“I confess that I have often had my fears on that point,” replied Jones; “but we mustn’t think of leaving him behind. Let him act as leader, if he can, until we are fairly afloat, and then, if we find he doesn’t know what he is about, we can easily depose him and put you in his place.”
“I don’t care to be captain,” said Enoch. “I’d just as soon go before the mast, provided there is somebody on the quarter-deck who understands his business. These racing boats are cranky things, and sometimes they turn bottom side up without any provocation at all. There’s Brigham now.”
Lester was delighted to learn that his two old cronies were ready to side with him, but he did not show it. He appeared to be quite indifferent.
“I listened with all my ears when the last week’s standing was announced, and I know very well what it was that brought you over to me,” said he, addressing himself to Jones. “You’re going to fall below seventy-five in spite of all you can do, and Enoch doesn’t want to go to Hamilton without you. I’ll have to talk to the boys about it. Perhaps they will say they don’t want you, because you went back on us once.”
“I say we didn’t go back on you or anybody else,” said Enoch, looking savagely at Lester. “We are ready to stand by our agreement, and you are not.”
Jones and Williams, believing that Lester was not very favorably disposed toward them, thought it would be a good plan to talk to the boys about it themselves. They found that some were glad to welcome them back, but that those who wanted to go to Hamilton and who were working hard, and with a fair prospect of success, to win the required number of marks, met their advances rather coldly.
“Let the celebration go and come with us,” urged Jones. “I’ll warrant you’ll see more fun on the bay than you will in marching about the dusty streets of Hamilton while the mercury is away up in the nineties.”
“Sour grapes!” exclaimed one of the boys. “Look here, Jones. A little while ago this parade was the grandest thing that ever was thought of, and you wouldn’t miss it for any amount of money. You tried your best to win a place in the ranks of your company, but you failed, and now you want us to fail, too. I can’t see the beauty of that.”
There was more than one who couldn’t see it—boys who spent all their time with their books and watched themselves closely, in the hope of attaining to the required standing. Some succeeded and others did not. Those who failed fell back into the ranks of Lester’s crowd, angry and discouraged, and ready for anything that would close the doors of that school against them forever. The fortunate ones, turning a deaf ear to the pleadings of their companions, but promising to keep a still tongue in their heads regarding the proposed picnic, went to the city with their company, and we must hasten on to tell what happened to them while on the way, and what they did after they got there.
While these things were going on inside of the academy, some stirring events, in which a few of the students finally became personally interested, were occurring outside of it. The daily papers, to which many of the boys were subscribers, began to speak of railroad strikes, and in every issue there was a column or more of telegrams relating to “labor troubles.” The boys read them, simply because they wanted to keep themselves posted, as far as they could, in all that was going on in the world; but they paid no particular attention to them. The news came from distant points and did not affect them in any way, because they were independent of the railroads and would be until September. If the hands on the Bordentown branch, the road that ran from Oxford through Bridgeport to Hamilton, wanted to strike for higher wages, they could do it and welcome. There was no law to prevent them. In fact, the students hoped they would do it, for then they could shoulder their muskets and march to the city, as the majority of them wanted to do.