When Lyceum and South Middle was reached the seniors turned and led the way through the narrow passage between the two buildings, which is known at Yale as the Pass of Thermopylæ. The juniors followed the seniors, and the sophomores came close after.
As is the custom, the sophomores broke ranks at the farther end of the pass, and prepared to fall on the freshmen as they came through.
The head of the freshmen line came on gaily, but the sophomores could not see what the latter half of the line was doing.
“At ’em!” yelled Ready, as he saw the freshmen halt, as if in alarm at the sight of the massed lines waiting for them to run the gantlet.
The freshmen seemed to waver and crowd back, which filled Ready’s heart with fear that they would somehow turn about and escape. Crying for the others to come on, he plunged into the pass. The sophs were eager to have part in the fun, and they followed, choking the exit to the pass and trying to jam in.
Then round Lyceum on the dead run charged in a compact body the second rear half of the freshmen, led by Rolf Boltwood, whose long hair seemed to wave wildly in the breeze. Without a sound, like the rush of a mighty wave, they came upon the sophomores packed and struggling at the exit of the pass, sweeping them back into it.
And thus the sophomores were caught between two fires. Neither seniors nor juniors had been given a hint of what was going to happen, and so they were quite unprepared for this astonishing move on the part of the freshmen.
There were shrieks of alarm from the sophomores, but too late they realized that they had been caught in a trap. They were driven into the pass, hurled down, piled up, stood on end, and battered in the most heartless manner.
But what was worse than anything else was the fact that preparations had been made to drench the freshmen who should be caught in this manner, and now the sophomores’ own allies threw open windows above and hurled down bucketful after bucketful of wet, wet water onto the heads of the poor wretches beneath.
What shrieks went up! What frantic struggles were made! What fury filled the hearts of the tricked and outwitted sophomores!