User:JerryFriedman/Stalky

Stalky*: Several pupils at the Coll are caught and locked in a barn while trying to steal cattle for fun. Corkran leads Beetle and M'Turk in rescuing them and locking the farmhands in the barn. The boys change Corkran's nickname "Corky" to "Stalky" (which rhymes with it in the non-rhotic accents of England).

"In Ambush": The three boys, reading and smoking in their "bunker" (hide-out), see a gamekeeper poaching. When M'Turk tells the poacher's employer, a colonel who owns land adjoining their school, he gratefully invites them to visit his land. Later Sergeant Fox, Mr. King, and Mr. Prout follow the boys to see what they're up to when far from the school, and Stalky leads them onto the colonel's land. He upbraids them for trespassing, amusing the boys, who are eavesdropping. Though the Head finds out that the boys are technically innocent, he canes them for causing trouble.

Slaves of the Lamp, Part I: While the three boys and the three in the study (private room) below are rehearsing a pantomime of "Aladdin", Mr. King interrupts to excoriate Beetle, as he has found lampoons Beetle wrote about him. By shooting a drunken carter with a catapult, Stalky induces him to throw stones at King, who is in his study reprimanding Beetle in front of the younger boy who showed King the poems. Beetle takes the opportunity to increase the damage that the stones do to King's study and to the tale-bearer.

An Unsavoury Interlude: King taunts Beetle for having been afraid of bathing in the sea, leading the boys of King's house (dormitory) to taunt those of Prout's house as "stinkers". The boys push a cat that they killed under a floor in King's house, causing a real stink, to King's house's much greater embarrassment.

The Impressionists: Mr. Prout evicts the three boys from their study because each has been doing the others' work in the classes that he is good at. They give the impression of conspiracies, intrigues, and systematic usury in the house till he sends them back to their study to get them away from the other pupils.

The Moral Reformers: The boys' favourite master suggests that they protect a small boy who is being bullied. They trick the bullies (two older boys) into letting themselves be tied up for a game, and in a scene that has horrified many readers, torment the bullies without mercy until they convincingly agree to behave themselves.

The United Idolaters*: A school fad for the Uncle Remus stories leads to wilder and wilder behaviour until a climactic fight between King's house, with a terrapin painted in their colours, and Prout's house, with a tar baby improvised by Stalky, Beetle, and M'Turk. As the school is nearly set on fire, the Head punishes many pupils. A new master obsessed with the possibility of homosexuality at the school thinks the Tar Baby was indecent, and the resulting quarrel with the other masters ends with his resignation.

Regulus:* Mr. King lectures enthusiastically on Horace's Ode III.5, which tells how the general Regulus took a message of war to Carthage though he knew that the Carthaginians would kill him. A normally serious boy releases a mouse in a class. Teased by other boys about his forthcoming punishment, he goes berserk (Beetle's diagnosis) and fights one of them viciously. He accepts his punishments without trying to delay or diminish them, so Stalky compares him to Regulus—giving King ammunition in arguing to the science teacher Hartopp that the pupils learn valuable things from Latin.

A Little Prep.: Some Old Boys (former pupils) return at the end of the term to play a rugby match against the current pupils. One of them, Crandall, an army officer in India, had seen another Old Boy die after a skirmish. The Head has Crandall sleep in his old dormitory, and boys crowd in to hear his story. To punish them for leaving their beds, the Head has them do prep. (study) on the last night. The pupils riot. The three boys had learned that recently the Head had saved another pupil from diphtheria by sucking the pseudo-membrane out of his throat, at great risk to the Head's life. They spread the report of the Head's heroism. When he comes to stop the rioting, all the pupils cheer him incessantly. He tries to cane all the older pupils the next day, starting with Stalky, Beetle, and M'Turk, but as they and the Old Boys and even the boys waiting to be caned cheer him, he gives up.

The Flag of Their Country: A general on the College's Board of Council sees Sergeant Fox drilling boys, including Stalky and Beetle, as a punishment for lateness. He thinks they're drilling voluntarily and decides the school should have a well-equipped cadet-corps. A number of boys participate enthusiastically to prepare for their intended careers as military officers. However, a friend of the general's gets a friend of his to give a patriotic speech to the school. The speaker tactlessly outrages the boys' private and inchoate feelings about their military families and future, culminating by waving a Union Jack, which means nothing to them. Led by Stalky, the members of the cadet-corps quit the next morning.

The Propagation of Knowledge:* Beetle shares literary trivia with other pupils so they can impress and distract Mr. King. He guides M'Turk in bringing up the theory that Francis Bacon wrote the plays ascribed to Shakespeare, which distracts King further, as he loathes that theory. An examiner for the Army Preliminary comes to the school. After Beetle and M'Turk elicit hints that he supports the Baconian theory, various boys pretend interest in it, getting high marks. King is forced to endure the examiner's praise of his pupils.

The Satisfaction of a Gentleman:* Beetle and one of the "Aladdin" players have a war of pranks. They conclude with a duel that turns into a chaotic battle on the golf course using dust shot. Beetle, fleeing, collides with an elderly golfer who turns out to be on the school's Council. The Head canes Beetle, Stalky, and M'Turk to appease him.

The Last Term: The three boys enjoy flirting with and kissing a local young woman, Mary Yeo. When a shy and intellectual prefect named Tulke sees them, they persuade Mary to kiss him. The prefects try to criticise the three for immorality, but they turn the tables by reporting Tulke's "immorality" and suggesting that the prefects are conspiring with him. The three boys grudgingly agree not to tell the rest of the school, but do so on the last day, when they're leaving but the prefects will be back.

Slaves of the Lamp, Part II: The characters are now about thirty, and most are civil servants or soldiers in India. All the participants in the Aladdin pantomime except Stalky reunite in England at the estate of a friend ("the Infant", who narrated Kipling's story "A Conference of the Powers"). They tell Beetle (the first-person narrator of this story) how Stalky, an army captain, got his small force out of a siege by shooting at his enemies to get them to fight each other, as he had got the carter to throw stones at Mr. King; meanwhile Stalky used his charisma and language skills to keep his Sikh and Pathan allies together and then to set himself up as almost a local ruler.

Other stories:

A Deal in Cotton: Stalky only listens to and comments on the main character's narration. Collected in Actions and Reactions.

The Honours of War: Stalky (now a lieutenant-colonel) and Beetle learn that two subalterns, friends of the Infant, are in trouble for playing pranks on a fellow subaltern, including abducting him to the Infant's mansion. As the victim intends to create a scandal, Stalky diverts him by helping tie up and embarrass the pranksters, after which the victim is as guilty as they are. Collected in A Diversity of Creatures.