“That is now fifty years ago,” said he, “and more—but I remember it as if it had happened yesterday.
“I was just going with two others from the Karreehof, and suddenly we heard a scream come from the corridor—I can not describe at all how it sounded—when a tiger or other wild beast breaks loose from his cage and throws himself on some one, then, I think, one would hear something like it.
“It was so horrible that we three let our arms drop and stood there quite paralyzed. And not only we, but everything in the Karreehof stopped and suddenly grew quiet. And then everything that had two legs to run with kept rushing up at full speed toward the corridor, so that it fairly swarmed and thickened black around the corridor. I, naturally, with the rest—and what I saw there—
“Little L had climbed on to Long K like a wildcat—nothing else—and with his left hand hanging on by the latter’s collar so that the tall gawk was half-choked, with his right fist he kept up a crack—crack—and crack right in the middle of Long K’s face, wherever it happened to strike, so that the blood was pouring from Long K’s nose like a waterfall.
“Now from the other court came the officer who was on duty and broke his way through the cadets. ‘L No. II, will you leave off at once!’ he thundered—for he was a man tall as a tree and had a voice that could be heard from one end of the Academy to the other, and we had a wholesome respect for him.
“But Little L neither heard nor saw, but kept on belaboring Long K in the face still more, and with it came again and again that fearful uncanny shriek that thrilled through us all, marrow and bone.
“When the officer saw that he-took hold himself, gripped the little fellow by both shoulders, and by main force tore him away from Long K.
“As soon as he stood upon his feet, however, Little L rolled up the whites of his eyes, fell his full length to the earth, and writhed on the ground in a convulsion.
“We had never yet seen anything like it, and were shocked and, stared at it in absolute terror.
“But the officer, who had been bending down over him, now straightened himself: ‘The lad certainly has a most serious convulsion,’ said he. ‘Forward, two take hold of his feet’—he himself lifted him under the arms—‘over to the infirmary!’