“Don’t throw away your ammunition. Take time to aim, and throw to hit something whenever you throw. It don’t do any good to hammer the walls of the fort. Aim at the openings and at the men behind the walls!”
These were Starbright’s instructions, and his men were trying to carry them out. The balls for this reason, did not fly so thick and fast as when the sophomores were the attacking force, but they did quite as much execution.
Starbright intended to make the preliminary “rifle-fire” and “cannonade” comparatively short, and charge suddenly, in the effort to take the sophomores by surprise. But when his forces quickly ceased raining snowballs on the white fort and swept forward, they found themselves confronted by the sophomores leaping the walls and coming at them.
Ready had ordered a sortie in force, for the purpose of surprising the freshmen. In the front of the walls of the snow fort the contending parties came together.
Unfortunately for Ready’s plan, some of his men, seeing the freshmen coming, did not leap over the walls, but remained behind them; and these, now beginning to shoot snowballs at the enemy, rained their missiles alike on friends and foes. Within less than a minute it was hard to tell sophomores from freshmen, for each party, in attempting to shower and beat down the other with armfuls of snow, found its members transformed into snowy images of men, in which clothing and features were hidden under the white coating.
Again Starbright and Ready came face to face. For a moment they stopped, looking at each other as if trying to measure strength. Ready tossed back his hair with a flirt of his right hand that at the same time cleared the snow out of his face.
“I’m coming for you!” he panted.
“Here’s where the Giant of the Wheel evens the score!” Starbright laughed back.
Then, with armfuls of snow suddenly snatched up, they dived at each other, and the hottest fight of the whole field began.
Starbright had the advantage by being taller; yet Ready was as supple, lithe, and active as a panther.