Ted howled, Jacker howled, but the master caned on until he thought he had quite accomplished his duty in that particular; then he let the limp youth slide back into his seat.

Mr. Ham returned to his high stool to rest and recuperate.  Thoughout the proceedings he had displayed no heat whatever, and when he addressed Jacker it was with his usual bland irony.

’You should thank me for my pains, my boy, but youth is proverbially ungrateful.  You will think better of my efforts a few years hence; meanwhile I can afford to wait for the verdict of your riper judgment, Jacker—­I can afford to wait, my boy.’

Jacker’s only reply to this was a long wail expressive of a great disgust.  That outburst was too much for the already over-wrought youngster in the Lower Fifth; starting up with a cry, Ted snatched one of the leaden ink-wells from its cell in the desk, and took aim at the master’s head.  The well struck the wall just above its mark, and scattered its contents in Joel Ham’s pale hair, in his eyes, down his cheeks, and all over his white moles.  Amazement—­blind, round-eyed, dumb amazement—­possessed the school, and for a few seconds a dead silence prevailed.  The spell was broken by Dick Haddon, who discovered his opportunity, plunged like a diver at the weak spot in the wall, went clean through and disappeared from view.  Ted McKnight, who had awakened to the enormity of his crime at the sight of the master knuckling the ink out of his eyes, and had gone grey to the lips in his trepidation, looking anxiously to the right and left for a refuge, saw Dickie’s departure; jumping the desk in front he rushed at the aperture the latter had left in the wall, and was gone in the twinkling of an eye.

The master mopped the ink from his hair and his face with a sheet of blotting paper, and calling Belman, Cann, Peterson, Jinks, and Slogan, made for the door.  Already Dick Haddon was halfway across the flat, scattering the browsing sheep to the right and left in his flight, and Ted was following at his best pace.

‘After them!’ cried the master.  ‘Two whole days’ holiday for you if you run them down.’

The pursuit was taken up cheerfully enough, but it was quite hopeless.  The breakaways were heading for the line of bush, and the sapling scrub along the creek was so thick that the boys would have been perfectly secure under its cover, even if the pursuers were not in hearty sympathy with the pursued, and the pursuit were not a miserable and perfidious pretence.

Mr. Ham, recognising after a few minutes how matters really stood, returned to the school.  His approach had been signalled by a scout at one of the windows, and he found the classes all in order and suspiciously industrious, and Jacker McKnight still sitting with his head sunk upon his arms—­a monument of sturdy resentment.

‘My boys,’ said the master, looking ludicrously piebald after his ink bath, ’before resuming duties I wish to draw your attention to the crass foolishness of which our young friends Haddon and McKnight are guilty.  You perceive that their action is not diplomatic, eh?’