They helped me to my cabin, and, as I sat there, I composed the tale of success that I would send to my mother. Then I stood up to dress, and, in my excitement, put on my shirt before my vest. There was a confusion of cheers within and without the building; and Upton, Fillet, and Jerry Brisket, the judges, were to be seen in animated debate, while many others stood round and listened. Dazed, faint, and unconscious of the passage of momentous events, I took no notice of them, but drank deeply of victory. It exhilarated me to reconstruct the whole story, beginning with my early stage-fright and ending with the triumphant climax, when I crashed into the end of the baths. I was indulging the glorious retrospect when there broke upon my reverie a sullen youth who said: "Well, Ray, we haven't won it after all." There was a hitch in my understanding, and I asked: "What d'you mean?" "You were disqualified." "I!" It was almost a hair-whitening shock. "I! What? Why? What for?" "They say you dived before Johnson touched the rope. Nobody believes you did." So then; I had _lost_ the cup for Bramhall. The lie! Too old to vent suffering in tears, I showed it in a panting chest, a trembling lip, and a dry, wide-eyed stare at my informant. Backed by a disorder outside, he repeated: "Nobody believes you did." All happiness died out of my ken. Conscious only of aching limbs, a fluttering heart, uneven breath, and a bursting head, I cried: "I didn't. I didn't. Who said so?" "Fillet--Carpet Slippers." "The liar! The liar!" I muttered; and, with a sudden attack of something like cramp down my left side, I fell into a sitting position, and thence into a huddled and fainting heap upon the floor. CHAPTER X WATERLOO CONTINUES: THE CHARGE AT THE END OF THE DAY Sec.1 While I was recovering there fell the first thunderdrops of mutiny. A youth at the back of the gallery, on intercepting the flying message that Fillet had demanded my disqualification and Jerry Brisket had ended by supporting him, roared out a threatening "_No!_" Maybe, had he not done so, there would never have been the great Bramhall riot. But many other boys, catching the contagion of his defiance, cried out "_No!_" The crowd, recently so excited, was easily flushed by the new turn of events, and shouted in unison "_No!_" Isolated voices called out "Cheat!" "Liar!" Dr. Chapman, as tactless as he was kindly, declared to those about him that Fillet's judgment was at fault, and thus helped to increase the uproar. The disaffection spread to the Erasmus men, who said openly: "We don't want the beastly cup. Bramhall won it fair and square." And then came the report that I, on receiving the news, had fainted. This, by provoking deeper sympathy with the hero and greater execration of the villain, acted like paraffin oil on the flames. Before the masters realised that anything more than disappointment was abroad, rebellion looked them in the face.