AT SANTA BENICIA ACADEMY
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:
“We stung ’em, see? we stung ’em, see?
Oh, the Jun-i-ors are wild.”
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.