Ready About; or, Sailing the Boat

by Oliver Optic

At the usual hour all was still; and the students, who had had plenty of exercise in the boats as well as in the shops, slept soundly in their rooms. Insomnia was unknown at the institution, and all were active and bright in the morning at an early hour.

Some of them awoke at an unusually early hour the next morning, though it soon appeared that the current of events was not flowing in its ordinary channel. The students and others had been awakened by some extraordinary disturbance, or most of them would have slept till the morning-bell roused them from their slumbers.

As nearly at three o'clock as the hour could afterwards be fixed, a tremendous explosion, with a sound which equalled the report of one of the yacht-guns on board of the Sylph, shook the buildings of the school, and made the windows of the dormitory rattle as though a hurricane had struck them. The very earth seemed to tremble under the effects of the convulsion.

Suddenly startled from their slumbers, those who heard the sound, and had been shaken in their beds by it, were unable to determine where the report came from, or to form any idea of what had caused it. Perhaps half the students in their rooms leaped from their beds, and the other half were partially paralyzed where they lay by the shock.

Doubtless, if they had been awake, and had understood the cause of the explosion, they would have enjoyed it; for the average boy delights in a terrific noise. But they were literally and figuratively in the dark. They could see nothing to explain the tremendous racket which had startled them from their deep sleep, and not a sound followed the shock to give them a clew to the strange event.

Some thought it must be an earthquake; others that it was a crash of thunder which attended the striking of the lightning at some point not far from them. Possibly some of them thought that a daring rogue of the school was playing off a trick upon his companions; and more wondered if one of the chimneys on the dormitory had not fallen over, and crushed in the roof of the building.

It might be an earthquake, for there was no smell of powder, no lightning in the sky; and no one was stirring in the building, as would have been the case if the roof had been crushed. In fact, not even the most intelligent and quick-witted of the students could assign any cause to the event. They stood in their rooms, or lay in their beds, thinking of it for a few moments, waiting for something else to come, some after-clap, which would throw a ray of light on the subject. Nothing came.

Some of the boldest and most energetic of the boys began to put on a portion of their clothes, and unfastened their doors. As may well be supposed, Dory Dornwood was one of the first to come out of the stupor produced by the shock. He had not been awake more than five seconds, before he had jumped inside of his pants, and opened the door of his room.

He looked out into the long hall, but it was as dark as Egypt there; and there was no glare of a fire in the building,--not a flash, not a sound of any kind. He went back into his room, and opened the window. He looked out on the lawn, but there was nothing in motion there. No key to the enigma was within his reach.

But by this time, he heard a sound in the hall. He went to the door, but it was too dark to see any thing. Some conspiracy on the part of a few restless students might have been brought to a focus at this time, and he deemed it prudent to light his lamp before he took any step. If there was any thing to be seen, he wanted to see it.