But Wilkes’ mind was on Art.
“Go get him, Carrots,” he yelled, pushing Compton forward.
“He’s a big bluff. Don’t stand for it.”
Spurred on, Compton made a new rush for Trevor. But something intervened. It was knotty little Connie’s fist. Carrots always insisted it wasn’t fair, that he wasn’t fighting Connie. Just the same, as Carrots lunged past Connie, the latter caught him on the jaw so cleverly that Carrots dropped. Like a cat Job Wilkes was on Connie’s back. In a flash the fight was on again with Nick Apthorp on the side-lines, whimpering and nursing the knob on his head, and Hank Milleson pawing his way into the center of the fray and yelling for fair play.
For perhaps five minutes the vicinity resounded with the noises that accompany boyish fights; grunts, exploding breaths, whimpering, howls, cries, half in defiance and half in protest, and, with it all the unmistakable commotion of jarring bodies. Now and then there was the crack of a blow struck, but not often. Even the bitterest boy battle rarely reaches the point of serious bodily injury.
Then, when the confusion of cries reached its height and nearly all were yelling “leggo my hair!” or “he’s bitin’ me!” (even in the juvenile world an inexcusable barbarism) or “he’s chokin’ me!” the furious tempest suddenly began to calm. The first drops of blood are wonderfully quieting.
One of the first to escape from the wriggling mass was Wart Ware. A sleeve of his shirt was gone, his hat was missing and his nose was bleeding freely. His fighting spirit was gone but he continued to struggle in Matt Branson’s neck-hold. At last, his mouth filled with blood, he yelled “Enough!”
Phil Abercrombie and Lew Ashwood were in no better condition. Buck Bluett and Mart Clare, both outclassing their opponents, had forced these “middle-weight” aviators into each other’s arms and were vigorously pounding their heads together. Phil was yet feebly defiant, but Lew had reached the point where he only groaned with each new knock.
With the first let-up in hair-pulling and punching noses a quartette of Elm Streeters made a feeble dash toward the river bank, where not less than twenty miniature aeroplanes had been deposited on the first sign of trouble. Colly Craighead, Paul Corbett, Duke Easton and Sandy Sheldon thought of these treasures apparently at the same time. Boys who won’t run away from a scrap have a way of suddenly remembering duties that are instantly imperative.
But Joe Andrews, Tom Bates and Nick Apthorp (who had now rejoined the combatants) were in close pursuit.