Harker would examine the interwoven strands, twisting it to and fro with jerks of his powerful wrists, pulling taut here, tucking something in there, and lo! the thing took shape.
“This is where you goes wrong, Mr. P., every time!” (Recollect there were sixty-odd in his term.) “Don’t forget what I’m always telling you. You splits the middle strands, and then an over-’and knot in the opposite ’alves....” It always looked so easy when Harker did it.
It was during the last night on board that{34} Harker rose to heights truly magnanimous. The fourth term regarded it as its right and privilege, on the last night of the term, to hold high carnival until sleep overtook them. Cadet captains even cast their responsibilities to the winds that night and scampered about, slim, pyjama-clad figures, in the dim light of the lanterns, ruthlessly cutting down the prig who yearned for slumber, lashing-up a victim in his hammock and leaving him upside-down to reflect on certain deeds of the past year that earned him this retribution, floating about on gratings on the surface of the plunge baths, and generally celebrating in a fitting manner the eve of the day that was to herald in new responsibilities and cares.
{34}
Harker, who for fifteen months had haunted the shadows on the look-out for just such a “rux,” whose ear caught every illicit sound—even the crunch of the nocturnal butterscotch—Harker was for once unseeing and unseen. It needed but this crowning act of grace to endear him for ever to his departing flock.
Yet he had one more card to play, and played it as he passed in farewell from carriage to carriage of the departing train. Further, he dealt it with accentuated emphasis for the benefit of those he thought needed the reminder most.{35}
{35}
“Gosh!” ejaculated such a one when Harker passed to the next carriage: he flopped back on to his seat. “Did you hear? He said ‘sir!’ to each one of us when he said good-bye!”
So much for Harker. But he brought with him a number of other memories entangled somehow about his personality, and on these it may be as well to enlarge a little ere they slip back into the limbo of the forgotten past.
It says much for the vividness of Harker’s personality that he outran in these reminiscences the memory of “Stodge.” Certainly few interests loomed larger on the horizon of these days than the contents of the two
Prev.
Back
Top