8. CHAPTER VIII.
President M'Goggin converts his government into a despotism:
the patriots rise in insurrection, and strike a terrible blow for
freedom: the effects of the great battle between the oppressor and
the oppressed.
On the sixth day, the usurper waxing weary of
his close application, and deeming his power perfectly
established, began to relax somewhat in his
vigilance; and in the afternoon took occasion to pay
a visit to a house across the way, that he had hired
for the reception of his family, which, with the assistance
of an old negress whom he had taken into
his service, he was now fitting up for his residence.
We took advantage of his absence to relax a little
ourselves, being as tired as he of the stupidity of the
five former days; and not knowing in what better
way to amuse ourselves, we got up a little fight between
two of the juniors; and this gradually setting
some half dozen others by the ears, there presently
arose a prodigious uproar, which reached the auditories
of M'Goggin, and brought him immediately
back. As we had warning of his return, the fray
was over, and we were all at our seats, diligently
poring over books and slates, before he entered;
which he did with thundering step, bellowing, as
he snatched up a bundle of his birches—“Who's
been fighting? Tell me, ye villains, and I'll give
it till 'em!”—a question which, being addressed to
the whole school, no one felt himself called on to
answer.
Seeing this, and having repeated the question a
second time without effect, M'Goggin strode to
the door, locked it, and deposited the key in his
pocket; and we were thus shut up with the tiger,
with no possibility of escape; a horrid situation;
but its very desperateness began to infuse a kind of
courage into the breasts of many of us. Then stepping
back to his platform, he cried out again, with
a most ferocious look—“Arrah, ye little divils,
ye don't think I'm now going to tache you a
lesson! Look upon me face! I intind to ask
you the question one afther another; and him that
doesn't answer, be the powers, I'll have the sowl of
of him! And, be me faith, I'll begin wid the biggest
of ye.”
And with that, he stepped up to Dicky Dare,
(who, being now driven to the wall, exchanged
glances with me, full of martial meaning and resolution,)
and demanded—“Who's been fighting, ye
spalpeen.”
“Why, really,” responded Dicky, modestly, (but
I observed he stole his fingers towards an inkstand;
and I did the same, besides winking invitingly to
others to make ready,) “I have been so busy with
this here problem, I can't pretend to say any thing
about it.”
“Ye lie, ye vagabone!” cried the tyrant; an expression
that the insulted general immediately retorted
by calling him an “Irish blackguard,” and
throwing the contents of the inkstand into his face;
while, at the same moment, down came, like the
tail of a comet, whisking a world out of its sphere,
the whole bundle of switches upon Dicky's head,
whereby, as he afterwards said, he got six dozen
stripes all in one. “Hurrah for freedom and schoolboys'
rights!” roared Dicky, making the inkstand
follow the ink. “Come up to the scratch, boys,
and we'll trounce the black-faced beggar in no
time;”—a call that was responded to by some
twenty or thirty of us, who felt that the case was
desperate, and that we must fight now or yield forever.
But more than half our republicans, I am ashamed
to say, were under such terror of the oppressor's
looks, that they sat still, giving us no assistance
whatever.
And now came the tug of war—the crashing of
the bundled birches on heads and shoulders, the
rattling of inkstands against breast, wall and window—the
shout, the cry, the rush, the scuffle, the
squeak and groan, the thump, the kick, the slip,
the tumble, the sound of rending garments—for it
was a Kilkenny business, and coats and jackets
went to pieces, if they did not utterly vanish in
dust and smoke. Never did twenty patriots rush to
the attack of their country's foe with nobler intrepidity
than we; never did twenty bulldogs more
valiantly leap upon the throat and back of armed
rhinoceros or Hyrcan tiger. In short, we did wonders,
but the greatest wonder of all was, that we did
wonders in vain; for, in five minutes space, there
was not a soul of us that was not put hors de combat.
Valour, patriotism, the love of liberty and
glory, could do nothing against a foe like Mr.
M'Goggin; who, having snatched up General Dare,
as General Dare would have snatched up a kitten,
and slung him round by the leg, in a circle, as a
slinger whirls his sling, whereby myself and seven
others were laid flat, and Dicky, who unfortunately
slipped through his fingers, lodged on the top of a
bookcase that contained the school library—caught
up another combatant, whom he hurled like a cannon
ball at the heads of the rest, disabling four, as well
as his missile, and ended by demolishing the others
in the usual Irish way, that is, by knocking them
down with his fists.
This ending, however, was, with him, only the
beginning; for, having now rendered the whole of
us conformable, he recurred to his birches, and
flogged us—alas, no longer resisting! in a manner
that is quite indescribable. In short, he entirely
used up his bundle of six dozen upon us; and this
being done, he appropriated the remaining fascis to
the others, the non-combatant members of the confederacy,
whom he trounced with great regularity
and impartiality, one after the other, till he had gone
over the whole school. In half an hour, we were a
vanquished people—all vanquished, all subdued—
dreaming no longer of our rights, but of our backs
—crest-fallen, heart-fallen, chop-fallen, without the
courage left us even to indulge the hope of vengeance.
But vengeance was, nevertheless, in store.
