“I wonder if he is telling the truth?” whispered the young major to his chums. “Ten of them! It doesn’t seem possible!”
“Wait till I take a look out of a window,” said Dale, and ran to the nearest opening. He poked out his head and looked down on the campus. “Well, I declare!” he ejaculated.
“What do you see?” asked several in a chorus.
“Three men down there, and they are armed with clubs and guns!”
“Never!” burst out Jack, and ran forward to take a look himself. Soon every window was crowded with cadets, all gazing down to the ground below. There were three strange men, including one of those who had been in the mess hall the evening previous. As Dale had said, each had a club in one hand and a gun in the other. They walked up and down the side of the building, every once in a while glancing upward.
“This is the limit!” cried Pepper. “Why, you’d think we were prisoners in a penitentiary!”
“Yes, and some of those men were the keepers,” added Andy. “Oh, I say,” he went on, “let us give them something to let them know we are awake.”
“Right you are!” cried Pepper, quick to catch on to a joke. “Everybody hand them a souvenir!”
In a moment more each cadet present in the two rooms had armed himself. One had a cake of soap, another an old pair of shoes, another a pitcher of water, and the rest old books and odds and ends of various kinds.
“Now then, all together!” cried Pepper. “One, two, three!” And [down went the miscellaneous collection] on the heads of the guards. Yells of pain and wonder arose, for each of the men was struck. Before the guards could recover from the unexpected attack, each cadet withdrew from sight.