Christmas week came. Bobby and Fred had intended to go home to Clinton for the short holiday, but the very day the term closed a great snowstorm set in. It snowed so heavily the first night that the railroads were blocked. Dr. Raymond would not let any of the boys leave the school, save two or three who lived near and whose people came for them in sleighs.
The good doctor telegraphed to the parents of his boys instead, and great preparations were made for a dinner and celebration at the school which would make the boys forget their disappointment.
Presents could arrive by express, too, by New Year's, and Dr. Raymond said that the actual distribution of gifts at Rockledge would be advanced one week. New Year's should be celebrated like Christmas.
The two and a half days' snow covered the lake two feet deep on a level. The ice had been more than a foot thick when it began to snow. In fact, the Rockledge and Belden icemen had been getting ready to cut, but would now have to put it over until after New Year's, because of the scarcity of labor.
There was no danger on the ice. There was not one airhole anywhere between the shore-fronts of the two schools—a stretch of nearly four miles of level, glistening snow.
The boys of the Rockledge Lower School had had much fun, on half holidays, up the lake at the island where the winter camp had been built; but that was a long way to go over the snow. Nobody had ever tried snowshoeing and skiing, and the authorities at the school rather frowned upon these sports. However, the field of snow between the bluffs on which the rival schools were built was a vast temptation for a hundred active boys.
There was a snowball skirmish between the larger boys of the two schools the very first day after the storm ceased. Captain Gray and his crowd had met a bunch of Beldenites ("Bedlamites," the Rockledge boys called their rivals) near the first island—a little, rocky cone, now a snowy mound, and with only a few trees upon it.
The fight had been fast and furious as long as it lasted, but it was rather a good-natured one, after all. Finally Captain Gray and the captain of the Belden School met for a few minutes' conversation. In that few minutes a challenge was given and accepted. Unless the teachers interfered, it was arranged to have a general snow battle between the schools.
Free from lessons, and with most of the ordinary rules relaxed, Captain Gray could plan a coup that the enemy would not possibly expect. It had been agreed that the coming battle should be fought near the island, which was about in the middle of the lake between the two schools.
That night, after supper, Captain Gray picked a dozen boys to help him—and not all big boys, for Bobby and Fred were among them—and they slipped out of the house.