The enemy rowed back and got out of their boat. Some of them acted
pretty lame, too. They hunched around and rubbed sore spots, while we
gave them the laugh. All of them went up to the hotel, where, after a
while, we heard them hammering and hammering.
“B-buildin’ a modern navy,” says Mark. “Wooden vessels went out of style
when the _Monitor_ steamed into Hampton Roads.”
“Slingshots’ll go out of style, too, won’t they?” says I.
“They won’t be quite so useful, anyhow,” Mark says, “but I calc’late
we’d better hang onto ’em.”
Motu’s eyes were shining. He looked about as happy as I’ve ever seen
anybody look.
“It was a great battle,” says he. “My father has told me stories of the
battles of ancient warriors of Japan. This was like them. When I come
again to my country this day shall be spoken of with pride by my family,
and in after-years my descendants shall tell their children of it.”
“Wait a bit,” says Mark, “and your decendants’ll have m-m-more to brag
about. This day’s battle ain’t over yet by several shots.”
“The more fighting the more glory,” says Motu.
Now I didn’t feel that way about it. The more fighting the more bother,
was my notion. I’d had plenty. My appetite was fed up, and I didn’t have
any use for a second helping. But I didn’t come of a race of warriors. I
expect my way of looking at it is the American way. We don’t fight for
glory, but only when it’s necessary, and then we want it over with and
done as soon as possible, just as we do any other disagreeable job that
may come along.
“Look,” says Binney.
Around the corner of the hotel came four Japanese, carrying a sort of
fence made of an old strip of carpet nailed on posts. They took it down
to the boat and The Man showed them how to set it up and nail it in
place so that the front and both sides of the craft were sheltered. With
that armor a fellow couldn’t see the rowers at all; in fact, the whole
five of them could sit in the boat and we couldn’t get a crack at them.
“Here’s where we get it,” says I to Mark.
“Maybe,” says he, “but you f-f-fellows fend off with your pike-poles,
and, Tallow and Binney, you ’tend to anybody that reaches over to meddle
with the poles while they’re holdin’ the boat. Get the idea? So long as
we can hold off the boat n-nobody can land, and we can hold off the boat
as l-long as our pike-poles are left alone.”
Well, sir, you’ll have to admit Mark was some general. That pike-pole
idea was a dandy, and, in spite of their new armor, our slingshots would
be useful a heap. And then, there was Mark up on the balcony of the
third floor, and he could shoot right down on top of the Japs.
“Motu,” says I, “I guess those old warriors of your’n never had a better
general than Mark Tidd.”
He just grinned.
Now the enemy was ready to attack again. They boarded their man-of-war
and pushed off, and a funny-looking ship they had. Of course the rowers
couldn’t see where they were going, and so somebody had to stand up to
direct them. The Man took the job of being pilot, so we had something to
shoot at from the beginning.
This time there was no chance of damaging the motive power, but we could
make the pilot wish he had a periscope. It was lucky for us they didn’t
have a submarine.
They came on steady and sure until they got in range. Then they kept on
just as steady, only we kept The Man hopping. By the time they got
within a hundred feet we had him ducking his head behind the armor plate
and only sticking it up to take a peek every little while. The result of
that was that the boat did quite a considerable bit of zigzagging.
However, they kept coming, and at last they were near enough so Mark
Tidd could get a shot at them from his station above. He shot fast and
often, and I expect those Japs wished their leader had put a roof on
their shelter.
But, no matter how straight and how fast he could shoot, one boy
couldn’t hold off the boat with a sling. Besides, it was difficult
shooting. So, in a couple of minutes they got dangerously near to shore.
“P-p-pike-poles!” yelled Mark.
Motu and Plunk were ready. They jabbed their spikes into the bow of the
boat and pushed. The boat stopped sudden and swung sideways. Plunk let
go and ran along till he could spear the boat near the stern, and there
they held her. The Japs tried to row, but Binney and I grabbed our
lances with the boxing-glove pads on the end and poked at their paddles
so they couldn’t do a thing.
The Man yelled something in Japanese, and the rowers pulled in their
oars. In a second one of them stood up suddenly and smashed at Plunk’s
pike-pole with his oar-blade. He might have hit if it hadn’t been for
Mark and Binney. Both of them smacked him good with pebbles and he
ducked. The best part of it was that he dropped his oar. Before they
could do anything to recover it Mark yelled to me to get it, which I did
with my pike. It was the first trophy of the war, and something to brag
about like real soldiers do when they report they’ve captured so many of
the enemy’s cannon, or some such thing.
The next thing they tried was a little more skilful, but it didn’t work
much better. A man lifted the carpet armor a little at the bottom and
shoved through his arm. He tried to grab the pike and jerk it away from
Motu, but Motu had jabbed in his spike good, and he pushed like a
Trojan. The man didn’t make much headway, and after we’d peppered his
knuckles a couple of times he didn’t seem anxious to keep it up. He let
go, and for a couple of minutes nothing happened. I guess The Man Who
Will Come was holding a council of war with himself.
After that they tried poking their oars through and punching at the
pike-poles with them, and that was a better scheme than any of the rest,
for there wasn’t anything for our artillery to aim at. But they had to
go it blind. Nobody seemed to want to stand up to see just where they
were poking, so they didn’t have very good luck at it. A few times they
thumped off one of the pike-poles, but before it did them any good Plunk
or Motu would jab it in again, and they were no further ahead than
before.
“Hey!” says Mark to The Man, “don’t you know history t-t-teaches that
land defenses can’t be taken with a n-navy alone?”
“We take, all right,” says The Man from behind his shelter. “We take and
then comes punishings. Ho! we shall see.”
“Better give it up,” says Mark. “We’ll let you go with honors of war.”
“No. You have our bad leetle Japanese boy. Give him up to us and we make
lovely speed away without spankings. Nobody shall have a spanking.”
“Glad to h-hear that,” says Mark. “We’d hate to be s-s-spanked.”
“You give him up? Yes?”
“We’ll give him up, no,” says Mark.
At that, quick as a wink, The Man stood up in the boat with an oar in
his hand. Of course all three of us shot and shot like fury, but before
we could stop him he swung his oar over his head and brought it down on
Plunk’s pike-pole. The pike-pole snapped and Plunk dropped his end like
it was hot. I guess it must have stung his hands some.
The boat was held only by Motu’s pike-pole now, and its stern began to
swing toward the shore. That wasn’t so bad, because there was no armor
plate around the back, and we could shoot right through. We didn’t miss
any time doing it, and the way they scrambled to swing their navy around
was a caution.
It was only a question of time now, and we all knew it. The Man could
stand up as soon as he was ready and smash Motu’s pole the same way he
did Plunk’s, and then we fellows would have to join battle with our
lances.
But it didn’t come to lances just then. All of a sudden Mark Tidd yelled
to look out. I looked up instead and saw him leaning over the edge of
the balcony with a big pail in his hands. He held it like he didn’t like
the job very well. I could see he had a cover on it and was pretty
careful to keep the cover in place.
“L-l-look out, fellows!” says he again, and then heaved over the pail.
It struck square in the middle of the boat and in a second I heard a
sound I recognized. It was an angry sound, the kind of a sound you want
to get away from. And right on top of it we heard a yell, and then
another yell, and the sound of a wild scramble in the boat.
But through all the noise the Japanese made I could hear that low, angry
sound. It was a sort of humming, singing, stinging buz-zzz-zzzz.
“Whee!” I yelled. “Reinforcements have arrived. Whoop!”
It was reinforcements, all right. More than a million of ’em, I guess,
and a million of the best and meanest fighters in the world. We could
begin to see them now, a regular cloud of them, and we could see the
enemy was in a bad way. They yelled and slapped and scrambled and
squealed while our allies went for them. Then they began a retreat that
was a rout. With only three oars left they started rowing for the other
shore, and, in spite of the speed they made, which was considerable,
I’ll bet it was the longest ride they ever took.
Just before they got to shore a Japanese stood up and jumped out of the
boat, waving his arms around his head and yelling. Another was right on
his heels, and the rest followed in quick order. The Man Who Will Come
wasn’t last, either. They laid right down under the water with nothing
showing but their noses—and our allies kept them there. Every time a
hand showed one of our friends made a dash for it.
“I t-t-told you reinforcements were goin’ to come,” says Mark, all
doubled up with laugh.
They _had_ come, and a sort of reinforcement I wouldn’t have wanted to
call on. I wouldn’t have known how to use them if I’d wanted to. Friends
like those are hard to handle. Sometimes they don’t quite detect the
difference between the folks you want them to attack and you. In fact,
our allies were the sort of fighters who take a lot of pleasure in
attacking anybody, friend or foe.
They were hornets! Regular old warrior hornets! It was a nest of them,
’most as big as a bushel basket, that Mark had thrown down into the
boat. It was as bad as a dynamite bomb and more painful, though not
quite so dangerous.
While our little fighters were keeping the enemies’ minds occupied, they
forgot their navy, and it floated off slow.
“Tallow,” says Mark, and pointed.
I wasn’t crazy about the job he’d picked out for me; not that I was
afraid of the Japanese just then—they had all they wanted to look
for—but I was afraid of the hornets. However, there was nothing for it
but to obey orders. If Mark Tidd had the nerve to use their nest for a
bomb, I had the nerve to go get that boat. So I plunged in, clothes and
all, and swam across.
It wasn’t any trick at all to tow back the man-of-war, and not a hornet
got me. I calculate they were all busy with the Japanese.
Well, I dragged the boat to shore, and we all celebrated. It was a great
victory all around. Mark said it ought to be one of the Fifteen Decisive
Battles of the World. We’d licked the enemy, we’d captured their whole
navy, and, to cap the climax, we’d captured the little cane that
belonged to The Man Who Will Come. That was a battle trophy worth
having. Some day we’re going to send it to Washington to be put up in a
case in the national war museum.
It was an hour before the broken and scattered forces of the enemy dared
come out of the water, and when they did they didn’t look as though they
would be able to take the offensive again for quite a while to come.
They were covered with bumps and swellings and they limped and groaned
and muttered.
“P-p-put mud on the stings,” Mark called to them. “It’ll take the f-fire
out.”
Not one of them said a word. They just mogged along to the hotel, a
pretty unhappy lot.
“Did you get stung much?” I asked Mark.
“Not once,” says he, with a grin.
“How ever did you work it?” says Plunk.
“Well,” says Mark, tickled to be getting some more admiration, “I
f-found that nest the other day and sat down to figger out how we could
use it. It wasn’t hard to figger what to do with it, but it took more
calc’latin’ to f-f-find _how_ to do what I wanted to. But there’s always
some way.”
Now that was just like Mark Tidd. Always some way. He believed that. It
didn’t matter what happened, or what had to be done, he knew there was
_some_ way to do it, and usually he’d figure and plan and calculate till
he found it.
“I got the idee,” he went on, “to take the n-nest in a pail and keep the
hornets in with a cover. So, when I n-needed ’em I sneaked up and shoved
the pail over the nest gentle-like and cautious. Then, mighty quick, I
can t-t-tell you, I cut down the nest with the cover and s-s-slapped the
cover on the pail. It was as easy as p-p-pie.”
“Yes,” says I, “and it made it easy for the enemy.”
Well, that was the last we saw of those Japanese _that_ day. I guess the
whole army went into the hospital. But we didn’t feel like organizing
any Red Cross to help their wounded. Not much.