The company showed every disposition to respond to the appeal.
“Look here,” said I, “it’s not my fault—but if you kick me, I’ll tell him about your precious guy, and you can look after him yourself; I shan’t. There!”
This rather fetched them. As custodian of that illicit effigy I had my uses, and they hardly cared to dispense with me. So Trimble was ordered not to make an ass of himself, and the discussion went back to Tempest and his blazer.
“I tell you what,” said Warminster. “I vote we hang about a bit and cheer him when he comes in. There’s no one to lag us for not going to bed, and we may as well stay and back him up.”
With which patriotic resolve we resumed our seats and occupied the interval with auditing the accounts of the club—a painful and tedious operation which gave rise to much dispute and recrimination, particularly when it was discovered that on paper we were 25 shillings to the good, whereas in the treasurer’s pocket we were 6 shillings to the bad.
The treasurer had a bad quarter of an hour of it, till it was discovered that the auditors had accidentally forgotten to carry the total of one column to the top of the next, an oversight which nearly brought about the dissolution of the club, so fierce was the storm which raged over it.
More than half an hour was spent over these proceedings, and we began to wonder why Tempest had not come back. It was certain he must have been stopped by somebody, or he would have been back in ten minutes. Had he and Jarman had an encounter? Was Mr Jarman at that moment begging for quarter? or was our man answering for his riot to the head master?
Half an hour passed, three-quarters, an hour. Then, just as we were giving him up, hurried footsteps came across the quadrangle, and Tempest, with pale face and disordered guise, carrying his blazer on his arm, entered and passed rapidly to his room. His countenance was too forbidding for us to venture on our promised cheer. Something unusual had happened. How we longed to know what it was!
I was thrust forward to follow him to his study, on the chance of ascertaining, and was on the point of obeying, when a terrific sound broke the silence of the night, and sent us back with white, rigid faces in a heap into the faggery.
The sound proceeded from the direction of the gymnasium—first of all, a dull, spasmodic thunder; then a fierce burst, followed almost immediately by two tremendous reports which shook us to the soles of our boots.