Their delight seemed to be to seize on all the youngsters they could by any pretext lay hands on and hale them to appear before him.

By this means they imagined they were making his authority known and dealing a serious blow at the less obtrusive captain in the schoolhouse.
Poor Bloomfield had to administer justice right and left for every imaginable offence, and was so watched and prompted by officious admirers that he was constantly losing his head and making himself ridiculous.
He gave one boy a thrashing for being found with a paper dart in his hand, because Game had reported him; and to another, who had stolen a book, he gave only twenty lines, because he was in the second-eleven.
Cusack and Welcher, who was caught climbing the schoolhouse elms one Monday, he sentenced to an hour's detention; and Pilbury, whom he caught in the same act on Tuesday, he deprived of play for a week--that is, he said he was not to leave his house for a week.

But Pilbury turned up the very next day in the "Big," under the very nose of the Parrett captain, who did not even observe his presence.
It was this sort of thing which, as the term dragged on, made Bloomfield more and more uncomfortable with his position.

It was all very well for Game, and Ashley, and Wibberly to declare that but for him Willoughby would have gone to the dogs--it was all very well of them to make game of and caricature Riddell and his failures.

Seeing is believing; and Bloomfield, whose heart was honest, and whose common sense, when left to itself, was not altogether feeble, could not help making the unpleasant discovery that he was not doing very much after all for Willoughby.
But the boat-race was now coming on.