The West Point Rivals: or, Mark Mallory's Stratagem

The speaker was a tall, gaunt cadet, dressed in the uniform of a West Point plebe. He was resting in a tent in summer encampment, and close at hand were two other plebes.

Drills were over for that day, and likewise dinner, and the corps had been dismissed, excepting members who had extra tours of guard duty to do by way of punishment. This includ...

You have perhaps read of Ben Hur and the famous chariot race, and remember how General Wallace describes the staring crowds about that amphitheatre. There was no one there a bit...

The scene that resulted is left to the reader’s imagination. Bull was simply drenched; he was sputtering and gasping with rage. As for the elephant, he set up a terrific trumpet...

Such was the invitation, a rather curious and unconventional one. But that gave it no less interest in the eyes of the seven lads who were all gazing at it at once.

Oh, but Grace Fuller’s was an imposing house, when finally the plebes managed to find it! It was big and brilliantly lighted, with high, old-fashioned porticoes. There were spac...

The Banded Seven were having a first-rate time just then. In the first place, they were returning in triumph from a daring venture, about which to tell the angry cadets next mor...

There was not a boat to be seen anywhere, so the crowd was helpless and terrified. The only thing that prevented a serious accident was first, the fact that the boat was very ne...

The cadets were building a pontoon bridge, the second one that summer. The cadets of the first class were the “engineering corps” and they were giving the orders; the plebes, qu...

You may imagine the consternation of our friends, the plebes. The whole thing had come with such horrible suddenness that they were completely taken aback, and helpless. The she...

Texas had fallen just behind the door which the man had opened. Texas leaped up, his eyes blazing with fury. No risk was too great a risk to take now, for his cadetship was the...

The amount of alarm which that apparition caused to the yearlings it would be difficult to imagine. The idea of their hated rival escaping had never once flashed over them, and...

The speaker was Mark. There were quite a number of other plebes with him, seven of them altogether. They were hurrying through the woods north of the post; and a stranger passin...

The reader of course knows that no cadets had been near the cave. But that the Seven did not know; they thought that “the enemy” had left by that entrance.

Now, the first thing for the crowd to do was to locate that “echo.” If they found it, they were mad enough to make trouble for its originators. The originators did not seem to b...

“It’s plain as day,” Mark laughed, “that they can never get in here at us. There’s room for only one man at a time through that opening, and it’s only another case of Horatius a...

Over on the opposite side of the West Point inlet, stood a post with a barrel upon it. That was the target; the fondest hope of every cadet heart was that “some day” he might hi...

You can have no idea what a forbidding task it was――entering that cavern. The plebes only began to realize it when they got to the place. Why the very sight of that yawning, bla...

The feeling of horror which overwhelmed the helpless prisoners at that awful moment exceeds the possibility of description. They heard their comrade’s scream, and that told them...

As for Stanard, he was having a yet more terrible experience. His exclamation had been caused as he felt two clawlike hands seize him and fasten to him with the grip of a vise....

It was the sound of a drum, echoing through Camp McPherson and proceeding from a small-sized drum orderly at the head of the company street; a stern and handsome lieutenant was...

As Dewey said, this was a rare chance. Bull Harris was going to act as host and commissary at one of those surreptitious feasts so common among the cadets. Now for plebes to do...

The sentries that night were marching under very different circumstances from the usual ones. No broad paths and moonlit, tree-shaded avenues; no gas lamps and spacious tents; b...

You could not imagine seven more altogether delighted lads if you tried for a month. Once they had made sure that the enemy was gone for certain they swiftly went wild. Their pl...

That crowd, so it appeared, was not the only crowd that was gathered in the streets of Camp Lookout that morning, for the purpose of discussing things. In fact, a stranger passi...

The speaker was Mark again. He was standing in just the same position as when we left him for the brief glance at Lieutenant Allen. And he was addressing the same six plebes as...

“I don’t believe he is,” was the ex-cowboy’s answer. Texas was less disposed than Mark to take a charitable view of his enemy. “I jes’ tell you it’s nothin’ but a bluff; an’ the...

The two speakers were crouching in the moonlight behind one of the tents of Camp Lookout. The reader scarcely needs to be told that they were Mark and Texas on hand, true to the...

Mark Mallory lay hiding in the bushes at the edge of the camp. There was little for Mark to do except to wait, to wait with all possible patience. It did not seem likely that an...