"Snorky" Green, at the fourth desk of the middle aisle, gazed dreamily at the forgotten pages of the divine Virgil. The wide windows let in the warm breath of June meadows and the tiny sounds of contented insects roaming in unhuman liberty. Outside were soft banks to loll upon, from which to watch the baseball candidates gambolling over the neat diamond, tennis courts calling to be played upon, and the friendly "jigger" ready to soothe the parched highway to the aching void. And for an hour the tugging souls of forty-two imprisoned little pagans would have to construe, and parse, and decline, secretly cursing the fossils who rediscovered those unnecessary Latin documents.
Eight rows of desks, nine deep, were swept by the Argus eye of the master from his raised pulpit. Around the room, immense vacant blackboards shut them in—dark, hopeless walls over which no convict might clamber, on which a thousand boys had blundered and guessed and writ in water.
Lucius Cassius Hopkins, "The Roman," man of heroic and consular mould, flunker of boys, and deviser of systems against which even the ingenuity of a Hickey hurled itself in vain, sat on the rostrum, pitilessly mowing down the unresisting ranks.
Snorky's tousled hair was more rumpled than ever, a smudge was on one cheek, where his grimy, ball-stained hand had unknowingly left its mark. He was dirty, bored, and unprepared. The dickey at his throat, formed by the junction of a collar and two joined cuffs, saved the proprieties and allowed the body to keep cool. But the spirit of dreams was upon Snorky, and the hard, rectangular room began to recede.
He heard indistinctly the low, mocking rumble of the Roman as his scythe passed down the rows.
"Anything from the Simpson twins to-day? No, no? Anything from the Davis House combination? Too bad! too bad! Nothing from the illuminating Hicks? Yes? No? Too bad! too bad!"
Snorky did not hear him; his eyes were on the firm torsos of Flash Condit and Charley De Soto before him—Condit, wonder of the football field, hero of the touchdown against the Princeton 'varsity, and De Soto the phenomenal shortstop, both Olympian spirits doomed to endure the barbed shafts of Lucius Cassius Hopkins.
He, too,—Snorky,—would go down in the annals of school history. He remembered the beginning of an out-curve he had developed that morning in the lot back of the Woodhull—a genuine out-curve, Ginger Pop Rooker to the contrary, notwithstanding. With a little practice he would master the perplexing in-curve and the drop. And the Woodhull needed a pitcher badly. McCarthy had no courage; the Dickinson would batter him all over the field in the afternoon's game, and then good-bye to the championship. In his mind he began the game, trotting hopelessly out into left field. He saw Hickey, first up for the Dickinson, get a base on balls—four wide ones in succession. Slugger Jones, four balls—heavens, to be beaten like that! Turkey Reiter, third man up, hit a two-bagger; two runs. Doc Macnooder knocked the first ball pitched for a clean single; a two-bagger for the Egghead! Again four balls for Butcher Stevens! The Red Dog, of all people in the world, to hit safely! And still they allowed the slaughter to go on! The Dickinson House was shrieking with joy, dancing war-dances, back of third, and singing derisive songs of triumph. Flea Obie went to first on another base on balls, filling the bases. And five runs over the plate! Hickey and Turkey on the line began to dance a cake-walk. From the uproarious Dickinsonians rose the humiliating wail:
"We're on to his curves, we're on to his curves;
Long-legged McCarthy has lost his nerves."
McCarthy had lost his nerves. Five runs, the bases full, and "Wash" Simmons, the Dickinson pitcher, to the bat. The infield, badly rattled, played in to catch the runner at home in approved professional style. Snorky stole in closer and closer until he was almost back of shortstop. Simmons he knew couldn't send it out of the diamond. But Wash knocked what looked to be a clean single, clear over the heads of the near infield. That was what he had been waiting for; on the full run he made a desperate dive, caught the ball one-handed, close to the ground, turned a somersault, scrambled to second base, and shot the ball to first before the runner could even check himself!