CHAPTER III
AN UNEXPECTED EXPLOSION
“Here they come!”
“Hurrah for the conquering heroes!”
“The fellows who snowed Longley under!”
“Let’s form a parade and march around the campus with the silver trophy!”
“I’ll tell you that was sure something worth while!”
Such were some of the cries that rang out as the motor boat containing the Rover boys and their friends approached the Colby Hall boat-landing.
“Gee! how are we ever going to face that bunch?” murmured Andy, and for once his face grew pale.
“I almost feel like hiding,” came from his twin, and it must be confessed that Randy looked thoroughly miserable.
A number of motor boats had already landed their occupants, but, strange as it may seem, none of these cadets had seen the collision between Pud Hicks’ craft and the Jocelyn, due, no doubt, to the fact of there being so many boats making it necessary for every one in command to pay strict attention to how he was fashioning his course across the lake.
“Hello! Why, you’re dripping wet!” exclaimed Fatty Hendry, the stoutest lad in the school, as Jack, the first to land, leaped on the dock. “Whatever happened? Did you fall overboard?”
“We had an accident,” answered the young major.
“Hello, Andy and Randy are wet, and so is Phil Franklin!” put in Dan Soppinger, another of the chums.
“Anybody hurt?” questioned Ned Lowe, a cadet who was quite a singer and who generally led the cadets in their school songs.
“I had my fingers pinched, but it didn’t amount to much,” answered Spouter Powell. “But something pretty bad happened,” he went on.
“What was it?” questioned a dozen cadets at once, and then several added quickly: “Where is the silver trophy? Weren’t you to bring it over?”
For a moment there was a silence that was intense. Nobody seemed to be willing to break the bad news. Even Pud Hicks bent his head away and pretended to be at work over the engine of the motor boat.
“Well, we might as well tell the truth,” announced Gif at last. “The silver trophy is at the bottom of the lake.”
“At the bottom of the lake!”
“How did that happen?”
“Why didn’t you fish it up again?”
Thereupon there was wild excitement, and the cadets began to crowd closer to those who were just landing. The boys kept coming up until at least fifty of the Colby Hall pupils were assembled. Then, seeing the unusual crowd, Captain Mapes Dale, the chief military instructor of the institution, strode forward hastily.
“A steam yacht ran into us and nearly bowled us over,” said Randy.
Then all the boys who had come across the lake with Pud Hicks tried to explain at once. Numerous questions were asked and answered and a dozen lads became wildly excited.
“Why didn’t you have the owner of the Jocelyn arrested?” questioned Walt Baxter.
“He ought to have been tarred and feathered,” came from Bart White.
“Gosh! I’ll bet you fellows will catch it for losing that trophy,” came from a thin boy who had weak, shifty eyes and an unusually broad mouth. His name was Henry Stowell and he was generally known as the sneak of the school.
“It wasn’t our fault, Codfish,” answered Fred, calling the sneak by the nickname which was often applied to him. “The other boat headed directly for us. If Pud Hicks hadn’t acted quickly our boat might have been cut in two and some of us might have been killed.”
“Humph! that’s easy enough for you to say,” sneered Stowell. “If you could save yourselves, as you did, I don’t see why you couldn’t save the vase.”
This was a mean remark to make, since the sneak did not know the details of the affair. But his snap judgment was taken up by not a few of the other cadets and they looked rather sourly at the Rover boys and those who had been with them in the ill-fated trip across the lake.
“So you won the trophy only to lose it, eh?” came from Captain Dale in a voice that showed his regret. He had sense enough to know that no lads would have worked so hard to win a prize unless they were willing to do almost anything to keep it. “Are you quite sure the collision was not your fault, Hicks?” he demanded of the school employee. Hicks was really the janitor’s assistant, but had spent several years on the lake and was known to be a careful man among both sailboats and motor boats.
“It wasn’t my fault at all, Captain Dale,” was Hicks’ firm reply, and he went into the details, as he knew them, of the happening.
“We’ll have to look into this and without delay,” said the military instructor. “You had better report to Colonel Colby.”
After that the Rovers and their chums hurried to the gymnasium, and there those who were wet, as well as the others, changed from their baseball outfits into their uniforms. By this time it was close to the supper hour, and Jack and Fred had to hurry off to take charge of their commands.
It must be confessed that Andy and Randy felt in anything but an enviable frame of mind when they went for their rifles and joined in the brief parade around the campus which always preceded the entrance to the mess hall.
“Some of the fellows will never forgive us for losing that trophy,” remarked Andy, and his usually smiling face showed nothing but gloom.
“I guess you’re right,” answered his twin. “No matter how we try to explain it, they’ll always think that somehow or other we ought to have hung on to the trophy when the collision came.”
“Yes, but, Randy, you nearly lost your life trying to save it!”
“There will be some of the fellows who’ll never believe that—Codfish, for instance.”
“Oh, you mustn’t pay any attention to that sneak.”
“Well, there’s a bunch of others besides Codfish. I heard Walt Baxter talking to Ned Lowe just a few minutes ago; and while they didn’t say it in so many words, it was easy to see that they rather thought we should have made more of an effort to save the trophy.”
“If only we can fish it up again!”
“I’m certainly going to have a try at it, and that very soon. More than that, what’s the matter with offering a reward for its recovery?”
“That’s the talk! We’ll do it!”
Here the conversation had to come to an end as the boys took their places in the company’s ranks.
“Battalion attention!” came a minute later from Major Jack Rover, and every cadet straightened up, with eyes front and rifle at his side. A moment later the order came to march, the drums and fifes struck up, and away went the three companies of the school battalion around the campus and then around the school buildings. A few minutes later the cadets filed inside, placed away their rifles and side arms, and crowded rather noisily into the big mess hall, there to distribute themselves at the various long tables presided over by the teachers.
Discipline was rather strict this term, so that conversation flagged during the time set apart for eating. Yet the Rover boys could well understand that nearly everything that was said in an undertone related to the loss of the silver trophy.
“It will certainly put a damper on the celebration to-night,” whispered Fred to Gif, who sat beside him.
“Oh, we don’t have to take it as seriously as all that, Fred,” answered the manager of the baseball team. “We won the championship, and that’s the main thing, after all.”
“Yes, we can’t send that to the bottom of the lake,” returned the youngest Rover boy, with a slight grin.
In anticipation of a possible victory, a number of the cadets had been gathering boxes and barrels with which to build bonfires, and as soon as it grew dark enough these bonfires were started along the lake front, being placed there so that the Longley boys might see how their successful rivals were celebrating the victory.
“The baseball nine to the front!” shouted Fatty Hendry, who on account of his weight never played ball but was one of the best rooters the team possessed. “Come on! Get your bats and join the parade!”
Andy and Randy felt like declining this invitation; but Fatty and a number of others would not listen to it and shoved them forward, and in a very few minutes those who belonged to the baseball team found themselves bats in hand and surrounded by the other cadets, some with drums and fifes and others with horns, rattles, pans, and anything else that might be utilized in making a noise. At the head of the procession marched three of the tallest cadets, each carrying a new broom borrowed for the occasion from Mrs. Crews, the housekeeper.
Up and down the lake front went the cadets, singing one school song after another always ending with the well-known Hall refrain:
“Who are we?
Can’t you see?
Colby Hall!
Dum, dum! dum, dum, dum!
Here we come with fife and drum!
Colby, Colby, Colby Hall!”
“That’s the stuff! Give it to ’em louder!” shouted Fatty Hendry, dancing wildly in front of the singers and brandishing a stick. “Sing it so loud that they can hear it clear across the lake!”
“Oh, Andy, we almost forgot!” cried his twin suddenly.
“Forgot what?” put in Fred, who was marching alongside his cousins.
“The cannon! We forgot the cannon,” answered Randy.
“Say, did you fellows fix the cannon after all?” questioned Fred quickly.
“We sure did! Come ahead, Fred. Now is our chance to make a little noise in the world.”
“Say, don’t you know that that cannon hasn’t been shot off in years?” demanded the young captain of Company C. “It was only planted along the lake front as an ornament.”
“Oh, well, we didn’t put in much of a charge,” answered Andy. “It will make more of a sky-rocket effect than anything else. We’ll elevate it high into the air and have a barrel of fun when it goes off.”
The field piece to which the lads referred was one Colonel Colby had obtained from the Government after the close of the World War. It had been captured on the battlefront in France and the owner of Colby Hall was proud to have the piece planted at the corner of the school campus overlooking the lake. At first the cadets had been curious concerning this piece of artillery, but soon their interest flagged and few paid any attention to it. Then the idea entered Andy’s head to place a charge in the old piece and in case of a victory over Longley to discharge the same during the evening’s celebration. Fred and Jack had been called in consultation, but both had said that it would not be altogether safe to do this. Nevertheless, the twins had gone ahead and placed the charge in the piece when they thought nobody was looking.
“We’ve got to be careful, Andy, when we fire it,” cautioned his twin. “We can’t take too many chances on such a gun as that. It may have needed cleaning out when it was brought over here.”
“Oh, it will be all right,” was the ready reply. “There isn’t any ball or shot in it, or anything like that—it’s only a blank charge, one of those left over down in the powder house. Besides that, I’ve got a pretty long fuse, so we’ll not have to stand anywhere near the thing when it goes off.”
Making their way out of the crowd, the three Rover boys stole in the direction of the cannon. No one was near the piece, although they noticed that one of the other cadets was following them.
“Confound it, it’s Codfish! He’s always sneaking around to try to get something on us,” murmured Randy.
“Hi, Codfish! where are you going?” called out Fred sharply.
“None of your business,” retorted the sneak of the school, and then slunk back behind some bushes.
With only the fitful glare from the bonfires to light the way the three Rover boys advanced to the cannon and gave it a hasty inspection.
“Let’s try to elevate it a little,” suggested Randy. “Then the charge will make more of a showing.”
Not without considerable effort, the boys managed to raise the muzzle of the field piece until it was elevated to an angle of about forty-five degrees. Then Andy brought forth his fuse and attached the same.
“Now for it!” cried the fun-loving Rover, and without hesitation struck a match and applied the light to the fuse. Instantly the latter began to fizz, and all of the boys took to their heels.
Bang! It was a tremendous explosion, much louder than any of the boys had anticipated, and it fairly made the windows of the various school buildings rattle. Looking, they saw not one spurt of flames, but a dozen or more shooting in various directions.
IT WAS A TREMENDOUS EXPLOSION.
“It’s busted! The cannon has busted!” gasped Fred, who had been thrown off his feet by the concussion.
“Gee! it can’t have been much of a piece,” was Andy’s comment, and he looked startled.
The tremendous report which echoed and re-echoed against the buildings and the hills beyond was followed by a moment of silence. Then came a yell from the cadets at the other end of the lake shore.
“I’m hit! I’m shot in the arm!”
“Something struck me in the back!”
“Help! Help! I’m killed! Somebody shot me!”
So the cries ran on while the three Rover boys gazed at each other in abject consternation.