A GREAT DISTURBANCE
Time waits for no one, and that statement was as true of Ranleigh boys as of any others. Clive Darrell, in a mere twinkling as it seemed, had become quite an old stager at the school. Since that momentous match when Sturton had led his eleven to victory, thereby stimulating Clive to declare the most ambitious of sentiments, two and a half years had slipped by, two and half years which had seen great changes at Ranleigh.
"But always the Old Firm hangs on and exists," reflected Bert, as he sat on the table in Upper Sixth and stared into the fire. "I remember the term when Harvey left."
"One of the best," interjected Susanne, now no longer a gawky, ill-dressed youth, given to smoking cigarettes on every occasion, but spick-and-span, as immaculate as Rawlings, very English in appearance, and looking quite twenty-one years of age, for the great Susanne sported a moustache, and could, had he wished it, as he often declared, have grown a beard even.
"Better than any of the masters, too," he had said. "Awful bore, don't you know, you fellows. A chap has to shave regularly now every day. That means getting up half an hour earlier——"
"Draw it mild," Hugh had cried. "Half an hour. That's enough for a dozen shaves."
Whereat Susanne had crushed his friend with a withering glance and an air of superiority which made Hugh blush.
"What do you know of shaving?" he had asked satirically, closely inspecting his friend's smooth chin. "Not much. You're a baby."
But the subject under discussion was the change which had come to Ranleigh. Harvey had swayed the destinies of the school. Then Sturton had come upon the scene with his new ideas of exercise for all every day. Clive remembered the success of that innovation. Then Lawton, an Upper Sixth fellow, had followed, and held the post for more than a year. Later Franklin had ascended to the giddy height to which Clive ventured to aim. As to the Old Firm, as Bert had said, it still clung tenaciously together.
"As big friends as ever," reflected Susanne. "That's something. Of course, there have been rows, eh?"
"Some. That one between Masters and Clive was a bad un. Remember it?"
Susanne did. It was back in a past age. It had taken place long ago. But in those days it had appeared excessively severe, and had threatened the break-up of the partnership. And the cause was really so very simple.
"All about a cricket ball," laughed Bert. "Masters had lost one."
"Yes, Masters always does lose something," agreed Susanne. "Of course, he discovered the exact article in Clive's locker."
"Of course! And claimed it."
"Refused all explanations. Almost went to the extreme of accusing Clive of theft. In the end said he must have put the ball there himself in mistake. They fought it out."
That was where the seriousness of the thing came in. And yet, looking back upon the event, there was little doubt that the tussle which had resulted cleared the air wonderfully. For Clive and Masters went at one another with their fists, and having struggled through half a dozen rounds were declared to have made a drawn battle of it. Of course they shook hands. In fact, within ten minutes of the finish of the contest they were chatting in the old amicable manner and demolishing a cake which had arrived at the school for one of them that very morning.
"And the funny thing about it all was that the cricket ball—the one Masters had lost—was discovered tucked away in a corner of his own locker, where, no doubt, he himself had placed it," laughed Susanne. "That's Masters all over. Flares out in an instant. Licks the dust afterwards when he knows he's wrong, and makes the most ample apologies. By the way, Bert, I wish that fellow Rawlings would take himself off. He spoils our happy family here. No one wants him, and precious few trust him. Besides, he's too old to be at the school any longer. He ought to have gone up to the 'Varsity long ago."
It may be said with truth and fairness that Susanne was by no means prejudiced. He didn't like Rawlings, and never had done so. More than that, Rawlings was decidedly unpopular, and had been so from the day when the ranks of the Old Firm had been recruited. Had he been different, more friendly and less underhanded, he would most certainly have been captain of the school. As it was the Sixth voted en masse against him, a fact which Rawlings did not fail to perceive. It made him furious. He hated his fellow prefects, detested the masters, and was stupidly and outrageously jealous of them all. And the presence of this unpopular fellow, older than any of the others in Upper Sixth, was a damper to their enjoyment. He was a damper elsewhere. In East he was head prefect, and a martinet. He seemed to air there all the high-handed manners he loved so much, and which were forbidden in his class-room. Why he remained on at the school was a problem which none could solve. But there he was, barred by the Sixth, detested by the juniors in his dormitory, and disliked by not a few of the masters.
Clive, too, had ascended to the Upper Sixth. It may be said, indeed, that his rise had been meteoric. Of a sudden he had taken most seriously to work, had developed an acuteness hitherto unsuspected, and much to the delight of Old B., who coached him, had rushed his way up the school till now he was the youngest fellow in his form. A prefect also, he was senior in his old dormitory, reigning where Sturton had once held sway.
Masters had managed to crawl to the Lower Sixth, and was noted in the school more for games than for lessons. His sturdy, genial figure attracted the admiring eye of many a junior as he tramped the corridor, and when we admit that he was still as much a boy as ever, we do no harm to his reputation. Trendall, now an excellent fellow, was with Susanne and Bert in the Upper Sixth, while Hugh, now Ranleigh's chief exponent of gymnastics, was in the Upper Fifth.
It seemed, in fact, that nothing more could be wanted by the Old Firm and their fellows at Ranleigh to complete their happiness, and that something approaching an earthquake would be needed to upset their equanimity. However, it is the unexpected which always happens, and one night Ranleigh was stirred to the very depths of its foundations.
"Darrell—I say, Darrell," whispered a tremulous voice somewhere near the hour of midnight, while a ghost-like figure bent over him. "Darrell, please, are you awake?"
Clive wasn't. He stirred uneasily at the touch of this junior's hand, for Parfit, the boy who had stolen across from his bed to wake him, was hardly eleven years of age. Naturally timid at the thought of disturbing so august a person as the head prefect of his dormitory, Parfit quaked as Clive rolled over on to his other side and snored. Then, as if forced on by desperation, the lad shook him with a heavy hand.
"Darrell, please," he called. "I—I——"
"Hullo!" Clive sat up, gaping and rubbing his eyes. "Bell gone! Eh? Then what the dickens——! Why, it's Parfit."
"Please, Darrell," said the youth, "I'm awfully sorry for waking you, but——"
"You'll need your sorrow, young un," came the none too friendly interruption, for Clive, like others, objected to be roused in the middle of the night without due reason. Not that he was hard with his juniors. Indeed, he was always jovial with them.
"Well, what is it?" he asked, hearing the boy's teeth chattering, and at once speaking to him kindly. "Been scared, eh? Been dreaming something that's disturbed you? Well, cut along, young un, you'll be all right."
But Parfit had no intention of cutting. "It's not dreaming, Darrell," he said eagerly. "It's fire."
"Fire!"
"Yes, I—I think. I'm next to the door, and I feel sure I can smell smoke. Please, Darrell, I hope you won't be angry, but I felt bound to come and wake you."
Clive was out of his bed like a shot, and getting into his dressing-gown and slippers before Parfit could believe it.
"You get back to bed, young un. I'll go and see. And don't talk of being sorry. If you smelled smoke, or thought you did, why, of course, the thing to do was to wake me. I'd have licked you if it had been a piece of foolery. But, right or wrong, you can expect only thanks for what you've done. So cut, there's a sensible fellow. I'll hop downstairs and see whether there's anything in it."
He slipped down the length of the dormitory while Parfit was thanking him, and swiftly pulled the door open.
"Yes, smoke," he told himself, sniffing. "And thick. I can see it coming up the stairway."
There was a gas jet on the stairs, kept burning all night, and sure enough, by the light it gave, smoke could be seen filtering up the stairs and whirling in thin wisps over the banisters. Clive shut the door behind him, gathered his dressing-gown about his body, and ran downstairs.
"I can hear crackling," he told himself, stopping for a second or more to listen. "That means a fire. George! This is serious!"
It was more, as he discovered when he reached the foot of the stairs. For there the smoke was dense and suffocating. It was swirling from the opposite side of the wide corridor passing between the two staircases leading to the South Dormitories, while beneath the one giving access to Two and Three South the flash of flames could be seen through the dense haze.
"A fire under the stairs. Spreading fast, by the look of it," Clive thought. "It'll reach the gallery above, perhaps, and then the fellows in South Dormitories would be cut off and would have to clear out through the door to West landing. What ought a fellow to do?"
His inclination was to go tearing off up the stairs to his own dormitory, there to awaken the boys, while he rapped hard at the door of the room leading out of One South, occupied by Mr. Branson. And then he thought of the excitement which would result once the alarm was sounded.
"Make sure that it's a bad thing first of all," he said. "I'm going to squint in through that door and see what's happening."
His eyes were shedding streams of tears by now, for the pungent smoke attacked them remorselessly. Then, too, he was choking violently. To cross the wide corridor below and open the door beneath the far stairway, behind which the fire lay without a doubt, meant encountering denser and still more choking fumes. But Clive did not think of the discomfort or of the danger of the act. He thought of the welfare of Ranleigh, of the commotion there would be were he to give an alarm, and of the fact that action on the part of himself and others of the prefects in South Dormitories might put an end to the fire, and that without disturbing others. Wrapping the tail of his dressing-gown round his mouth, therefore, he darted to the bottom of the stairs and raced across the corridor, diving into a swirling cloud of choking vapour through which he could not see. But the reflection of the flames within the door he aimed for caught his eye. He felt for the handle and pushed the door open. Instantly flames blazed out at him, while hot smoke poured into his face, enveloped him completely, and went swirling up to the roof. There was a perfect furnace beneath those stairs. He could hear the woodwork all around crackling. It was clear that the conflagration was of a serious nature and most threatening. Instantly he banged the hot door to, and raced across for his own stairway. And in the short time it took him to ascend he had made up his mind how to act.
"Wake Susanne first. Let him do the same for the other prefects. Then take towels, blankets, and water. If the thing can't be beaten out, we'll wake Mr. Branson, and turn every fellow out of the dormitories. Here goes for Susanne."
But a violent fit of coughing doubled him up at the top of the stairs, and for a while he was helpless. "Please, Darrell," he heard in the midst of the attack, while Parfit's voice came feebly to him, "is—is it smoke? Is there a fire?"
Clive did not deign to answer. He shook off the fit of coughing with an effort and raced into Two South. He knew exactly where Susanne slept, and soon had that worthy along with him. In fact, in less than two minutes every prefect in South was mustered. Taking their bath towels with them and bearing cans of water they dashed down the stairs, while Clive himself reached for the extinguisher kept on every landing.
"We'll give it a trial," he said to Susanne. "If we don't make any sort of effect on the fire we'll sound an alarm, collect all prefects, and man the hoses. In fact, as only three or four of us can work below, I'll get Slater and Gregory to mount the nearest there is. Come on, you fellows."
A word to the two junior prefects, Slater and Gregory, sent them off post-haste to the nearest stand-pipe, near which a hose was coiled, while Clive led the way down the stairs to the site of the fire.
"Tie your towels round your faces," he gasped, for the smoke was even more irritating now, and was denser even. "Now, we've half a dozen cans of water between us. I'll open the door. Let my extinguisher play on the flames for a while, and then finish the business with water."
But though an extinguisher may be an excellent invention, and will extinguish a fire swiftly, its successful action depends entirely on one point. The contents must be delivered on the fire direct, and to that end the one who grips it must approach sufficiently close to the flames. Here, as it happened, that was almost impossible. For when the staircase door was thrown open the improvised brigade was swept back by an appalling gush of flame and smoke. Clive ducked his head, turned his face away, and set the extinguisher going. But the effect was nil, for the actual fire was situated round the angle of the door. Clive forced his way nearer till he was within two feet of the entrance, and endeavoured to direct the jet round the corner. And then Susanne dragged him backward.
