“Silence!” commanded Sprawson, with another flourish of his dreadful blade. “If you will make jokes, sir, we shall never have a chance; are we to take the whole house with us, or are we not?”
“I don’t like leaving them behind, Sprawson, to the tender mercies of any miscreants whose ambush we may have overlooked. Are the whole house there?” inquired the Spook.
“Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” from a dozen tongues, and another terrifying “Silence!” from Sprawson.
“Shall I call over, sir?” suggested Loder, emerging from obscurity to raise a laugh from the rank and file. Sprawson was too quick for him with crushing snub; he was surprised at the captain of the house: what next? So the laugh that came was at Loder’s expense, but it again was promptly quelled by the inimitable Sprawson.
“If we waste any more time here, sir, they’ll have the bars off the back study-windows and get clean away. I believe all the house are here. I should let them come, sir, if I were you; there’s safety in numbers, after all.”
“Then I lead the way,” said the Spook, diving under the raised carving-knife. “No, Sprawson, not even to you, my gallant fellow; second to none, if you’ll permit me, Sprawson, on this occasion. Follow me, my lads, follow me!”
And follow him they did on bare tip-toe, over the cold flags of the alley alongside the hall, and so out into the untrammelled moonlight of the quad. Sure enough, the nearer door to the studies was seen to be ajar. But as the Spook approached it boldly, Sprawson plucked him by the gown.
“The fives-courts, sir! I thought I saw something moving behind the back-wall!”
All eyes flew to the fives-courts at the opposite end of the quad; the back-wall, their unorthodox peculiarity as Eton courts, would have sheltered a band of robbers until the last moment, when their pursuers peeping over might be shot down comfortably at arm’s length. No better bulwark against carving-knives and battle-axes, no finer mask for a whole battery of small-arms; and yet the valiant Spook was for advancing single-footed, under that treacherous moon, upon this impregnable position. Sprawson would not hear of it; together, said Sprawson, or not at all, even if he got expelled for lifting his hand against a master. The master shook it melodramatically instead, and with a somewhat painful gait the pair started off across the stretch of moonlit gravel. Jan was the next to follow, with his jug; but all the small dormitory, being more or less armed, were to the fore in an advance which became all but universal before the leaders reached the rampart. Cave major alone had the wit to stay behind, a majestic rearguard with his hands in his dressing-gown pockets, and something suspiciously like a cigarette between his lips.
The courts were discovered empty at a glance; yet Sprawson seized Jan’s jug, and dashed it to fragments against the buttress in the outer court while the Spook was busy peering into the inner.