Coker, the champion chump

Three fellows holding his legs, three more holding his arms, pinned Coker across the table. Thus placed in a favourable position for punishment, Coker was given his due. Blundell wielded the fives bat with scientific precision. – Extracted from The Champion Chump, by Frank Richards, The Magnet, 14 March 1931. Available to download free-of-charge here.

Horace Coker of the Fifth Form thinks he is the best football player in the school, but he is a chump. He wants to be included in the Form team in the match against the Sixth, but he is left out. He devises a plot and asks Potter and Greene to help him lock up Blundell, the Captain, in a room ahead of the match. Then Coker will take his place in the team.

Potter and Greene think this is a hilarious ruse and tell the other fellows of the plan.

Now read on .....

 

Coker did not heed a sound of voices and footsteps in the Fifth Form passage outside. But he sat up and took notice, so to speak, when his study door was hurled open and half a dozen Fifth Form men tramped in, led by Blundell, the captain of the Fifth.

Coker stared at them.

Blundell & Co. appeared to be making an effort to keep serious, as became fellows dealing with a serious matter, in spite of this, however, they were grinning.

“What the thump do you want?” snapped Coker. “I don’t remember asking you into this study, Blundell!”

He stared again, noting that the captain of the Firth had a fives bat in his hand. Coker wondered what on earth Blundell was carrying a fives bat about for. He was soon to learn.

“You benighted ass!” was Blundell’s greeting.

“Chuck it!” said Coker.

“So you’re going to bag me before the Form match tomorrow,” said Blundell, “and bung me into penny, and lock me in?”

Coker eyed him calmly.

“What about it?” he asked.

“Wha-a-a-t about it,” stuttered Blundell.

“Yes. What about it?”

“Oh, my hat!” said Hilton of the Fifth.

“Ain’t he priceless?” chuckled Fitzgerald.

“Look here ...” hooted Blundell.

Coker waved an impatient hand to the door.

“Get out! I don’t care to discuss it!” he said.

“You – you – you don’t care to discuss it!” gurgled Blundell.

“No. Get out!”

The Fifth Form men looked at Coker and looked at one another. They did not get out. Blundell took a harder grip on the handle of the fives bat.

“You think you can arrange to bag a footballer and keep him out of a game to muck up a soccer match and nothing said?” asked Blundell.

Coker laughed – one of those sardonic laughs. He seemed contemptuously amused.

“You call yourself a footballer?” he asked.

“Wha-a-at?”

“Of course, a fellow can call himself anything he likes,” said Coker generously. “Call yourself a footballer, I don’t mind. You can call yourself the Emperor of Japan if you like!”

George Blundell breathed hard. He had come there to explain matters to Coker with a little help from the fives bat, but he had come in quite a good temper. Now his temper seemed to be less good. Blundell, captain of his Form, member of the First Eleven and a tremendous blood, was not the fellow to be talked to as Coker was talking to him.

“You burbling chump ...” began Blundell.

“As for mucking up a soccer match,” went on Coker, ruthlessly interrupting him, “that’s rot, and you know it! The match will be mucked up, anyhow, with a chump like you skippering, and a lot of fumbling duds barging about. You fellows may take it seriously if you like. You can’t expect a footballer like me to take it seriously.”

“Ye gods!” murmured Bland of the Fifth.

“The Sixth will walk all over you,” resumed Coker, “as usual! You choose to leave out the only really good man in the Form, and the other duffers choose to let you do it. Well,  what difference will it make to the match whether you play or not? Some other silly ass could take your place and nobody would see any difference. Isn’t one howling ass as good as another?”

Some of the Fifth Form men chuckled, and Blundell’s face grew crimson. His good temper was quite gone now, and his grip on the fives bat almost convulsive.

“So – so – so that’s how you look at it?” gasped Blundell.

“That’s how,” agreed Coker. “I shouldn’t have dreamed of shifting a man out of the game if it would make any difference to the result. In your case it wouldn’t. It would be a lesson to you. You’re too sidey, Blundell.”

“I – I – I.”

“Much too sidey,” said Coker. “It’s time, I think, that you were told plainly that you’re not the big noise you fancy you are!”

“Oh!” gasped Blundell.

“It would be a lesson to you, and a warning,” explained Coker. “You’ve asked for it – begged for it, in fact. As for the match, that’s a muck-up, anyhow, with me left out. If you’d been missing, some other silly idiot could fumble and foozle about instead of you. Bland might have had sense enough to play me. In that case it would mean a win.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” roared the Fifth Form men.

“You can chortle!” roared Coker. “As it happens, I know what I’m talking about, and all that you fellows know about soccer could be put into a thimble. Any-how, I’m fed-up with you, and I’ve no time to waste. Get out!”

Blundell breathed hard and deep.

“You don’t see anything rotten in this scheme of yours Coker?” he asked.

“Don’t be an ass!”

“You don’t see anything mean or sneaky or tricky?”

“Don’t be a fool!”

“You don’t expect to be jolly well licked for it?” roared Blundell, his temper quite bad now.

“I’d like to see any man in the Fifth lick me!” aid Coker truculently.

“That’s lucky, for you’re just going to see it,” said Blundell. “You’re going to have six with this bat, Coker, as a warning not to play the goat. If you’d really tried on that potty stunt we’d have lynched you. As it is, you get six as a warning. Collar him!”

Coker leaped to his feet.

He had not, apparently expected this. But with Coker it was often the unexpected that happened.

“Why you cheeky rotters!” hooted Coker. “Hands off! Why, my hat, I – I -I’ll – Yarooop!”

Coker hit out right and left as he was collared. Hilton of the Fifth captured Coker’s right with his eye; Fitzgerald got Coker’s left with his nose. Both of them uttered wild war-whoops. But Coker had no time for more. Collared on all sides, Horace Coker was swept off his feet and slammed on the study table, face down.

“Hold him steady!” said Blundell.

It was not easy for even half a dozen Fifth Form men to hold Coker steady. Coker roared and struggled and wriggled.

But they held him. Three fellows holding his legs, three more holding his arms, pinned Coker across the table.

Thus placed in a favourable position for punishment, Coker was given his due. Blundell wielded the fives bat with scientific precision.

Whack! Whack! Whack!

“Whoooop!”

The celebrated Bull of Bashan had nothing on Coker, so to speak, at that moment. The trumpeting of a wild elephant would have sounded like a gentle murmur in comparison with Coker’s terrific roar.

Outside Coker’s study the passage was swarming. Fifth Form men were there, and they were joined by juniors of the Shell, the Fourth, the Remove. Even some fags in the Third and the Second struggled for places.

Whack, whack, whack!

“Yaroop! I’ll smash you, Blundell! I’ll lick the lot of you! I’ll pulverise you all round! Yarooooh!”

“Ha, ha, ha!”

“Yarooogh!” Oh crikey! Leave off!” yelled Coker, wriggling spasmodically. “Oh, my hat! Oh crumbs. Oh jumping Moses! Ow!”

“Ha, ha, ha!”

Whack, whack, whack!

“Yoooooooooooop!”

“That’s a dozen!” said Blundell, stopping at last. “You ought to have some more Coker; but we’re letting you off with that. Chuck him into a corner and come on you men!”

 

                                   For more extracts from comics and story papers, click here

 

 Traditional School Discipline

Traditionalschooldiscipline@gmail.com