orders had been given to attack the wild men in the morning and most of the teenie weenie soldiers slept very little during the night. at daylight a thimbleful of hot cocoa and a supply of bread was brought into the front trenches and while the little soldiers ate, the artillery kept up a heavy fire on the wild men’s fort.
at last the order was given to charge and the excited teenie weenies climbed out of their trenches and dashed for the fort.
although the soldiers’ tiny knees knocked together and their teeth chattered with fright, they went into battle with great eagerness, cheered by the voices of several meadow mice and bugs, who stood out of range of the wild men’s arrows.
it was a great victory. probably the history of the battle can be better told by one who took part in it, so we shall hear the story from a letter written by mr. lover to his wife immediately after the battle. the tiny letter was written on a piece of very thin birch bark, about half the size of a postage stamp, but if you could see it under a powerful microscope you would read it, word for word, just as it appears on this page.
my dear bab:
as the indian is carrying the official news of the battle back to shoehurst, you will know before you open this letter that we have won. it was wonderful and i will tell you all about it from the very first. the wild men’s fort, which was made of strong sticks, lay in a narrow path guarding the only open road to the village, where the lady of fashion and poet are held prisoners. in order to get to the village we had to capture the fort. we heard the night before that we were to storm the fort in the morning and believe me, we didn’t sleep much; that is, i didn’t. i was as nervous as a cat in a dog house.
early in the morning the aviator flew over the fort and dropped pepper bombs. these bombs are made out of red pepper tied up in thin pieces of tissue paper and when they hit the ground they break and scatter the pepper all around. while the wild men were sneezing from the effects of the pepper, the artillery opened up and sent a lot of shot into the fort.
next, a big mine we had made under the fort was exploded. there were two big firecrackers in it and, say, you ought to have seen the sticks fly up in the air when that mine went off! right after the mine explosion we were ordered to charge and we jumped out of the trenches and started on the run for the fort.
the teenie weenie army drives the wild men from their wrecked fort.—chapter twenty-two.
we were almost halfway there when the sailor, who was carrying the flag, dropped with an arrow in his chest. the dunce caught up the fallen flag and putting his hat on top of the staff, he yelled for us to follow. everybody cheered, for we didn’t think the dunce had enough nerve to do such a brave thing.
the fort was badly wrecked by the explosion, so it wasn’t hard to climb over it to get at the wild men. most of the saboes were so scared they never tried to fight, but a few of them stood their ground. they were quickly subdued, however. we captured fourteen men; five of them are wounded, but the doctor has them in the hospital and he’ll fix them up all right.
four of our men were wounded, but the sailor is the only one who was badly hurt. the doctor says that he will pull through all right.
we wanted to attack the wild men’s village, but the general wouldn’t let us. he says we have got to take care of the wounded and make our lines safe before we can go farther. some of the men seem to think that there will be very little fight left in the wild men, for they were pretty well scared by our attack. the scotchman and i are doing guard duty; we have to guard the prisoners. we are using an old bottle for a prison and it certainly makes a good one; if we keep on getting prisoners we’ll soon have a bottleful.
i do hope the general follows up the victory and goes right after these wild men, so we can end this war, for i want to get home to you and the children.
well, i’ll have to stop now as the indian is about ready to start for shoehurst. tell the twins i have a nice string of blackberry seed beads for each of them and give them each a kiss for me.
affectionately,
your husband.
p. s.: the cook and the chinaman have just brought up a pot of cocoa and four hot beans! hurrah! we’re going to have a feast.
hubby.
