Tom Fairfield at Sea; or, The Wreck of the Silver Star
CHAPTER I
STARTLING NEWS
“Where to now, Jack?”
“Oh, I just thought I’d run into town and see what’s going on, Tom. Want to come along?”
“I’d like to – but this Latin – ”
“Oh, bother the Latin!” and Jack Fitch, the chum and roommate of Tom Fairfield, snatched the book from the scarcely resisting grasp of his friend. “Come along. You’re up well enough. Besides, we haven’t that old tyrant Skeel to deal with now in the classics.”
“That’s so. Guess I will go. Think it’ll be safe?”
“As safe as running the guard ever is, Tommy my boy,” and Jack assumed a wise air. “Probably there’ll be some of the proctor’s scouts out, but if we can’t fool ’em, after we’ve put in nearly a year at Elmwood Hall, I wouldn’t give much for our ability.”
“Right you are, Jack! Shall we tip off some of the others? Bert Wilson would like to come along, I know.”
“All right, I’ll give him the high sign. Shall we take the human question box?”
“Who, Georgie Abbot? Might as well. He isn’t as bad as he used to be, though he’s bad enough. Four will be just about right. Got anything special on, the reason you want to go to town?”
“No. But there’s a good musical comedy there, I hear.”
“How’s the weather? Is it raining yet?”
“Clear as a bell,” reported Jack, as he poked his head out of the window of their room. “Now I’ll take a look to see if the coast is clear, and get Bert and George while you put your collar on,” for Tom, to be at more ease while he was studying, had adopted a sort of negligee costume.
Gliding out into the hall, Jack knocked cautiously at the door of the adjoining room, giving a certain signal.
“Well?” whispered a voice at the keyhole.
“Come on into town, Bert,” whispered Jack in return, for caution was necessary, since it was past the hour for the Freshmen to go about as they pleased, to each other’s rooms, and long past the time when they might leave their dormitory without permission.
“What’s up?” asked Bert, as he opened his door a crack.
“Tom Fairfield and I are going to take in a show. I’ll get George, and we’ll have some fun. Cut down through the basement when you’re ready, and we’ll meet just outside the boiler room. Our studious janitor won’t give us away.”
“No, old Demy Miller will be so busy over his Latin or Greek, trying to be the king pin among studious janitors, that he won’t even see us. Go get ‘Why.’ I’ll be on hand in a minute.”
Jack glided to a room on the other side of his own and his chum’s, and repeated the tapping signal.
“Well?” queried George Abbot, otherwise ‘Why.’
“Come on to town?”
“What for? Who’s going? What are we going to do? Is it safe?”
“Say, if you fire any more questions at me,” whispered Jack hoarsely, “I know one lad who won’t be going, and that’s you, Why! Now hush up and come along. Tom, Bert and I are going to cut in.”
“All right, I’ll be with you directly.”
Jack glided back into his own apartment, and only just in time to escape the keen eyes of a patroling monitor. But he did get inside safely, and breathlessly.
“What’s up?” asked Tom.
“Denton-is-out-there. But I-guess he won’t stay-long.”
Cautious observations through the keyhole proclaimed this for a fact a little later, and soon Tom and Jack were tiptoeing down to the basement. There they met George and Bert, and the four were soon on their way to town, cutting across the campus in such a direction as to conceal their movements.
It was rather a cool evening toward the close of March, and there had been a drizzling rain all day. Now it had cleared, coming off cold, and Jack, realizing this had felt a restlessness that could not be satisfied unless he was doing something – something forbidden, by all preference.
Tom, Jack, and a number of their intimate friends were approaching the close of their Freshman year at Elmwood Hall. They had gone through the sports of the fall – football and the like, the Christmas vacation had come and gone, and now the Easter holiday was approaching.
When that was over the spring term would open – the closing term at the school – and Tom would soon be in line as a Sophomore. But much was to happen before he could count himself a second-year student.
“Think anyone will catch us?” asked George Abbot, who never could seem to stop asking questions.
“What if they do, you old interrogation point?” inquired Tom.
“Nothing, only I don’t want to be expelled just when the Freshman year is so nearly over.”
“Don’t worry. Just trust to me,” spoke Jack. “I’m running this outfit, and we’re not going to be caught.”
“There’s someone now – just ahead of us!” suddenly exclaimed Bert, drawing back. The others instinctively paused.
“No danger!” called Tom, who was a little in advance of his chums. “It’s our friend Bennington.”
“Hello, Tom Fairfield!” greeted a voice out of the darkness. “Whither away?”
“Into town on a lark. Want to come along?”
“Thanks, no. Remember I’m a grave and reverend Senior, and not a giddy Freshman like yourself. I have a reputation to maintain, and I can’t afford to take any chances with my graduation in prospect. I’d like to though. I’ll see that you get in safely, however, in case there’s any danger.”
“Thanks,” called our hero, Tom, as he and his chums passed on, while Bruce Bennington, a Senior whom Tom had aided in a peculiar way during the former term, headed toward Elmwood Hall.
“He’s a great chap,” commented Bert.
“He sure is,” agreed Jack. “And he’s a heap sight different than he was before Tom found the forged note that Skeel held over him.”
“I’m glad I was able to help him,” said Tom. “Come on, now, fellows, sprint for it. I think I hear a car coming.”
They broke into a run, and a little later had boarded an electric vehicle that ran near the preparatory school, and into the town of Elmwood proper.
“Look who’s here,” spoke Jack to Tom in a low voice, as they took their seats, and he nodded toward the far corner of the car.
“Who?” asked Tom, and then he added: “Oh, Sam Heller.”
“And Nick Johnson is with him,” went on Jack.
“Well, I guess they won’t make any trouble for us,” said Tom, for the two lads had been, and still were, his enemies.
“Unless they squeal on us,” suggested Bert Wilson.
“They’re just as much in the fire as we are,” protested Jack.
“They may have gotten permission to go to town,” came from George Abbot.
“Not much!” asserted Tom. “They cut for it the same as we did, and they won’t say anything.”
Sam Heller and his crony glanced over at our friends, but said nothing, and the car continued on its way. Soon it was in town, and Tom and his chums hurried to a theatre that the school boys patronized. They were a little late to see the start of the performance, but they did not mind that.
“Say, this is great!” exclaimed Bert as one “turn” after another was gone through with behind the footlights.
“Here comes a sleight-of-hand performer,” remarked Jack. “I always like to see them, even though I know they fake every trick.”
“Say! did you see that!” exclaimed George, as the man apparently picked cards out