Hike and the aeroplane

Santa Benicia Military Academy, California. It is a peaceful, beautiful place, with no signs of hurrying tetrahedrals or busy Army Boards. White and purple figs overhang the walk to the main building, and beside it there are little stretches of grass, shaded by orange trees, or tulip trees filled with great white blossoms. Keep along the walk, and you come to the Yard, surrounded by vine-covered dormitories. Beyond the Yard are the stretches of the athletic field and parade ground. Everywhere are palms, and grape vines, and giant roses. A beautiful place, and an ideal school for boys. For, even though it is a military academy, there are practically no rules. The students are expected to be gentlemen—there are no “bounds,” almost no “hours.”

Messrs. Hike Griffin and Poodle Darby trotted through the Yard gate, their arms about each other’s shoulders, singing the newly revised class song:

They were trying to look peacefully happy. But they were not happy in the least. Poodle put it right when he said they felt like clams who had strayed out of their rivers and gotten fried, and then tried to go back to the mud and pretend they’d never seen a stove.

For every chap who passed them, except for the new Freshmen, shouted something like this: “Hello, aviators. Brought your airyplane? When do I get a ride?”

Poodle admitted that they felt “like digging a hole and crawling into it, and pulling the hole in after them,” when the great Pink Eye Morrison, president of the Senior Class, and baseball-captain, stopped, raised his school cap to them, and remarked:

“It isest a great honor you doest us poor slobs, O thou Griffin and thou Darby in the vocative, to visit us in the midst of—”

“Oh, please cheese it,” begged Hike, and Pink Eye passed on, with an unholy smile.

That is but a sample of what they got, not only from the Juniors and Seniors, but even from their own classmates. It had been a joy, in the morning, to drop their suit-cases on the grass, and yell at their old friends of the year before, but by afternoon, they felt like keeping to their rooms. It looked as if they were going to have a horrible year, as if everything they said or did would be laughed at, as coming from “the aviators.” They wished, for a while, that they had never seen an aeroplane.

Poodle tried to convince Hike and himself that it was all nonsense for two persons who had just been playing with tetrahedral-flights and generals and million-dollar Army appropriations, to be bothered by a few laughs from classmates. But they were bothered, just the same.

There is something about school honors that make them mean more than anything else. A fellow has been working for them ever since the day he got out of the kindergarten and put on knickers. Perhaps that’s the reason. Anyway, Hike and Poodle, after having played the game hard all Freshman year, and having made good, were broken-hearted at starting in the Sophomore year queered.

“Queered” they seemed to be. Every one was ready to “jolly” them. Partly, it was envy and jealousy on the part of the fellows; partly it was a feeling that these two Sophomores had broken every unwritten law of the school by making themselves so conspicuous in the newspapers. But mostly it was the joy of being able to torment such famous people. Never was a West Point plebe so badly hazed as was the late General Frederick Dent Grant, when he entered the Point as the son of General Ulysses Grant, President of the United States. Hike and Poodle remembered that they, too, had taken delight in “kidding” a classmate of theirs who was the son of the Governor of Nevada—just because he was the son of a governor.

Probably Plebe Grant and the son of the Governor would gladly have traded their positions as the sons of great men for good reputations with their classes. So it was with Hike and Poodle. The problem before them, they decided, as they entered their room, was twice as hard as fighting any old P. J. Jolls. They had to win over the school.

The room was filled with memories of Freshman year—Hike had come back to it after helping win the Freshman game with San Dinero; Poodle had here written his poems for the school magazine; here they had “ground” for the spring examinations. Hike’s football-helmet hung over the fireplace—where, in the chilly California evenings, they had had many a good fire, with classmates singing and talking.

Sitting on the broad window-seat, they could look across the silver stretch of the Carquinez Straits to purple Mount Diablo. Here they had lounged so many lazy afternoons, with friends, planning walking-trips across to the mountain. But now—?

They were pretty silent, for a gloomy half-hour, while unpacking; wandering around the room, hanging up a photograph of the Hustle here, and tossing a new soft-cushion there, and fighting over nails for toothbrushes and bars for towels. Poodle came near sniffling, as he spread a new couch-cover out carefully, patting out the wrinkles, and remembering that when his pretty sister had given it to him, a couple of days before, she had said, “I hope you and all your friends will be willing to rest on this, Torry, when you get tired of being heroes.”

“O rats, what’s the use,” said Hike suddenly. “But maybe they’ll quit kidding us, in a couple of days. What’s that!”

“That” was a curious sound beneath their windows, down in the Yard. Shouts of “Tie your struts to the dingbat,” and “Curl your legs around the levers and get a purchase on them” mingled with the crack of a motor. Rushing to the window, they saw a group of classmates about the strangest aeroplane that ever was built. Before a stationary motorcycle was Left Eared Dongan, Sophomore, the wild-haired candidate for football-end, seated in a Morris chair carted out from some one’s room. He wore a child’s toy helmet and a huge wooden sword, and was busily twiddling levers the size of a large man’s body. Beside him was a classmate stuffed with pillows, and bearing on his back a placard lettered “Poodle.” Behind them, for the wings of this remarkable aeroplane, a blanket was stretched between two wooden chairs.

Out from an entryway rushed three boys wearing masks and brandishing clubs. Left Eared Dongan shut off the motorcycle’s motor, stood up, waved his wooden sword wildly and yelled in a pleasant, refined voice which could have been heard across the Carquinez Straits, “On! brave Poodle, have at them. The King of Salamanca awaits our coming.”

The mock Poodle got up with great dignity, and snapped a toy pistol at the brigands, three times. They fell flat, with considerable kicking of the legs, and bawled for mercy.

The few windows that had not been occupied by the heads of grinning Santa Benicians were well filled now. From all ’round the quadrangle came shouts of “Flee, brave Hike,” “Try your auxiliary motor,” “On to China,” “Touch-down with your southeast plane.”

Then came from the entry a fat boy with a false mustache, bearing the sign “President Taft.” He fell on his knees before Left Eared Dongan and sang out, “Take me with you, O Hike. I nominate thee a second-hand major general.”

The group danced cheerfully about the aeroplane, while Left Eared Dongan settled back in his Morris chair and started the motor again.

Hike and Poodle smiled feebly, up there. But they did not smile, they most certainly did not, when they were left out of the Fig Tree Celebration, that evening.

On the office-walk was a huge tree called “Fig Tree Major.” Under this was held annually the solemn ceremony which officially began the hazing of the Freshmen. Each of the new students was put through his paces by a Master of Ceremonies and a Jester, while the class applauded.

The Class President of the year before was usually chosen Master of Ceremonies, and this year Hike and Poodle had practically taken it for granted that they would be chosen Master and Jester.

They were not. The class, marching across the Yard, did not call them out of their rooms. “Bluggy” Blodgett, center rush of the Freshman team of the year before, had been chosen Master; and Left Eared Dongan was Jester.

It took some nerve for Hike and Poodle to go to the Fig Tree Celebration, after that cut, but they went—and nearly every classmate that spoke to them said something insulting about aviating.

They were very unhappy as they sat in their room, after the Celebration and the first hazing of the Freshmen.

“Gee,” growled Hike, “I wonder if they’re going to keep it up all year!”

There was a modest tapping at the door.

“Come in!”

Mousey Tincom, a small wisp of a Sophomore, who played chess and studied hard and worshiped Hike as he did Napoleon (whom Mousey thought he himself resembled, and whom he sure didn’t resemble), came ambling in, sat carefully on the front edge of a large chair, and bleated:

“Hello, fellows. I’m awful’ sorry about to-night.”

“The class going to keep it up?” asked Poodle.

“I’m afraid so. Left Ear was ’lowing we haven’t had so good an opening for jollying any one since the Flood. Say, I’ve got some news for you.”

“All right. We can stand it.” (Hike was impolite. You had to be impolite to Mousey Tincom, or he would have stood about worshiping all the while.)

“Well, you know Captain Thurbey got off’n the job as military instructor last spring, and they hadn’t appointed any one till just now. Now, I hear that Lieutenant Adeler of the Signal Corps—”

“HurRAY!” shouted Poodle and Hike. “Go on.”

“Well, he’s asked the President to transfer him here, so he can make some experiments with wireless and televises in the laboratory here. So I think he’ll be military instructor here. Is he nice?”

“Slickest chap that ever woggled a saber, Jack Adeler is,” said Poodle, and Hike agreed “You bet.”

“Well, say, some one was telling me—listen across there! they must be hazing the Freshmen good and plenty to-night; making them aviate, sounds like.”

“Hang the aviating—though I suppose that’s what we’ll get right along,” sighed Poodle. “Gwan about Lieutenant Adeler.”

“Well, some one was saying that he’s here already—came this afternoon, and that he’s staying at the Headmaster’s to-night.”

“I wonder why he hasn’t let us know?” wondered Hike.

“Probably wants to surprise us,” mused Poodle.

“Well,” said Hike, “I’ve got some unpacking to do, Mousey.”

“All right, so long you fellows. I’ll have to beat it and help the hazing, I guess.” And Mousey disappeared.

For the thousandth time Poodle declared that Hike was intolerably rude to poor Mousey, and for the thousandth time Hike declared, “Yuh, I know I’m beastly to him, but if you’d ever come in from a dusty practise game and seen Mousey hanging around and admiring, standing there like he was waiting for a hand-out—just when you felt grouchy anyway, why you’d want to kill him. He’d be here all the time if—”

Light, quick feet on the stairs, a tap at the door, and in came—Lieutenant Jack Adeler!

Hike and Poodle arose and beat him on the back till he could scarcely breathe, half laughing and half crying with joy.

“Yes,” he answered their questions, which were piled on him like a brick-wall falling, “I’ll be here all year. Want to make some experiments. The military part here won’t take much time. And I’ll have the pleasure of getting even with you two young fiends for mixing me up with Welch and Jolls. Oh, the way I’ll hector you on the parade-ground—! By the way, speaking of Jolls, his trial ought to come off pretty soon.”

Then Messrs. Griffin and Darby suddenly changed from Santa Benicians to very grown-up aviators, and plunged into a long talk with Jack Adeler.

But when the Lieutenant had gone, when Taps had sounded and they were undressing, in the dark, they changed back into two very tired youngsters, horribly bored at the thought of being “jollied” all that year.

They seemed to have guessed right. Though Hike was immediately tried out at half on the school team, for two weeks they had to keep to themselves as much as possible. The school wits found a hundred new ways of referring to aviation, every day.