As it happened, they made an attack that night while the Doctor was staying with the Chief. And about ten o'clock everybody was awakened out of his sleep with cries of "War! War! The Amazons are here!"
There was terrible confusion. And until the moon had risen people were hitting and falling over one another everywhere in the darkness, not knowing friend from enemy.
When it was possible to see, however, the Doctor found that most of Chief Nyam-Nyam's people had fled off into the jungle; and the Amazons, in thousands, were just going through the village, taking anything they fancied. The Doctor tried to argue with them, but they merely laughed at him.
Then the white mouse, who was watching the show from the Doctor's shoulder, whispered in his ear:
"If this is an army of women, Doctor, I think I know of a way to deal with them. Women are terribly afraid of mice, you know. I'll just go off and collect a few in the village and see what we can do."
So the white mouse went off and gathered an army of his own, about two hundred mice, which lived in the grass walls and floors of the huts. And then suddenly they attacked the Amazons and began nipping them in the legs.
With shrieks and howls the fat women soldiers dropped the things they had been stealing and ran helter-skelter for home. And that was one time the famous Amazons of Dahomey didn't have it all their own way.
