A Quarter-Back's Pluck: A Story of College Football

by Lester Chadwick

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE FRESHMEN DANCE

  "Here, quit!" cried Sid, making an effort to pull back the coverings onwhich Tom was yanking. "Let a fellow alone, can't you? Quit fooling!This is no freshman's room!"

  "Get out, you old duffer!" yelled Phil. "The place is on fire!"

  "Who's on the wire?" asked Sid, thinking some one had called him on thetelephone. "I don't care who it is. I'm not going to answer this time ofnight. I want to sleep. Tell 'em to call up again."

  "Fire! Fire! Not wire!" shouted Tom in his ear, and this time Sid heardand was fully awake. He caught a glimpse of the clouds of lurid smokepouring in from the corridor.

  "Jumping Johnnie cake! I should say it was a fire!" he cried. "Come on,fellows, let's get some of our stuff out! I want my football pictures,"and with that Sid rushed to the wall and yanked down the only bit ofornamentation he cared for--a lithograph of a Rugby scrimmage. "Comeon!" he yelled, grabbing up a pile of his clothes from a chair. "Thisis all I want. Let the books and other stuff go!"

  "But the sofa! The chair!" cried Tom, who had peered out into the hall,only to jump back again, gasping and choking. "We can chuck them out ofthe window."

  "That's right. Can't hurt 'em much," added Phil, who was getting intohis trousers.

  "Grab hold, then. But wait until I button my vest," ordered Tom, whowas fumbling with the garment, the only one he had grabbed up. He hadswitched on the electric light, and the gleam shone through a cloud ofthe reddish smoke. "What's the matter with this blamed thing, anyhow?"he cried, as he fumbled in vain for the buttons.

  "You've got it on backwards!" cried Sid, who had tossed his clothes outof the window, following them with the picture, and was now ready tohelp his chums.

  "Great Jehosophat!" cried Tom. "So I have!"

  He yanked off the garment and tossed it into a corner. Then, clad onlyin his pajamas, he started to carry the old armchair to the window. Itwas almost too much for him, and Sid came to his aid.

  "Let that go, and get the sofa out first!" cried Phil. "The chair canfall on that. Say, listen to the row!"

  Out in the corridor could be heard confused shouts, and the sound ofstudents running to and fro. Every now and then some one would cry"Fire!" and the rush would be renewed.

  "The whole place must be going!" cried Sid. "Hurry up, Tom, shove itout! Maybe we can save some other things."

  "Better save ourselves first!" exclaimed Phil. "The stairs and halls areall ablaze!" He came back from a look into the corridor choking andgasping. "We've got to jump for it! Shove that chair out, then the sofa,and pile the bedding on top. That will make a place to land on."

  "Here she goes!" shouted Tom, and he and Sid shoved their precious oldchair from the window. It fell with a great crash to the ground, twostories below.

  "Broken to bits!" said Tom with a groan. "Now for the sofa. There'll benothing left of it."

  They had raised it to the window sill, after much effort, and werebalancing it there while recovering their breaths. Their room wasfilled with the heavy fumes of smoke, and the noise in the corridorwas increasing.

  "Let her go!" cried Phil. "Lively, now, if we want to get out alive!"

  But just as the three chums were about to release their hold on thesofa, Mr. Snell, one of the under-janitors of the college, and a sort ofscout or spy of the proctor's, ran into the room.

  "There's no fire! There's no danger!" he called. "Don't throw anythingout."

  "No fire?" questioned Tom.

  "No. Some of the students burned red fire in the halls, that's all,"went on Mr. Snell. "There's no danger. The proctor sent me around toexplain. It's only some illuminating red fire."

  Tom, Sid and Phil looked at each other, as they stood at the window,holding their precious sofa. The clouds of smoke were rolling away, andthe noise was lessening. Tom looked out of the casement, and, in thesemi-darkness below, saw the chair they had thrown out. Just then, frombelow, a crowd of freshmen, who had perpetrated the trick, began singing"Scotland's Burning."

  Tom glanced at his chums. Then he uttered one word:

  "Stung!"

  "Good and proper!" added Phil.

  "By a nest of fresh hornets!" commented Sid wrathfully.

  The scout withdrew. Phil looked at his trousers, and then he beganslowly to take them off. Tom took one more look out of the window.

  "They're jumping all over our chair," he said.

  "They are? The young imps!" cried Sid. "Come on to the rescue! Get intosome togs and capture a few freshmen." Then, as he realized that he hadtossed his clothes out of the window, he groaned. "You fellows will haveto go," he said. "I haven't any duds."

  "They're parading around with your best go-to-meeting suit," observedPhil. Sid groaned again.

  "Hurry, fellows, if you love me," he said.

  "There's a crowd of sophs after 'em now," added Tom, and so it proved.The freshmen beat a retreat, and some of our friends' classmates formeda guard around the things on the ground.

  The three chums were not the only ones who had tossed articles out oftheir windows in the moments of excitement. Many possessions of thesophomores were on the ground below, and, now that the scare was over,they began collecting them. Tom and Phil managed, with the help of someof their classmates, to get Sid's garments and the chair back to theirroom. The chair was in sad shape, though, and Sid groaned in anguish ashe viewed it.

  "Oh, quit!" begged Phil, as he tossed Sid's clothes on the bed. "We canfix it up again."

  "It'll never be the same," wailed Sid as he tried it. "There was a placethat just fit my back, and now----"

  He leaped up with a howl, and held his hand to the fleshy part of hisleg.

  "What's the matter?" asked Tom.

  "A broken spring stuck me," explained Sid, who was too lightly clad toindulge in indiscriminate sitting about. "Oh, those freshies! What canwe do to get square with them?"

  "That's more like it," said Tom. "We've got to pay them back in someway, and the sooner the better."

  It was an hour or more before matters had quieted down in the westdormitory. From various sophomores who came into their room to exchangenotes, Tom, Phil and Sid learned that the freshmen had executed awell-organized fire scare by the simple process of burning in eachcorridor some of the powder extensively used on Fourth of July, or inpolitical parades.

  "Well, there's no use talking about what they did to us," said Ed Kerr."The question is, what can we do to them? They certainly put it all overus."

  "Dutch, you ought to be able to suggest something," said Tom. "You'realways up to some trick. Give us one to play on the freshies."

  "Sure," agreed Dutch. "Let me think."

  Sid arose and turned out the light.

  "What's that for?" asked Dutch.

  "So you can think better. I can, in the dark. Go ahead, now. Let's havesomething good."

  Dutch was silent for a few minutes, and then he proposed a plan whichwas received with exclamations of delight.

  "The very thing!" cried Tom. "I wonder we didn't think of it before.We'll be just in time. Now, maybe we can make them laugh on the otherside of their heads."

  The next morning there were triumphant looks on the faces of thefreshmen. They had played a good joke on their traditional enemies, thesophomores, and felt elated over it. But, in accordance with a plan theyhad adopted the night after Dutch revealed his plan, the sophomores madeno retort to the taunts of their enemies. And there was no lack ofrailery. Gathered on the walk about Booker Memorial Chapel, whence formany terms freshmen had, by traditional college custom, been barred, thefirst-year lads made all sorts of jokes concerning the scrabble that hadensued among the sophomores when the cry of fire was raised.

  "And we have to stand it!" exclaimed Tom, gritting his teeth.

  "For a couple of days," added Sid. "But it strikes me, old chap, thatlast term you played the role of the aforesaid freshies to perfection."

  "Oh, that was different. But let them wait. We'll put the kibosh ontheir fun
in a few days. Has Dutch got the stuff?"

  "Hush!" exclaimed Phil. "The least hint will spoil the scheme ofrevenge! Revenge! Revenge!" he hissed, after the manner of a stagevillain. "We will have our re-venge-e-e-e-e!"

  It was the night of the freshman dance, an annual affair that loomedlarge in the annals of the first-year students and their girl friends. Itwas to be held in a hall in Haddonfield, and many were the precautionstaken by the committee to prevent any of the hated sophomores fromattending, or getting to the place beforehand, lest they might, by someuntoward act, "put it on the blink," as Holly Cross used to say.

  The hall was tastefully arranged with flowers and a bank of palms,behind which the orchestra was to be hidden. About the balcony weredraped the college colors, with the class hues of the freshmenintermingled.

  Early on the evening of the dance, Garvey Gerhart, who was chairman ofthe committee on arrangements, left the college on his way to town tosee that all was in readiness.

  "Doesn't he look pretty!" exclaimed Phil, who, with a group ofsophomores, stood near Booker Chapel.

  "I wonder if he has his dress suit on?" asked Tom.

  "We ought to see if his hair is parted," put in Sid. "Freshmen don'tknow how to look after themselves. Have you a clean pocket handkerchief,Algernon?" and he spoke the last in a mocking tone.

  "Look out; there may be another fire," retorted Gerhart with a grin, andthe sophomores could only grit their teeth. They knew the freshmen stillhad the laugh on them.

  "But not for long?" muttered Phil. "Is Dutch all ready?"

  "All ready," answered that worthy for himself. "We'll slip off to townas soon as it's dusk."

  "Think you'll have any trouble in getting in?" asked Ed Kerr.

  "Not a bit. I bribed one of the doorkeepers. Be on hand outside tolisten to the fun."

  A little before the first arrivals at the freshman dance had reached thehall, a figure might have been seen moving quickly about the ballroom inthe dim illumination from the half-turned-down lights. The figure wentabout in circles, with curious motions of the hands, and then, after asurvey of the place and a silent laugh, withdrew.

  The music began a dreamy waltz, following the opening march. Freshmenled their fair partners out on the floor, and began whirling them about.The lights twinkled, there was the sweet smell of flowers, fair facesof the girls looked up into the proud, flushed ones of the youths.Chaperons looked on approvingly. The music became a trifle faster. Thedance was in full swing.

  Suddenly a girl gave a frightened little cry.

  "What's the matter?" asked her partner.

  "My shoes! They--they seem to be sticking to the floor. I--I can'tdance!"

  From all over the room arose similar cries of dismay from the girls andexclamations of disgust from the boys. The dancers went slower andslower. It was an effort to glide about, and some could scarcely lifttheir feet. The floor seemed to hold them as a magnet does a bit ofiron. Garvey Gerhart, releasing his pretty partner, leaned over andtouched the floor.

  "It's as sticky as molasses!" he cried in dismay.