Three guns is West Point's fire alarm. Quick as a flash, before the audience had time to think of flight, of panic, the commandant of cadets sprang to the platform.
"Company fire battalion form on the street outside, immediately!"
At the same moment, in response to a command from outside, a drum orderly sounded the "long roll." The band struck up a quick march, and tramp, tramp, tramp, the grave cadets marched out of the hall, forgetting friends and entertainment, forgetting everything in the one important thought—discipline—obedience to orders.
And in half a minute more the gymnasium was empty; the street was crowded with the anxious audience, and the battalion was tramping steadily across the parade ground in a vain search for an imaginary fire.
In that battalion were seven wildly delighted plebes. They hugged themselves for joy; they gasped, choked with repressed laughter. They punched each other in the ribs and whispered:
"Didn't we do it? Oh, didn't we do it? Three cheers for the Banded Seven—B. B. J.!"
The fire, of course was not found. Near camp the corps halted, to wait for the person who fired the alarm guns to come out and lead the way. He didn't do it, and gradually it began to dawn upon the commandant and the assembled "tacs" that the whole thing was a hoax. "And then indeed the Philistines were wroth."
Captain Quincey, the commandant, stepped to the head of the line, determined to investigate the matter on the spot. Roll call disclosed the fact that no one was absent; that made him think the guns were fired with a time fuse, and so he tried another way to find out the culprits.
It is not good form in West Point to lie; cadets who do soon find themselves cut by the class. So Captain Quincey, knowing that, gave this order:
"Parties who fired those guns will remain standing. Those who are innocent will advance one step. March!"