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.