It began after tea—say 6.50 P. M. It got into its stride by 7.30 when Turkey, with pillows bound round the ends of forms, invented the Royal Battering-Ram Corps. It grew and—it grew till a quarter to nine when the Prefects, most of whom had fought on one side or the other, thought it time to stop and went in with ground-ashes and the bare hand for ten minutes....
Honours for the action were not awarded by the Head till Monday morning when he dealt out one dozen lickings to selected seniors, eight “millies” (one thousand), fourteen “usuals” (five hundred lines), minor impositions past count, and a stoppage of pocket-money on a scale and for a length of time unprecedented in modern history.
He said the College was within an ace of being burned to the ground when the gas-jet in Number Eleven form-room—where they tried to burn Tar Baby, fallen for the moment into the hands of the enemy—was wrenched off, and the lit gas spouted all over the ceiling till some one plugged the pipe with dormitory soap. He said that nothing save his consideration for their future careers kept him from expelling the wanton ruffians who had noosed all the desks in Number Twelve and swept them up in one crackling mound, barring a couple that had pitch-poled through the window. This, again, had been no man’s design but the inspiration of necessity when Tar Baby’s bodyguard, surrounded but defiant, was only rescued at the last minute by Turkey’s immortal flank-attack with the battering-rams that carried away the door of Number Nine. He said that the same remarks applied to the fireplace and mantelpiece in Number Seven which everybody had seen fall out of the wall of their own motion after Brer Terrapin had hitched Miss Meadow’s bed-cord to the bars of the grate.
He said much more, too; but as King pointed out in Common Room that evening, his canings were inept, he had not confiscated the Idols and, above all, had not castigated, as King would have castigated, the disgusting childishness of all concerned.
“Well,” said Little Hartopp. “I saw the Prefects choking them off as we came into prayers. You’ve reason to reckon that in the scale of suffering.”
“And more than half the damage was done under your banner, King,” the Reverend John added.
“That doesn’t affect my judgment; though, as a matter of fact, I believe Brer Terrapin triumphed over Tar Baby all along the line. Didn’t he, Prout?”
“It didn’t seem to me a fitting time to ask. The Tar Babies were handicapped, of course, by not being able to—ah—tackle a live animal.”
“I confess,” Mr. Brownell volunteered, “it was the studious perversity of certain aspects of the orgy which impressed me. And yet, what can one exp——”
“How do you mean?” King demanded. “Dickson Quartus may be eccentric, but——”