The whole plot now revealed itself to me at once, and I commenced a series of kickings and plungings that almost left me free. My enemies, however, were too many and too powerful; on they bore me, and in a perfect storm of blows, lunges, writhings, and boundings, they held me fast under the stream, which played away in a frothy current over my head, face, chest, and legs,--for, with a most laudable impartiality, they moved me from side to side till not a dry spot remained on my whole body.
I shouted, I yelled, I swore, and screamed for aid, but all in vain; and my diabolical tormentors seemed to feel no touch of weariness in their inhuman pastime; while I, exhausted by my struggles and the continual rush of the falling water, almost ceased to resist; when suddenly a cry of "The Dean! the Dean!" was heard; my bearers let go their hold,--down I tumbled upon the flags, with barely consciousness enough to see the scampering crew flying in all directions, while a host of porters followed them in hot pursuit.
"Who are you, sir? What brought you here?" said a tall old gentleman I at once surmised to be the Dean.
"The devil himself, I believe!" replied I, rising with difficulty under the weight of my soaked garments.
"Turn him outside the gates, Hawkins!" said the Dean to a porter behind him. "Take care, too, he never reenters them."
"I 'll take good care of it, sir," said the fellow, as with one strong hand on my collar, and the closed fingers of the other administering gentle admonitions to the back of my head, he proceeded to march me before him through the square; revolving as I went thoughts which, certes, evinced not one sentiment of gratitude to the learned university.
My college career was, therefore, more brief than brilliant, for I was "expelled" on the very same day that I "entered."
With the "world before me where to choose," I stepped out into the classic precincts of College Green, fully assured of one fact, that "Town" could scarcely treat me more harshly than "Gown." I felt, too, that I had passed through a kind of ordeal; that my ducking, like the ceremonies on crossing the line, was a kind of masonic ordinance, indispensable to my opening career; and that thus I had got successfully through one at least of my "trials."