Then Tug began to struggle furiously again, and to resist their efforts to drag him out of the room. He could easily have raised a cry that would have brought a professor to his rescue and scattered his persecutors like sparrows; but his boyish idea of honor put that rescue out of his reach, and he fought like a dumb man, with only such occasional grunts as his struggle tore from him.
He might have been fighting them yet, for all I know, had not History twisted his mouth from under the hand of his captor and threatened—he had not breath enough left to call for help:
"If—you—don't let me go—I'll—tell on you."
The very thought of this smallness horrified Tug so much that he stopped struggling, and turned his head to implore History not to disgrace Lakerim by being a tattler. The Crows saw their chance, and while Tug's attention was occupied one of them threw a loosely woven sack over his head and drew it down about his neck. Then they started once more on the march, History scratching and kicking in all directions and doing very little harm, while Tug, with his hands tied behind him and his head first in a noose, used his only weapons, his shoulders, with the fury of a Spanish bull. And before they got him through the door he had nearly disabled three of his assailants, making one of them bite his tongue in a manner most uncomfortable. And the room looked as if a young cyclone had been testing its muscles there!
The Crows hustled the Lakerimmers out without any unnecessary tenderness, forgetting to close the door after them. Out of the hall and across the board walk, on to the soft, frosty grass where the sound of their scuffling feet would not betray them, they jostled their way. Tug soon decided that the best thing for him to do was to reserve his strength; so he ceased to resist, and followed meekly where they led. They whirled him round on his heel several times to confuse him as to the direction they took, then they hurried him through the dark woods of a neglected corner of the campus. History simply refused to go on his own feet, and they had to carry him most of the way, and found only partial revenge in pinching his spidery legs and bumping his head into occasional trees.
The two boys knew when they left the campus by the fact that they were bundled and boosted over a stone wall and across a road.
History, as he stumbled along at. Tug's side, at length came to himself enough to be reminded of the way the ancient Romans used to treat such captives as were brought back in triumph by their generals. But Tug did not care to hear about the troubles of the Gauls—he had troubles of his own.
Once they paused and heard a mysterious whispering among the Crows, who left them standing alone and withdrew a little distance. History was afraid to move in the dark, for fear that he might step out of the frying-pan into the fire; but Tug, always ready to take even the most desperate chance, thought, he would make a bolt for it. He put one foot forward as a starter, but found no ground in front of him. He felt about cautiously with his toe, and discovered that he was standing at the brink of a ledge. How deep the ravine in front of him was, he could only imagine, and in spite of his courage he shivered at the thought of what he might have done had he followed his first impulse and made a dash. There are pleasanter things on a dark night than standing with eyes blindfolded and hands bound on the edge of an unknown embankment. As he waited, the weakening effect of the struggle and the mysterious terrors of the darkness told on his nerves, and he shivered a bit in spite of his clenched teeth. Then he overheard the voices of the Crows, and one of them was saying:
"Aw, go on, shove him over."
Another protested: "But it might break his neck, and it's sure to fracture a bone or two."