The Three-cornered Tournament
Never had the Squirms, as a body, succeeded in scoring points over the
Merry Men. Duffers at football and cricket, which they only played
because both were compulsory, slackers in the gymnasium, and too flabby
to shine in athletic sports, their chief recreations were indoor ones
which did not fret their fat, such as chess, draughts, and dominoes.
At these three games they frequently played to pass away the long
winter evenings, while other boys indulged in gymnastics and boxing.
Consequently, quite a number of them became, through constant practice,
fairly proficient in table games--certainly far cleverer at them than
other Foxes of their own age, who seldom cared to play with them.
"I've got a rattling good idea for taking the starch out of Robin and
his gang," Osbody announced to a little group of Squirms. "Their
beastly heads are swollen to the size of balloons over the flukey way
they nabbed the burglars. Odious to see them swanking about, isn't it,
chaps?"
"Makes me sick," agreed Grain.
"Positively nauseating to hear Old Man Wykeham puffing 'em up
sky-high," said Niblo. "Special holiday in their honour, indeed!"
"I vote we all stick in the class-room and swot that day, just to show
our contempt for it," suggested Vinns, a boy with a rather uncanny gift
for mathematics--the only Squirm who had ever distinguished himself in
a scholastic way.
"Swot yourself, Professor Vinns," snorted Grain. "I'd swop all my
school-books for a penny bag of popcorn. Time to wonder how to spend
the holiday when it comes. Just now, I'm waiting to hear 'Body's plan
for wiping Arkness's eye."
"It's this," said Osbody. "Half the Merry Men (as they have the cheek
to call themselves) scarcely know one end of a chess-board from
another. Dominoes are just slabs of wood to them. Draughts make them
shiver."
"Granting all that," said Niblo, "I don't see what you're driving at."
"Well, we all want to take Robin's conceited 'crush' down a peg, I
guess?"
"Rather! Aching for the chance."
"Then it's yours for the asking. Not to make a song of it, I've
written something on a sheet of paper which, if you're all agreeable, I
shall send to Arkness to-night. Listen, and I'll read it."
He smoothed out a sheet of foolscap, cleared his throat, and began:
"We, the Foxenby Junior Games Club, hereby challenge Robin Hood and his
Merry Men to a three-cornered tournament, viz: Games of Chess,
Draughts, and Dominoes, to be played in the Holbeck House Games-room on
Friday evening next."
"Oh, great gingerbreads, that's ripping!" said Niblo.
"Best idea ever!" said Vinns.
"Humph!" grunted Grain. "Must be grass-green, both of you, if you
fancy they'll rise to a bait like that."
Osbody looked annoyed. Grain's habit of throwing cold water on
everything he suggested was always a thorn in the flesh of the leader
of the Squirms.
"See nothing to sneer about, Grain," he snapped. "Why shouldn't they
bite?"
"They'll make paper pellets of the challenge," Grain persisted. "What
asses they would be to play us on our own pitch, so to speak, at games
they don't stand an earthly in. Fancy Arkness bringing his men like
lambs to the slaughter! He's too fly for that!"
"I agree," said Niblo, with a sigh of disappointment. "It won't come
off, 'Body, old man. Better make paper boats of the challenge than
give Robin the chance to be sarcastic about it."
"Yes," said Vinns. "He's confoundedly clever at writing skits."
But Osbody stubbornly declined to be talked out of his venture. "Stow
your jaw, everybody," he said. "This challenge is going, whatever you
say. I'm positive it's the only way of taking a rise out of Arkness
and his Shrubbery hooligans."
"It'll come back like a boomerang," growled Grain.
"Well, if it does, only my head will suffer, for I shall sign it," said
Osbody. "Here, younker," he broke off, collaring a First-form boy who
was trying to slip past, "take this paper to Robin Arkness, in Rooke's
House. Look alive, now."
Five minutes later Robin was reading out the challenge to a group of
Merry Men in the "gym". Its arrival quite knocked the steam out of a
ding-dong glove-fight between Little John and Friar Tuck, old rivals in
pugilism. They ceased banging each other and gathered round Robin with
the rest.
"What a beastly lot of one-eyed badgers," exclaimed David of Doncaster.
"Rather!" agreed Will Scarlet. "Licked at everything that matters,
they want to draw us into chimney-corner and parish-tea games."
"No jolly fear," said Little John. "Chess always gives me a headache."
"Same here," said the Miller.
"I always end by building castles with my dominoes," said the Tinker.
"Draughts strikes me as a sort of girl's game," another Merry Man put
in.
"Allan a Dale's the only man we have who can play all three games
decently," the Tanner declared.
"Good idea," said Dave. "Set Allan on playing Osbody, and we'll all
stand round to watch."
Shy Allan hastily declined the honour, whereupon Robin, having waited
for the hubbub to subside, gave his opinion.
"Cheek in chunks, but artful--particularly artful," he said. "We don't
want to play the Squirms at games. We don't want to sit in the same
room with them. We'd rather play snakes-and-ladders with the Tinker's
flamingoes at the Zoo."
"We would indeed!" cried Will Scarlet. "Send him a snorting answer,
Robin."
"Refuse the challenge, do you mean?" queried Robin.
"I should say so, thumbs down."
Robin shook his head sadly. "We can't," he groaned. "If we did,
they'd never afterwards cease yapping at us. Oh, yes, I can see you
staring at me, but what would you say, chaps, if Osbody put up his
dukes to me in the Shrubbery and sang out 'Come on'?"
"We'd tell you to go for him, Robin, like old steam."
"Just so. It would be a challenge, and you'd expect me to take it. If
he said, 'I'll race you up the Moston Church-side to the steeple', daft
though that would be, I'd have to climb with him. Twig what I mean,
boys? The Merry Men's reputation is at stake. We cannot refuse."
Many of them decidedly differed from this opinion. Why, they argued,
should they give the Squirms the chance of scalping them in a
tournament of Osbody's own choosing? But Robin was not to be shaken.
"I'll put that right, chaps," he said. "Give me two minutes while I
answer the challenge."
He scribbled furiously for a time and then read out the following:
"We, the Merry Men, accept the challenge of the Foxenby Junior Games
Club to play them at Chess, Draughts, and Dominoes on Friday evening
next IF they will agree to play us at football on the following
Wednesday afternoon.
"(Signed) _Robin Hood_."
"Good!" exclaimed David of Doncaster. "That's a facer for them, Robin."
"You've turned their flanks," commented Will Scarlet. "The mere
thought of meeting us at footer will make them goggle-eyed."
"It'll wash out the Games Tournament, hurrah!" cried Little John,
intensely relieved.
"Don't be too cocksure of that, fellows," said Robin, gloomily. "I
hope it will, but we've got to be ready for anything."
He found a messenger to carry the answer to Osbody, whose face
lengthened somewhat as he read it aloud to his cronies.
"There, you've let us in for it now!" cried Grain, angrily. "Didn't I
warn you the boomerang would come back? Fancy having to play 'em at
football! The bare idea gives me a stitch in my side."
It was a turning of the tables which the Squirms had not even remotely
anticipated, and they followed Grain's lead in heaping reproaches on
Osbody's head. But he, too, had a will of his own, combined with a
gift of leadership almost equal to that of Robin.
"Chaps," he said, "have I ever failed you as a leader of this band? We
have had some pretty rough times--when did I ever show funk?"
They were compelled to admit that he had stood by them through thick
and thin.
"Very well, then," said Osbody. "Either I'm to have the pleasure of
leading you to victory once in a while, or the whole bag-o'-tricks goes
overboard. Football or no football afterwards, we're playing this
games' tournament on Friday evening."
Grain's crafty eyes lit up with sudden hope. "Nobody's indispensable,"
he said, significantly.
Osbody shot a fiery glance at his rival. "Let the fellows choose!" he
snapped. "I'll have my way, or go."
If Grain had any serious hopes of stepping into Osbody's shoes at that
moment, his disappointment must have been intense. Fully twenty of the
Squirms were present, and they crowded round Osbody with assurances of
loyalty that did them credit.
"You're right, 'Body," said "Professor" Vinns. "Revenge is sweet, and
for once we'll have it."
"So we will," said Niblo. "At chess, draughts, and dominoes we'll make
crawling worms of them. They shall taste the dust beneath our feet."
"Just as we shall taste the mud beneath _their_ boots when the football
match comes off," sneered Grain, savagely.
"Rats to the old football match!" said Niblo. "If necessary, we will
play two goalkeepers to hold the score down. Friday comes before
Wednesday, and thrice-armed is he who gets his blow in first."
In the few remaining days before the tournament some of the Merry Men
tried desperately hard to rub up their knowledge of indoor games.
Allan a Dale, bashful and slow-spoken as a rule, became almost as
loud-voiced as a drill-sergeant in his efforts to teach chess and
draughts to his chums.
Lovers of the open-air as they were, their thoughts were continually
wandering from the chequered board. Robin alone made satisfactory
progress. It was up to him, he believed, to set his men a good
example, though all his eloquence failed to keep Little John longer at
the chess-board than fifteen minutes at a time.
"I shall just move the pieces anyhow and trust to luck," Little John
said.
"Then your opponent will wipe the floor with you."
"If he does," said Little John, grimly, "let him look out for himself
when I meet him on the football-field, that's all."
Generally speaking, it was this thought of out-door revenge which
sustained the dejected Merry Men when they took their seats for the
tournament on Friday evening.
Osbody had arranged the order of things most craftily. First came
dominoes, as the game in which there was only a slight element of
skill. It was natural that the Merry Men would score a few points at
dominoes, though three-fourths of them were well-beaten, Robin and
Allan being amongst the losers.
The Squirms were openly exultant. Even Osbody had difficulty in
repressing a triumphant smile.
"Draughts next," announced the leader of the Squirms. "Any particular
fancy about pairing off, Arkness?"
"I'll play you," said Robin. "The other fellows can sort themselves
out as they like."
Osbody whispered something to Vinns, who casually dropped into a chair
opposite Allan a Dale. This was a pre-arranged plan, for "Professor"
Vinns was as weirdly clever at board-games as he was at mathematics,
and all Allan a Dale's skill proved powerless to prevent him winning.
Their game lasted longest, but the result was never in doubt. Allan,
the hope of the Merry Men, was cornered and beaten.
No sum of subtraction was needed to reckon the tally in favour of the
Squirms. They had won every game but two drawn ones, Osbody having
failed to beat Robin, and Grain having found in Will Scarlet an
opponent too tough to knock out.
"Something like an evening's sport," commented Osbody.
"Most enjoyable," murmured Niblo.
These happy meetings ought to become a permanent feature," said
"Professor" Vinns, beaming over his glasses at his crestfallen opponent.
"I beg to differ," said Robin. "Not in an atmosphere like this,
anyhow. Phew! I can scarcely breathe! I vote we have all the windows
open, chaps; the place is like a furnace."
Some of the Merry Men ran at once to the window-cords, but Osbody
violently protested.
"Windows open be hanged!" he cried. "It's freezing outside. There's a
sea-breeze that cuts like a knife. We should all get our deaths of
cold."
"Rubbish!" retorted Robin. "Fresh air never harmed anyone. Better to
shiver than be baked alive. I feel like a bread-loaf in an oven."
"I can't help that," snapped Osbody. "I hate to sit in a draught.
What do you other fellows say?"
The Squirms unanimously agreed with their leader. It would, they said,
be like courting almost certain death from influenza or pneumonia to
open the windows on such a night.
"Well," said Robin, "it comes to this: we want air and you want
suffocation. What's the polite rule in these cases? The visiting team
is given the choice. Are you for ventilation, my Merry Men?"
"Ay, ay, Robin!" the Merry Men cried, with one voice.
"Fresh-air fiends!" snorted Grain.
"We shan't agree," said Osbody.
"Right you are," cried Robin easily. "There's only one thing to do,
then. We'll leave the tournament as it is, and call it a draw."
The Squirms stared at one another in blank consternation. To be robbed
of their sweeping victory in this freakish fashion was a misfortune not
to be borne.
"Tommy-rot!" exclaimed Osbody. "We haven't played a single chess-game
yet."
"Funkpots!" sneered Grain. "You're afraid to see it through."
For answer Robin pulled down the upper part of a big window and his
Merry Men followed his lead, flooding the over-heated room with sweet
night air.
"There, that's better!" cried Robin. "Carry on with the chess."
The Squirms were outmanoeuvred. They had either to abandon full and
complete victory or finish the tournament in a torrent of air which
swept their score-cards to the floor. So, with sinking hearts, and the
sourest of faces, they turned up their coat-collars and decided to
"stick it".
At chess most of the Merry Men went down like ninepins, some of them
having difficulty in distinguishing knights from bishops.
Once again the Squirms swept the board. Allan a Dale and Robin, by
dint of mental gymnastics which made their heads swim, wrung draws from
Vinns and Osbody respectively; but these partial successes only threw
the general rout of the Merry Men into stronger relief. Just as they
had expected, they were decisively and ignominiously thrashed.
Immediately the Squirms became a Mutual Admiration Society. Hands were
wrung and shoulders were slapped, and in every way the Merry Men were
made to feel that they were very small potatoes indeed. In unutterable
disgust at such exceedingly bad taste, they trooped to the door.
"Here, aren't you going to give three cheers for the winners?" Osbody
called after them.
With eyes that blazed contemptuously Robin flung round on him.
"No, we're not," he said. "This wasn't a tournament from the start.
It was like a rabbit-coursing match, where they blind and starve the
rabbits before they let the dogs loose."
"Rubbish!" Osbody scoffed. "It was man to man. We met on even terms!"
"All serene," answered Robin. "Hope you'll think the same when we're
dry-rubbing you next Wednesday!"
He hurried his Merry Men out of the room, and then, as a parting shot,
popped his head round the door to shout--
"Hot water-bottles and babies' comforters, this way! All dirty Squirms
with stiff necks should grease 'em with goose-fat. Like cures like!"