“You’ll hear no fog-horn to-day,” answered Paul.
“Good-bye!” shouted Fred Century, and then his sloop took an extra spurt and went ahead a distance of a hundred yards or more.
“Oh, Jack, we’ve got to beat them!” murmured Pepper. “If we don’t——”
“They’ll never get done crowing,” finished Paul.
“We’ll do our best,” answered the youthful owner of the Alice. “This race has only started.” And then he moved the tiller a trifle, to bring his boat on a more direct course for Cat Point.
To those who have read the previous volumes in this “Putnam Hall Series” the boys aboard the Alice need no special introduction. For the benefit of those who now meet them for the first time I would state that they were all pupils at Putnam Hall military academy, a fine institution of learning, located on the shore of Cayuga Lake, in New York State. Of the lads Jack Ruddy was a little the oldest. He was a well-built and handsome boy, and had been chosen as major of the school battalion.
Jack’s bosom companion was Pepper Ditmore, often called Imp, because he loved to play pranks. Pepper was such a wideawake, jolly youth you could not help but love him, and he had a host of friends.
Putnam Hall had been built by Captain Victor Putnam, a retired officer of the United States Army, who had seen strenuous service for Uncle Sam in the far West. The captain had had considerable money left to him, and with this he had purchased ten acres of land on the shore of the lake and erected his school, a handsome structure of brick and stone, containing many class-rooms, a large number of dormitories, and likewise a library, mess-room, or dining hall, an office, and other necessary apartments. There was a beautiful campus in front of the building and a parade ground to one side. Towards the rear were a gymnasium and several barns, and also a boathouse, fronting the lake. Beyond, around a curve of the shore, were fields cultivated for the benefit of the Hall, and further away were several patches of woods.
As was but natural in the case of an old army officer, Captain Putnam had organized his school upon military lines, and his students made up a battalion of two companies, as related in details in the first volume of this series, called “The Putnam Hall Cadets.” The students had voted for their own officers, and after a contest that was more or less spirited, Jack Ruddy was elected major of the battalion, and a youth named Henry Lee became captain of Company A, and Bart Conners captain of Company B. Some of the boys wanted Pepper to try for an officer’s position, but he declined, stating he would just as lief remain “a high private in the rear rank.”
At the school there was a big youth named Dan Baxter, who was a good deal of a bully. He had wanted to be an officer, and it made him very sore to see himself defeated. Together with a crony named Nick Paxton and a boy called Mumps he plotted to break up a picnic of Jack and his friends. This plot proved a boomerang, and after that Baxter and his cohorts did all they could to get Jack and his chums into trouble.