Chapter XIV: In Which the Storm Gathers

“I guess he has gone off to get his own dinner, and he is going to leave us starve!” groaned Stuffer. “I’m not going to stand it—no, sir!” And he jumped up from his desk and began to walk around nervously.

“This is certainly a new move,” said Jack.

“I don’t believe Captain Putnam or Mr. Strong would do such a thing,” vouchsafed Bart Conners.

“No, both of them are too considerate,” answered Dale.

“This is the combined work of old Crabtree and Cuddle,” came from Andy. “Cuddle loves to cut a fellow short on grub.”

Jack walked to the door and tried the knob.

“Locked, true enough,” he said.

“But the windows aren’t,” added Pepper. “I could get out of a window almost as quick as out of a door,” he went on suggestively.

“Let’s all climb out and make a break for the mess hall,” cried Fred Century. “He has no right to cut us out of our dinner. It’s paid for.”

“So it is!” answered several.

“I’ll climb out if anybody else will,” said Reff Ritter.

“So will I!” said Dale and Coulter in a breath.

“Look here, fellows, if we make a move we ought to have a regularly appointed leader,” said Dave Kearney. “I move we make Major Ruddy our leader. He’s the commander of the battalion anyway.”

“Second the motion!” came in a dozen voices.

“What’s the matter with my leading?” demanded Reff Ritter. “I made the suggestion to climb out of the window, didn’t I?”

“That’s it—make Reff leader,” put in Paxton, quickly.

“He’s just the fellow for the place,” added Coulter, while Sabine nodded.

“No, no, give us Ruddy!” called out a great number of cadets.

“Ruddy! Ruddy!”

“No, give Ritter a show!”

“Might as well put it to a vote,” suggested Dale, when cries were heard from all sides. “All in favor of Jack Ruddy for leader raise their right hand.”

Instantly fifteen hands went up.

“Now those in favor of Reff Ritter.”

Eight hands went up. The other cadets present refused to vote at all.

“Major Ruddy has it,” announced Dale. “Is everybody satisfied?”

“Yes!” was the loud cry.

“I suppose we’ll have to be,” grumbled Coulter. “But Ritter would have made a better leader. He offered to go through the window, and——”

“Never mind chewing it over now,” broke in Pepper. “From now on, let Jack do the talking.”

“Boys, are all in favor of leaving this room and going to the mess hall?” asked the young major, mounting to the top of a desk and gazing around him.

“Yes! yes!” was the answer.

“Then let us get out of the windows, form a company on the campus, and march into the mess hall in regular soldier style. When we get there, let every fellow take his usual place—and refuse to budge until dinner is served.”

“Hurrah! That’s the talk!” cried Stuffer. “And a full-sized dinner too, with dessert!” he added hastily.

For cadets used to gymnasium practice, it was an easy matter to climb out of the classroom windows to the campus. Once on the green, Jack lost no time in forming the boys into a single company.

“Attention!” he called out. “By column of two, forward march!” And he led the way, the cadets following in pairs, and marching as stiffly as if on dress parade.

It may be that somebody was on the watch, yet the boys were not disturbed, and soon they filed into the mess hall, where the other cadets were just finishing their midday meal. At one table sat Pluxton Cuddle and at another Josiah Crabtree. Both leaped to their feet in amazement.

“How dare you!” gasped Josiah Crabtree. “How dare you!” For the moment he could think of nothing else to say.

“As it was past the dinner hour the class made up its mind to come in and get something to eat,” said Jack, stiffly, and looking the teacher full in the face.

“You—you—rascal!” exploded the teacher. “I’ll have you to underst——”

“Excuse me, Mr. Crabtree, I am not a rascal,” interrupted Jack. “I am the major of the Putnam Hall battalion and the spokesman of our class—so chosen by a vote of the cadets. We decided that we wanted dinner—and we are here to get it.”

“This is mutiny—rebellion!” gasped Pluxton Cuddle.

“You can call it what you please, Mr. Cuddle. We are entitled to our dinner and we mean to have it.”

“Good for you, Major Ruddy!” came from a pupil from another classroom.

“Crabtree and Cuddle have no right to do you out of your dinners,” added another.

“Make them give you what you pay for,” added a third.

The cries increased until it looked as if the demonstration in the mess hall would be greater than that which had occurred in the classroom. Pluxton Cuddle called for order, but even as he spoke a hot potato went sailing through the air and hit him in the shirt front. Then a shower of bread went up into the air, falling all around both Cuddle and Crabtree.

“Boys! boys!” gasped Josiah Crabtree, and now he turned pale, wondering what would happen next.

“Better give ’em something to eat, sah!” suggested the head waiter, a colored man. “Some of them hungry chaps look wicked, sah!”

“They have all been fed too much, that is the reason,” said Pluxton Cuddle. “I don’t mean to-day, I mean in general. However, perhaps it will be as well, just now, to let them have a—er—a light repast,” he went on stammeringly, for another hot potato had hit him on the shoulder.

“Boys!” called out Jack. “Stop throwing things. Mr. Crabtree wants to say something.” For he saw that the teacher wanted to speak to the assemblage.

“I—er—I wish to state,” began Josiah Crabtree, when the cadets settled down at Jack’s command, “that I—er—I did not intend to make you do without your dinner. I was—er—going to—er—let you come to the mess hall—er—after the other pupils had finished. But as it is——” he gazed around somewhat helplessly, “I—er—I think you can stay. The waiters will bring in the dinner.” And he sat down and mopped his perspiring forehead with his handkerchief.

“Gosh! I’ll bet it was hard for him to come down!” whispered Dale to Pepper.

“He’s getting afraid of the crowd,” returned The Imp. “He was afraid we’d pass him the stuff on the table without waiting for plates!” And Pepper grinned suggestively.

The cadets had to wait a long time before they were served. Meanwhile Pluxton Cuddle consulted with the head waiter and paid a visit to the kitchen. As a result, when the dinner came in, the cadets found the food both scanty and exceedingly plain.

“Say, how is a chap to get along on this,” growled Stuffer. “I could eat twice as much!”

“Make the best of it this time,” said Jack. “We can hold a meeting after school and decide upon what to do in the future—if things don’t mend.”

The worst of it—to Stuffer’s mind—was that there was nothing but a little rice pudding for dessert. All of the cadets who had rebelled went from the mess room hungry—and out on the campus they discovered that the other cadets had fared little better.

“It’s Cuddle’s doings,” said one of the other students. “He’s a crank on the question of eating—thinks a man ought to eat next to nothing to be healthy and clear-minded.”

“Crabtree was willing enough to fall in with his views,” returned Pepper.

“That’s because he wanted to square up with you. Personally, Crabtree likes to eat as hearty a meal as anybody.”

“I know that.”

“I don’t know what we are coming to, if Captain Putnam or Mr. Strong don’t come back soon,” said another cadet. “We had a row in our classroom too.”

“Neither Crabtree nor Cuddle are fit to manage a school,” said Dale. “They may be good enough teachers, but they need somebody in authority over them.” And this statement hit the nail squarely on the head.

Reff Ritter was still disturbed, thinking that Crabtree might find out that he was guilty of throwing the inkwell, and he went around, “sounding” various cadets and getting them to promise not to mention the matter. He was chagrined to think that he had not been chosen leader in the rebellion, and was half inclined to draw away from Jack’s friends and form a party of his own.

“Ruddy wants to lead in everything,” he growled to Coulter. “It makes me sick!”

“Well, you can’t afford to go back on him now,” was the answer. “If you do he may take it in his head to let old Crabtree know about the inkwell, and then——”

“Oh, he can lead if he wants the job so bad,” interrupted the bully hastily.

At the proper time the bell rang for the afternoon session and all of the cadets marched to their various classrooms as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Lessons were taken up where they had been dropped, but the boys found it hard to concentrate their minds on what they were studying or reciting. All felt that a storm—and a big one at that—was brewing.

Josiah Crabtree did not come into the classroom occupied by Jack and his chums, and Reff Ritter and his crowd. Instead he sent an under teacher, a meek man who did just what he was told, no more and no less. With this teacher the boys got along very well.

“Wish we could have him right along,” observed Stuffer.

“If you did have him you wouldn’t make much progress,” answered Jack. “He’s good enough for the lower classes, but that’s all. He doesn’t know half as much as Mr. Strong.”

When the cadets were dismissed for the day they hurried out on the campus, and here Jack asked all who were interested in what had occurred to attend a meeting at the boathouse. About three-quarters of the cadets responded, those holding back being the smaller lads and a few timid ones like Mumps.

At this meeting it came out that every class in the school had “caught it,” either from Josiah Crabtree or Pluxton Cuddle. Sharp words and almost blows had been exchanged in the classrooms, and every cadet had some fault to find with the food served for dinner.

“Cuddle not only wants to cut down the amount, but he wants the meats and other things cooked in a peculiar way,” said one cadet. “I have always been used to a good table and I am not going to stand for it.”

“Nor will I!” cried Stuffer. “Our parents pay for good board—and that means three square meals a day.”

“I understand Captain Putnam and Mr. Strong expect to be away for at least ten days,” said Henry Lee. “I am not going to starve myself for that length of time, even to please Crabtree and Cuddle.”

“Just what I say!” exclaimed Pepper.

“We are certainly entitled to as good a table as we have been having,” was Jack’s comment.

“Then, if we don’t get it, let’s strike!” cried Andy.