He turned and grinned and waved his little cane. “It is but the beginning of the commencement,” says he. “Plenty of time for spankings is yet left remaining.”
“I’ll show you how it feels,” says I, and gave him one right where he’d have spanked me. He quit standing up without a second’s delay. I guess he figured he’d rather be hit some place else by a pebble. Well, I accommodated him.
“Three c-c-cheers,” says Mark, and we all threw our hats in the air and yelled.
It was the first big battle of the campaign. They had tried a straight frontal attack, as Mark called it, but Mark’s strategy and his disposition of his artillery had won the battle. So far we had come out ahead every place from the beginning. But the end was a long way off.
“Don’t leave your places,” says Mark. “They’ll be back.”
CHAPTER XV
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.”