"No. He'd have killed him if he had. He picked Skeff up by the collar and the seat of his bags and said to me, 'Watch 'em, Dishy!' Then he carried Skeff downstairs, and slugged him into the middle of the grass plot outside."
"Good egg!" murmured Mr. Angus.
"Didn't the others try to bolt?" inquired Towzer.
"The idea was mooted," replied the coxswain loftily, "but I told them to sit still or they'd get their silly heads knocked together."
"Did he cart them all downstairs?"
"No; it would have been too tame a job with such a set of mangy squirts. He simply came back and said:—
"'Now, you miserable little snipes, I give you fifteen seconds to quit these premises. The last man out will be personally assisted downstairs by me. I'm sorry I've only got slippers on.' Still, he landed the Honourable Hopton-Hattersley a very healthy root for all that," concluded Dishy, with a seraphic smile. "After that the porter arrived with the Dean's compliments, and it was past the hour for music, gentlemen; but Hughie slapped him on the back and told him that he had arrived too late for the fair. Then he went home to bed as cool as a cucumber. Oh, he's—Hallo, there he is! I must catch him. So long, you men! See you at lunch, Reggie."
And Mr. Dishart-Watson, swelling with importance, hurried off to overtake a figure which had swung out of a distant staircase in the southwest corner of the court and was striding towards the gateway.
There was no undergraduate slouchiness discernible either in the dress or in the appearance of the Captain of the St. Benedict's boat. He was a strong-limbed, clean-run young man of about twenty-one; perhaps a trifle too muscular to be a quick mover, but, with his broad back and sinewy loins, an ideally built rowing-man. He was a youth of rather grave countenance, with shrewd blue eyes which had a habit of disappearing into his head when he laughed, and a mouth in which, during these same periods of exhilaration, his friends confidently asserted that you could post a letter. He was a born leader of men, and, as the discerning reader will have gathered from Mr. Dishart-Watson's narrative, was still strongly imbued with what may be called public-school principles of justice. He entirely refused to suffer fools gladly or even resignedly, but had a kindly nod for timorous freshmen, a friendly salute for those Dons who regarded undergraduates as an integral part of the scheme of college life and not merely as a necessary evil, and a courtly good-day for fluttered and appreciative bedmakers. He never forgot the faces or names of any of those over him or under him—Dons and college servants, that is; and further, in his own walk of life (a society in which you may recognise the existence of no man, even though he daily passes you the salt or gathers you under his arm in the familiarity of a Rugby scrummage, until you have been formally introduced to him), he never pretended to do so.
While Mr. Dishy-Washy's short legs are endeavouring to bring him alongside the striding Olympian in front, it will perhaps be well to explain why it was so absolutely essential to the welfare of St. Benedict's College that eight young men should enjoy a night's rest untrammelled by revels on the floors below.