“Don’t b’lieve cliff-dwellers had knights,” says I.
“We’re the kind that does,” says he. “Kneel.”
I grinned sort of foolish, I expect, and got down. He tapped me on the shoulder with the stick he had been using and says:
“Rise, Sir Tallow Martin. I dub thee knight.” With that he put a smear of the messy stuff on my cheek and chuckled. “I daub the knight, too,” says he. “That’ll make it all the stronger.”
“It was plenty powerful enough without,” says I.
All of a sudden the stairs dropped with a bang. Plunk had missed the knife with his lance and the Japanese had cut the rope.
“Ready to repel attack,” Mark shouted, and grabbed his lance.
Plunk had his and so did I. Mark and I stood plumb at the head of the stairs, while Plunk stood over to the side to take the enemy on the flank. No sooner did the stairs drop than three Japanese made a wild jump on to them. One man was ahead and made a bound up three steps. The others were right on his heels. Well, sir, what followed was too good to be true. The top man no sooner landed on the step than both his feet went slap out from under him and he sprawled on his face. His heels flew back and swatted the two behind, and they went down, and all of them rolled over and over to the floor in a tangle. I caught a glimpse of their faces and you never saw anybody look so surprised and startled and mad all at once.
“Wumph!” the first fellow says when he landed, and “Wough!” says the other two fellows when his heels hit them in the stummicks. I guess it knocked the wind clean out of them, for they all sat on the floor gasping and hanging on to their waist-lines like they thought somebody was going to try to steal them. They didn’t get right up. You could see they weren’t ready to stand up, not any of them. They were perfectly willing to rest a bit.
In a minute The Man came in sight and began jabbering at them. At first they didn’t do anything but goggle at him and groan and pant, but he tongue-lashed them till they got on to their feet pretty slow and painful.