CHAPTER XV.
A BATTLE WITH THE ENEMY.
Now, the first thing for the crowd to do was to locate that “echo.” If they found it, they were mad enough to make trouble for its originators. The originators did not seem to be the least bit afraid of that, however, for they kept up a merry chaffing from their hiding place.
“Hello, down there! You needn’t be looking for us in the trees, because we aren’t crows. We nest in the rocks. What are you going over that way for, stupid? Can’t you hear my voice? Ah, now you’re warm! Keep on hunting. An echo is an awfully hard thing to find. You’re looking a little too high up now. Go home and get a ladder. Go home and get a cannon and lay siege to us!”
During all this, which was in a disguised voice, the exasperated cadets had been staring helplessly about them. They heard the voice, but, to save their lives, they couldn’t tell where it came from. In fact, they were on the point of giving up in despair when something else happened.
There was a plainly visible movement in one of the bushes that grew on the side of the rock. A moment later a bit of white cardboard sailed down.
Rogers made a leap for it and picked it up. His companions rushed to his side.
“What is it?” they demanded, eagerly.
By way of answer the cadet held it out to them to read, his face a picture of disgust as he did so. For this was what the card said:
“Mr. Chauncey Van Rensselaer Mount-Bonsall,
“—— Fifth Avenue.”
“By Heaven!” shouted Rogers, “it’s that Mallory and his gang again.”
“Right you are!”
“Betcher life, b’gee.”
“Yea, by Zeus!”
“Bah Jove!”
There was no misunderstanding these voices. It was Mallory’s gang for a fact, hidden in that hole in the rock and making fools of their “superior officers.”
The effect of that discovery upon the angry cadets may be imagined. It was as a match to a powder magazine. The yearlings simply went wild.
“Storm the place!” yelled one.
“Drag ’em out!” shouted another.
“Wipe the spots off of ’em!” cried a third.
And then as one man they made a leap for the entrance. There was no end of fun after that.
The attack had, of course, not been unexpected by the plebes. Mark had prepared for it carefully and the cadets were destined to get a very warm welcome indeed. It was a welcome of a most unexpected variety, too, for during the interim Texas had rushed back into the cave and come back with an armful of curious white weapons. The reader may guess what they were.
Billy Rogers had been the first man to reach the foot of the cliff. The hole from which the card had come was about ten feet from the ground, but a ledge made it an easy climb. The yearling leaped up and without a moment’s hesitation flung himself in at the entrance.
His head and shoulders were lost to view for just about one second. Then they reappeared, as the owner gave a cry of horror and started back. He tumbled backward to the ground and would have been badly hurt if his companions had not caught him. His face was as white as a sheet.
“What’s the matter?” cried they.
“Good heavens!” gasped the terrified Rogers. “It’s a skull!”
“A skull!”
“Yes! I saw it staring at me, all white in the darkness! Ugh!”
Just at this moment there was a movement in the bushes. The yearlings glanced up, just as a face protruded.
It was Parson Stanard, peering down. The Parson’s cadaverous, bony features shone out pale and white, and but one idea flashed over the badly-scared Rogers.
“There it is again!” he yelled. “The skull!”
The roar of laughter that followed defies description. Even the yearlings joined in. They imagined that their classmate had originally seen the Parson’s head and taken it for the “skull.”
Of this idea, however, they were speedily disabused. For the Parson stretched out his long, bony arms, and the next instant the yearlings found themselves half buried beneath a shower of clattering white objects—the skeletons of the counterfeiters! When the yearlings looked up again Parson Stanard was gone.
The cadets were too much amazed and horrified to say anything. They could only stare—and listen. They heard a loud voice inside, and this was what the voice said:
“By the bones of my ancestors, was there ever such an outrage? Yea, by Zeus! By Apollo and the Heliconian Muses! Unhand me, gentlemen, I say! I will not stand it! I will out and at them! I will scatter them to the six winds of Æolus! The very idea! My head a skull! What is there to warrant so outrageous an insinuation? Why, it is enough to make the ashes of my noble grandfather burst forth into flame. And am I to stand it? No, by Hercules! I feel the might of a Centaur rising within me. Like Hector of old, will I sally forth from my citadel and smite the insulters of my race. Just think of it! My head a skull!”
There was a brief silence after that, succeeded by the sounds of a struggle.
“Steady, Parson!” said a voice. “You don’t want to go out there. Take it easy now——”
“Let me go, I say! let me go! I demand the right of every gentleman to defend his honor with his life. I do not propose to submit to this outrage. I swear it by the terrible Styx! This is enough to enrage a subcarboniferous Plesiosaurus! It is enough to make an ornithorhynchus rise in wrath! And I have the blood of Boston in my veins. My ancestors were among the warriors of Bunker Hill and Lexington. My ancestors smote the tyrant and fought for the right and liberties of man. Yea, by Zeus! And shall I, with such examples as that before me, allow my head to be mistaken for a skull? By Melpomene, my very capillary ducts cry out for vengeance!”
This last bit of information was succeeded by another movement in the bushes. The Parson’s head and shoulders appeared again. The Parson was a red skull now. His cheeks were blazing with wrath and his long hair bristling.
He sought to fling himself upon “the enemy.” This, however, he was unable to do, for the reason that some one had hold of him by the feet and wouldn’t let go. In the entrance accordingly he stuck fast, and from that strange position, “poured out his impetuous wrath in burning words.” As his friend Homer somewhere describes it:
“Ye scoundrels,” he began, shaking his fists in impotent wrath. “Scoundrels, I say; for what better term can I use than the one so often employed by the wise and respected Dr. Johnson, a man before whose classical attainments my own meager latinity shrinks—but, by Zeus! I am wandering from my theme! Scoundrels, I say! I would call you Philistines, but the Philistines would rise up in wrath. I would call you vulgus—but you wouldn’t have sense enough to know what it meant! And so I say, scoundrels! By the ’far-darting Apollo,’ I demand satisfaction. Do you hear me? Do you understand me? I will not ’mutely and ingloriously’ swallow your outrageous insinuations. My blood boils with wrath. I am not a skull! I do not look like a skull! And, by Hermes! I challenge any one of you to come forward and prove that I do. By the heroes of the Trojan cycle, I defy you! I demand——”
During the first part of this truly extraordinary outburst the yearlings had been staring in open-mouthed amazement. As it continued, however, the absurdity of the situation overcame them and they fell to howling with laughter. The abrupt pause on the Parson’s part was caused by a new development. Rogers saw an opportunity for vengeance; he stooped, picked up one of the skulls and let it drive at the orator’s head.
The two objects met with a hollow crack and Parson Stanard set up a howl. The rest of the cadets, laughing uproariously, seized whatever came to their hands. From the shower that resulted our friend, the Parson, was glad to be dragged ignominiously in by the feet.
And thus ended his famous oration.