"No, Trelawny, I never have, because it would be contrary to my
opinions."
Then he merely said I was a sticky and noxious worm that wanted
poisoning with rat poison, and that nothing more need be said before the
court-martial.
*II*
Well, the court-martial, though held by the sixth, was grossly unfair,
and the thing they decided to do was simply cruel bullying in a superior
form. To begin with, Macmullen, who is the champion speaker at our
debates, was the leading witness against me; whereas I had nobody to
speak for me, because though I was told three days before the trial to
get somebody to speak for me, of course nobody would; and I had to stick
up for myself, which was a thing I never could do. So I went down, and
the fools pretended to prove that I had arranged hundreds of fights and
been second at scores. And yet, somehow, I had never fought a single
fight myself from the time I came there. Dozens of kids were called to
witness at the court-martial that I had given them 'best' rather than
fight them; and many were much younger than me, and one, called Foster,
was only eleven, though certainly he was a great fighter, and many boys
of fourteen had to give him best in the long run, though not till after
they had fought him and been licked. Well, just because my religious
opinions kept me from fighting anybody, and especially Foster, they
called me an insect and a coward and a disgrace to the school and so on.
Then Trelawny, as the head of the court-martial, gave a verdict and I
was sentenced to have a fight, whether I liked it or not. Inquiries
were made and finally the court-martial found a chap called Andrews, who
was in my class and whose age was just one week less than mine. This
Andrews and me they decided must fight; and when it was known, everybody
wanted to be second for Andrews and nobody wanted to be second for me.
Trelawny said we might have a week to train, and then the court-martial
broke up. It was a brutal bit of work altogether, and I found rather an
interesting thing, which was that Andrews felt quite differently to the
affair to me. I talked to him privately as soon as I could, and
pretended it was all rot and laughed at the whole thing. But he said it
wasn't rot at all as far as he was concerned. He was a new boy and
rather keen to make friends and be well thought of; so he considered
this a jolly good opportunity and began to train as well as he knew how.
I saw at a glance that he could lick me, for I'd never learned fighting
and hated hurting anything, I'm sure, always; and I argued a good deal
with Andrews about it. He said that his father had told him that a
chance to make friends and distinguish himself would be sure to come.
And Andrews said no doubt his father was right, and that the chance had
come and that he was going to distinguish himself as much as he could on
me.
Well, of course I saw what had to be done. Just at that time I was
rather unfairly hated by Dr. Dunstan, because of an affair in the
playground. There was a fir-tree in it at one corner, and I had found
that turpentine came out if you cut notches in it. Well, into this
turpentine I stuck live ants and then burnt them up with a
burning-glass. It was nothing; but old Briggs, the writing master and
natural history master, discovered me doing it and must needs make a
ridiculous fuss. He told the Doctor and the Doctor made a ridiculous
fuss too and turned against me and hated me. So Dunstan was out of the
question, and there was only one other master I could tell, and that was
Monsieur Michel, the French master. But he was weak and useless in an
emergency like this; so finally I decided that the proper person to
approach would be Andrews himself.
That much was pretty easy to decide, but then came the question what to
say to him, and I was helped in this matter by a very lucky thing. It
came out in class that Andrews was an absolute flyer at geography, and
though not as good as me--me being head of the class in that
subject--still he jolly soon got second to me and stopped there. I am a
tremendous dab at geography myself; and if I knew as much about other
things I should be in the sixth; and if a good many things I
know--especially about religious saints--were regular subjects in
school, instead of being barred altogether, I should also be in the
sixth.
And finding out the greatness of Andrews at geography gave me the idea I
wanted, which happened only just in time; because the day I spoke to him
was a Wednesday and the next Saturday was the day we had to fight.