A Javelin for Jonah

lecturer was allotted his own lecture-room to which his students came or not, as they pleased—and found it crowded. He walked to the dais, glanced at his audience, said, ‘Goodmorning, ladies and gentlemen,’ and placed his lecture notes on the desk.

“What’s your name, bugger?” asked a youth in the front row.

“Well, not that,” Hamish replied. “I will tell you what it is at the end of the session. My subject this morning is Jean-Paul Sartre. I shall speak entirely in French and when I have finished you will write in your notebooks, in either French or English, the gist of what I have said.” He glanced over his notes and began to utter. So did the students. They kept up a continual low murmuring all the time he was speaking. When he paused, so did they. When he resumed, they did the same. Hamish carried on his discourse without raising his voice. At the end of a quarter of an hour he stopped, smiled and said, “That’s it, then. Ten minutes to get down what you can remember.” He seated himself. The students began to write. He wondered what was going down in their notebooks. At any rate they had ceased to mutter. All appeared to be extremely busy, although he had no illusions about the sort of thing which was probably being written, for now and again there was a smothered guffaw as one student showed another what he had put into his notebook.

The first climax came fairly soon. The youth who had asked him his name came out to the desk and said, “Please, sir, what’s the French for… ” (an unprintable word even in these days). He spoke loudly and clearly. The group looked up interestedly. One of the women students tittered. Hamish rose to his feet and picked up a piece of chalk as though he was going to write on the blackboard. Instead, he dropped the chalk, seized the student by the collar, swung him round and kicked him half across the room.

“That’s the French you are asking for,” he said pleasantly, “and, if you can’t spell it, perhaps I can be of further assistance.” He looked at the class. “Does any other gentleman require help?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, I do,” said a hulking young man at the back of the room. “You’ve hurt that poor boy. I demand satisfaction. I don’t like to see you hurt that poor boy.”

“Oh, are you the champion of the oppressed?” asked Hamish, measuring him with his eye. The young man, who appeared to be among the oldest and was certainly the biggest of those present, stepped out from the ranks and came towards him. Without further speech he swung a heavy fist at Hamish’s head. Hamish avoided it easily, put his left fist with a sharp jab into the man’s brightly-coloured shirt-front and then clipped him under the jaw with his right. It was not, and was not intended to be, a knock-out blow.

“Hey!” said the man, blinking. “How did that happen?”

“Come again, and I’ll show you.”

“Right,” said the fellow. He grinned good-naturedly. “In the gym, though, and, I think, with the gloves on.” He returned to his place. The youth whom Hamish had kicked limped out of the room, no doubt (thought Hamish) to confide his troubles to the Warden. Hamish seated himself again. He felt certain that his own troubles were by no means over, but he felt also that the preliminary skirmish had gone his way. He had no intention of allowing anybody to read out the scurrilous stuff which he was quite sure some, if not all, had put into their notebooks. Instead he said, “I shall now translate my lecture for you, so perhaps you will correct your own work and form your own opinion as to how much of the lecture you understood.”

There were no more interruptions. When he had finished, amid what he thought he recognized as the brooding silence which precedes a thunderstorm, he wrote a short vocabulary on the blackboard and braced his shoulders against the missiles which he more or less expected would be thrown at him once his back was turned. These, singularly enough, did not materialize. Turning again to the students, he remarked in a quiet tone, “Some of you may care to use some of those words in your essay. The subject is Memorial d’un Gladiateur Romain. Needless to say, the work is entirely optional, as I understand is customary here, but I shall be happy to mark anything sent in.”

“So what is your name?” asked one of the women students.

“The Warden has suggested that I answer to the name of James, mademoiselle,” replied Hamish.

“Come up and see me sometime, James,” said the damsel, who appeared to be about eighteen.

“I suggest you wash your face and comb your hair before you issue your invitations,” said Hamish. “The class is dismissed.” He stood in the doorway as they clattered out and, waylaying the large student, said to him, “And what’s your name, may I ask?”

“Richard,” he replied. “In other words, Dirty Dick, so you’d better look out. You won’t catch me napping again.” But he grinned amiably as he spoke.

“Fine. We meet at Philippi, then. Let me know when you can spare the time.” Hamish gave the young man a friendly clap on the shoulder and they walked out side by side to the college canteen.

chapter

2

Long Jump with Casualties

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Two circumstances made life at Joynings, so far as Hamish was concerned, very much simpler and easier than he might have expected. One was the lack of brotherliness among the men students to which Henry had referred. They were prepared to sabotage, more or less effectively, lectures which did not please them, but of physical ganging-up against authority there was little sign. The second circumstance was that the promised set-to with the gloves between Hamish and his hulking challenger had resulted in a spectacular knock-out by Hamish, followed by a cheerful, unembittered relationship with the defeated Richard which Hamish found undeniably helpful.

Richard, he learned later, had been expelled from his school for half-killing an unpopular sadistic prefect. He was now twenty-one years of age and had been at Joynings for four years, during which time his size, weight and strength had brought him to a position of leadership to which his other attributes scarcely entitled him. Hamish, bit by bit, learned the case-histories of a good many of the men-students. By no means all of them were discreditable, he thought.

Miss Yale, the senior woman lecturer—the battle-axe to whom Hamish had referred in his letter home—was more reticent about the women students, but these, with no encouragement from him, told Hamish more about themselves than he ever learned from headquarters. They also made overtures to him which so young a man might have found embarrassing but for the fact that Hamish had a fund of common sense and a robust sense of humour