DOI Artikel:
Gilbert, Henry: An early chapter
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.38746#0173
By H. Gilbert 169
It was Arthur Neil who organised secret societies among the
bigger boys, composed cypher alphabets for the laborious com-
munications between the members of these mysterious brotherhoods
in neighbouring desks ; and kept the accounts of the weekly
journal fund for the purchase and reading of Red Lion Court
literature. He had been Grand Master of the short-lived Order
of the Knights of Albion ; and the dubbing by him of a squire in
one of the school corridors, with the adjuncts of green tunic, “ cap
of maintenance,” dagger and real rapier—aa right Toledo blade”
—was an unforgettable though furtive ceremony. When he picked
out Murray’s Prairie Bird for a prize, and after reading it lent
it round to his friends, their enthusiasm fashioned moccasins and
leggings (ornamented with worsted scalplocks) out of American
cloth, made bows and arrows from umbrella ribs, tomahawks from
blade bones and wood, and scalping knives from abstracted table
cutlery, ripped up mattresses for war-plumes,and secreted all leather
within reach. Arthur, with the advantages of a cap made of badly
dressed rabbit skin, the green tunic (which, though slashed and
puffed, could be made to serve many turns), belt, totem—a disk of
bone hung by a leather boot-lace round his neck and having “a
war eagle ” scratched upon it—powder-horn, wooden gun and
cross bow, was made chief of a band of half a dozen warriors,
skulking in the dusky prairies and scarlet-runner forests of a back
garden, until the mother of one of them—Terror of Palefaces—
called him in to go to bed.
It was Arthur also who had suggested basket-lids for shields and
“ tolly-whacks” (rope knotted and twined in graduated thickness)
for weapons, in the fights with other schools. Even the invention
of this “stunning” mode of warfare had been marred by his
weakness. The Scardell Road School was in a newly-opened
suburb, and the boys, being mostly villa residents, had always
despised
It was Arthur Neil who organised secret societies among the
bigger boys, composed cypher alphabets for the laborious com-
munications between the members of these mysterious brotherhoods
in neighbouring desks ; and kept the accounts of the weekly
journal fund for the purchase and reading of Red Lion Court
literature. He had been Grand Master of the short-lived Order
of the Knights of Albion ; and the dubbing by him of a squire in
one of the school corridors, with the adjuncts of green tunic, “ cap
of maintenance,” dagger and real rapier—aa right Toledo blade”
—was an unforgettable though furtive ceremony. When he picked
out Murray’s Prairie Bird for a prize, and after reading it lent
it round to his friends, their enthusiasm fashioned moccasins and
leggings (ornamented with worsted scalplocks) out of American
cloth, made bows and arrows from umbrella ribs, tomahawks from
blade bones and wood, and scalping knives from abstracted table
cutlery, ripped up mattresses for war-plumes,and secreted all leather
within reach. Arthur, with the advantages of a cap made of badly
dressed rabbit skin, the green tunic (which, though slashed and
puffed, could be made to serve many turns), belt, totem—a disk of
bone hung by a leather boot-lace round his neck and having “a
war eagle ” scratched upon it—powder-horn, wooden gun and
cross bow, was made chief of a band of half a dozen warriors,
skulking in the dusky prairies and scarlet-runner forests of a back
garden, until the mother of one of them—Terror of Palefaces—
called him in to go to bed.
It was Arthur also who had suggested basket-lids for shields and
“ tolly-whacks” (rope knotted and twined in graduated thickness)
for weapons, in the fights with other schools. Even the invention
of this “stunning” mode of warfare had been marred by his
weakness. The Scardell Road School was in a newly-opened
suburb, and the boys, being mostly villa residents, had always
despised