of a lad; life was a solemn and serious business with him. Most plebes take their hazing as fun, rather unpleasant, but still nothing dangerous. With Indian on the other hand it was torture; he dreaded the yearlings as his mortal enemies, and to his poor miserable soul everything they did was aimed at his life.

This curious state of affairs the yearlings were not slow to discover, and the result had been that fully half the hazing that was done had fallen on the head of this unfortunate plebe. And one may readily believe that the merry cadets were waiting with indescribable glee for the first night when poor Joseph Smith turned out on sentry duty.

Sentry duty at the camp is of course a mere formality; no enemies are expected to attack West Point, and there is no necessity for an all-night guard. But it was precisely this fact that our friend could not understand, and that was where the fun came in.

To Indian, the sentry was put on guard to ward off some real and terrible danger. Everything that happened confirmed this view in his mind. In the first place the solemnity and businesslike reality he found in the guard tent impressed him. Then the sepulchral tones of the corporal who gave him instructions, and who, it may readily be believed, lost no opportunity to impress the gravity of the situation upon his charge and to frighten him more and more, strengthened his conviction.

Then they gave him a gun, a heavy, dangerous-looking gun, with a cold-steel bayonet sharp as a knife, that made him see all sorts of harrowing visions of himself in the act of plunging it, all b.l.o.o.d.y, into the body of some gasping foe.

After that, with all these uncanny ideas in his head, they marched him solemnly out to his post and left him there alone in the darkness.

Indian's post lay alongside the camp, but in his fright he did not recognize anything. All he knew was that it ran along a dark deserted path beneath trees that groaned and creaked in the moonlight. And Indian paced tremblingly up and down clutching his cold steel gun nervously, seeing an enemy in every waving shadow and in every tree stump, hearing one in every distant voice and tread, consoling his mind with visions of all sorts of horrors, wis.h.i.+ng he had some one to talk to, and wondering if it were not almost ten o'clock and time for that other sentry to relieve him. The very clanking of his own bayonet scabbard made this bold young soldier jump.

This continued as the night wore on. Indian strode back and forth losing heart every moment, and beginning to believe that the relief guard had forgotten him. Tramp, tramp--and then suddenly he halted, his heart leaped up and began to thump in a frenzy. Could that be? Yes, surely it was! Some one was crossing his beat, stealing along in the moonlight!

Half mechanically, Indian obeyed his instructions, brought down his gun to the charge position and gave the challenge:

"Who goes there?"

The voice was so weak that Indian scarcely heard it. He stood trembling, to await the answer. When the answer came he was still more mystified.

"The Prince of Wales!" called the intruder.

The Prince of Wales? What on earth was he doing here? Poor Indian had received no instructions about the Prince of Wales. But he was given no time to find out, for a step way back at the other end of the post took him down there on the run, where in response to his second challenge the ghost of Horace Greeley made itself known. And scarcely had the ghost been warned away before the confused sentry had to rush back to the original place to find that the prince had given place to a band of Potawottamie squaws combined with Julius Caesar and the Second Continental Congress.

Indian of course should have summoned the corporal of the guard. But in the alarm he had forgotten everything except that he must challenge everybody he saw. The result was that the poor lad was kept flying up and down until nearly dead from exhaustion, challenging ghosts and colonels, armed parties, patrols, grand rounds, reliefs, and other things military and otherwise. Occasionally a "friend with the countersign" would hail, and then inform the rattled sentry that the countersign was "b.u.t.ter beans," or "Kalamazoo," or "kangaroo," or "any old thing you please," as one joker told him. Poor Indian was fast being reduced to a state of nervous prostration.

He was in this condition when the climax came. Hurrying down the path he was suddenly electrified to see a red can lying in the middle of the path. Staring out in great black letters that made the sentry gasp were the letters d-y-n-a-m-i-t-e! Indian started back in alarm. He saw a spark, as if from a fuse; and in an instant more before he had a chance to run, that can--which contained a firecracker--went up into the air with a terrific flash and roar.

That was the last straw for Joseph.

He dropped his gun; gave vent to one shriek of terror and then turned and fled wildly into camp!

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ATTACK ON MARK.