True To His Colors

by Harry Castlemon

"Talk about rebels! Why, this is a riot," said Cole.

"It looks very like it," replied Dixon, who stood at the foot of the stairs urging every boy to fall in. "They're all going except the company officers, who have taken themselves off out of sight, so that they cannot be called upon to oppose us. Where's Caleb?"

"I made sure of him by saying that I would raise some money for him," replied Marcy.

"If we were only outside the gate we should be all right."

"We'll get out easy as falling off a log," said Dixon. "If you had glanced toward the gate when you came in, you would have seen four good fellows there talking with the sentry. It will be their business to disarm him, if he shows fight when we attempt to march out, as it is his duty to do; and if the officer of the guard tries to turn the key upon us, those four fellows will quietly take the gate from its hinges and tumble it over into the road. It's all cut and dried, and if the boys keep as still as they are now, we'll be out before the colonel knows what we are up to. Oh, I haven't been idle since the commandant ordered me from the guard-tent."

There was no need that Dixon should say this, for the actions of the students proved that he had done a good deal of talking since he was ordered out of the tent. Although they were pushing and crowding one another in their haste to get into the armory and out of it again before some busybody (there are boys of that sort in every school) could run to the colonel and apprise him of what was going on, there was not the least noise or confusion, not a word spoken above a whisper, and if there had been any studious scholars in the dormitories, they would not have been in the least disturbed. In five minutes more the armory was thronged with students, who having taken their muskets from the racks, were buckling on their cartridge-boxes. The weight of the boxes dispelled the fear that the colonel might have had the ball cartridges that were put in them the night before removed. Why he hadn't done it, seeing that he had promised to remain neutral in future, was a mystery.

"This is a high-handed proceeding, boys," observed one, "and if a shoulder-strap should come in and order us to put these guns back, then what?"

"Then would be the time for you, to prove that you were in earnest when you promised that you would stand by Rodney and Dick if the colonel refused to help them," said another. "Who cares? We're rebels anyhow, and we certainly would not go back on our principles at the command of anybody up North."

"Don't stop to discuss politics," said Dixon, who, by common consent, was the commander of the expedition, there being no commissioned officers present. "Some of you take muskets number twenty-two, thirty-four, forty-four, and fifty-six from the racks in addition to your own for those four fellows at the gate. Now fall in, in your places as near as you can. We'll not stop to count fours or to divide the companies into platoons. So long as we get there, we don't care whether we go in military form or not. Fours right: Forward, column left, march!"

"Charge bayonets!" shouted some half-wild fellow in the ranks, when the colonel and officer of the guard, both with drawn swords in their hands, suddenly appeared in the doorway. "Run over everything that gets in the road."