"Turn on the screw."
"I have. The water can't be on."
"Yes, it is. I turned it."
"I tell you it won't work," was whispered from the stool. "Go back to the room and turn on the faucet, I tell you."
Hurried footsteps retreated from the door. Some one could be heard entering the next room. Then some one rushed out of it again.
"Say," spoke an excited voice, "we're flooded! The hose has burst, and we are deluged, and----"
"Boys, a light--the monitor's coming," interrupted a warning voice.
"Cut for it! Something's wrong! We're caught!"
There was heedless rush now from the next room. Frank could hear the hose dragged along the corridor. The door of the adjoining room was hurriedly closed.
"Off with your clothes--hustle into bed," ordered some one in that apartment.
Shoes were kicked off, beds creaked, and then came odd cries.
"Wow!"
"Murder!"
Tap--tap--tap! came a knock at the door.
"What's going on here?" asked the sharp, stern voice of the dormitory watchman.
"Thunder!"
"Oh, my back!"
"I'm scratched to pieces!" So ran the cries, and half a dozen persons seemed to bound from beds to the floor.
Bob Upton was shaking with suppressed laughter, stuffing the end of the pillow into his mouth to keep from yelling outright.
"Bob," whispered Frank, "what have you been up to?"
"Drove a plug into their hose ten feet from the faucet, slit the rubber full of holes--and filled the beds with cockle burrs," replied Bob, and, quaking with inward mirth, he rolled out on the floor.
"Gentlemen of Dormitory 4, report at the office in the morning with an explanation," droned the severe tones of the monitor out in the corridor.
CHAPTER XII
A STRANGE HAPPENING
"Bob, this is worse than the Banbury crowd could devise," remarked Frank.
"Yes. The only thing is that in this case it's friends who are responsible for it. Ugh! I'm sunk to the knees in water."
"I'm in to the waist," said Frank. "They've gone--the vandals! Off with the blindfolds. Well, this is a pretty fix!"
Two minutes previous a sepulchral voice had spoken the awful words:
"Slide them into the endless pit!"
Then, with a gay college song, the mob that had led Frank and Bob on a hazing trip, that had been positively hair-raising in its incidents, had seemed to retire from the spot. Their laughter and songs now faded far away in the distance.
"Well," uttered Bob, getting his eyes clear and his arms free, "we've had an experience."
"I should say so," echoed Frank. "That old ice chute they dropped us into must have been a hundred feet long."
"The hogshead they rolled us downhill in went double that distance,"
declared Bob.
"Well, let's get out of this," advised Frank.
That was more easily said than done. Comparative strangers as yet to the country surrounding Bellwood, even when they had got on solid ground out of the muck and mire of the boggy waste, they knew not which way to turn.
It was dark as Erebus and the wind was blowing a gale. Nowhere on the landscape could they discover a guiding light. They were in a scrubby little patch of woods, and they were confused even as to the points of the compass.
"I think this is the direction of the academy," said Frank, striking out on a venture.
"Yes; and we want to get there soon, too," replied Bob, "for we're going to have a great storm in a few minutes."
As Bob spoke the big drops began to splash down. As the lads emerged upon a flat field, the drops seemed to form into streams, and they breasted the tempest breathless, blown about, and drenched to the skin.
"We've got to get shelter somewhere," declared Bob. "Let's put back for the timber."
"I think I see some kind of a building ahead," observed Frank. "Yes, it's a hut or a barn. Hustle, now, and we'll find cover till the worst of this is over."
In a few minutes they came to an old cabin standing near some dead trees.
It was small and square and had one door and one window. Bob banged at the door with a billet of wood he found, but could not budge it. The windows had stout bars crisscrossing it.
"Give it up," he said at last. "No one living here, and padlocked as if it was a bank. Hey, Frank, here's a chance."
In veering to the partial shelter of the lee side of the old structure, Bob had noticed a sashless aperture answering for a window in the low attic of the cabin. He got a hold with fingers and toes in the chinks between the logs, and steadily climbed up.
"Come on," he called. "It's high and dry under the roof," and his companion joined him, both half reclining across a loose board floor.
"Hear that," said Bob, as the rain seemed to strike the roof in bucket-like volume. "I hope the crowd who got us in this fix are ten miles from any shelter."
The rain kept on without the slightest cessation. In fact, it seemed to increase every minute in volume. Fully half an hour passed by. Neither lad thought of leaving shelter, and Bob had stretched himself out. The conversation languished. Then Frank, catching himself nodding, sat up and looked out of the window, noticing that his rugged, healthy comrade was breathing heavily in profound slumber.