"Candidates turn out promptly!" sounded snappily in another part of barracks.
Another lot of newcomers began to tumble downstairs and out of doors with feverish haste, to be confronted by another cadet corporal who awaited them.
"Never mind that other squad!" admonished Cadet Corporal Brayton sharply. "Favor me with your whole attention. Now, then, listen, and do each thing as I tell you. b.u.t.ton your jackets and overcoats all the way down! Stand erect, with your heels together, and your toes pointing out at an angle of sixty degrees. Stand erect.
Throw your shoulders back, your chests out and hold your heads up. This is called "the position of the soldier." Stand as I do."
Corporal Brayton favored his awkward squad with a profile view of himself, as he took the exact position of a soldier. How the anxious candidates wished they really could stand as this handsome young son of Mars did! To them it seemed impossible ever to acquire such truly military carriage. They did not realize that, between drills, gymnasium work and the setting-up drills, they would, in a few weeks, be hard to distinguish in elegance and perfection from their present instructor.
"Not quite so much like an ostrich, Mr. Prescott!" rasped out Corporal Brayton severely.
d.i.c.k flushed painfully, all the more so because he heard one of the other candidates snicker.
"Stop that laughing, Mr. Danvers!" commanded Corporal Brayton.
Greg, in trying to get the right position, had so exaggerated it that now he found himself trembling from the strain of trying to maintain that position.
"What ails you, Mr. Holmes!" demanded Brayton, with withering scorn.
"I--I was trying to get the right position, sir," stammered Greg, reddening.
"That isn"t the position of even a respectable dromedary, Mr.
Holmes," rejoined the cadet corporal crisply.
Then he poured a storm of refined abuse upon Greg. It wasn"t intended entirely for Greg, but for the benefit of all the awkwardly standing green candidates. Not a word in Brayton"s remarks went beyond the limits of strict military propriety, yet every word cut.
"My, but I"d like to fall out and give this fellow a licking!"
muttered Greg to himself.
"Mr. Holmes," observed Cadet Corporal Brayton dryly, "clenched fists do not go with the position of the soldier. Let your hands fall naturally at your sides, each little finger resting against the seam of the trousers, or where you judge the seam to be."
Again the blood shot up to the roots of Greg"s hair, suffusing his face. But Mr. Brayton had already turned to another candidate whom he found in a ludicrously bad position. After some minutes of this attempt to instruct the candidates in the seemingly simple matter of standing correctly, Brayton gave the welcome order to rest.
By this time four other awkward squads were at the same work.
"I wish we had our uniforms," whispered Greg. "I"d feel better."
"I am glad I haven"t a uniform yet," returned d.i.c.k in an equally low voice. "I realize how like a fool I"d look in it when I don"t even know how to stand, let alone attempting to walk in a uniform. Just look at the magnificent carriage of the man that"s drilling us!"
"I"d like to hammer him until he needed a carriage to get anywhere in," muttered Greg vengefully. "That corporal is a brute, without a vestige of good breeding."
"Then, for a fellow without breeding, he certainly carries himself like a king," retorted d.i.c.k. "At least, I don"t believe any European prince has half as fine a carriage as Mr. Brayton."
"I wonder if they"re all as bad as this corporal," demanded Greg.
"Brayton is a tyrant in gray."
"Greg! Greg! Get a brace on yourself, old fellow," whispered d.i.c.k warningly. "This is only the morning of the first day, and we have before us months--years--of taking our medicine. Don"t lose the gait even before you"ve got it. We came here to take our medicine and learn to be soldiers, didn"t we?"
"Squad, attention!" rasped out Corporal Brayton, wheeling and once more favoring his own green lot with his whole regard.
Repeatedly he showed these new men how to stand, how to hold themselves and how to do it without appearing ridiculous. So crisp, so rapping and even decorously abusive was Mr. Brayton that the boys under his command at this moment would have gasped had they been told that Brayton was considered one of the easiest and best-natured of the cadet corporals. Brayton had his work to do--that was all. It was part of his own training to learn how to whip an awkward squad into time in the shortest possible order.
By-and-by all these anxious, even trembling, candidates were instructed in the mystery of marching a few steps at command, how to keep their alignment on the right guide, how to halt, the facings and all that.
"Now, we"ll pa.s.s on to learning to count fours, and how to march off in column of fours," announced Brayton. "Squad halt!" he commanded hoa.r.s.ely, in disgust, ere the young men had taken four steps. "Listen to me more attentively, and try more closely to follow orders!" glared the young corporal.
After that it seemed as though Cadet Corporal Brayton could have no other aim in life than to drive his squad of candidates away from West Point. At almost every move through the drill he berated them caustically, though in such faultless military language of reproof as to keep him from censure.
"Dismissed," glared Brayton at last. "The candidates will go to their rooms until summoned again."
d.i.c.k and Greg both felt stiff in the legs. Their backs ached from the long-continued drilling in what was yet, to them, the rigor of near-military carriage. Both chums toiled up the stairs to their bare room.
"Oh, you brute!" muttered Greg, standing in the middle of the room and shaking his fist in the direction of the area.
"Meaning--whom?" queried Prescott, with a wan smile.
"Whom could I mean but Brayton?" almost hissed young Holmes.
"Why does that fellow hate us all so?"
"I"ll tell you a secret, if you want to hear it," proposed d.i.c.k mysteriously.
"Please!" begged Candidate Holmes.
"Then I don"t believe he does hate us."
"What?" gasped Greg incredulously.
"I don"t believe he"d remember half our faces if he pa.s.sed the members of his squad in the area right now," declared d.i.c.k.
"Then why does he persecute us so?" demanded Greg indignantly.
"I don"t believe it is persecution," d.i.c.k continued.
"Then why, in the name of all that"s kindly, does that fellow put us under the heel of hateful usage? Why must we submit to the tyranny of that cadet corporal?"
"It"s the West Point way--that"s all, I guess."
"Do you propose to submit to it?" challenged Greg.
"Yes," retorted d.i.c.k soberly. "I don"t want to have to leave the Academy and go home stamped a failure."
"Neither do I," admitted Candidate Holmes in a more moderate tone. "But I wonder whether we have to stand so much nonsense from a petty young official like a mere corporal?"
"I"m afraid we do," nodded d.i.c.k. "Now, see here, Greg, can"t you make a good guess as to why we"re put through such a grilling?"
"I"ll confess I can"t see any human reason in it," declared Candidate Holmes.
"Why, what did we come here to learn to be?"
"Soldiers."