It took only a moment for us to answer the challenge. Dee headed the opposing forces, making a long dive that brought her up almost on the beach of the little kingdom. Dum was ready to push her back in the water and kerflop! she went before Zebedee could come to her aid. Then ensued such a battle as had not been fought in the United States since Custer's last rally.
Of course Dum and Billy had the advantage of position, but we so far outnumbered them that it took all of their strength to keep us from landing.
"Mary! Mary! You and Shorty come be our allies!" called Queen Dum to the couple who had gone to housekeeping on a small island near her own. Mary slid into the water like a turtle and Shorty followed. They landed from the rear and now the battle raged fiercely.
I know I got pitched back into the water at least a dozen times. Having learned to swim only the summer before at Willoughby, I was not a past master in the art, but I could keep above water indefinitely, thanks to Zebedee, my instructor, who had made floating the first requisite.
The odds were in our favor but the vantage they had in position was well-nigh discouraging us, when Zebedee and Wink made a flank movement and landed on the other side of the island, immediately pushing over the opposing forces into the foaming torrent and then pulling all of us onto dry land.
"Victory! Victory!" we shouted; and then for the first time since the battle began to rage we remembered our chaperone. She had awakened and dug herself out of her warm sand nest. What were her charges up to? It never entered the old woman's head that we were playing a game, and I fancy we looked in dead earnest.
When she had dozed off after landing we were all of us clothed and in our right minds, and suddenly she awoke to find us anything but clothed, according to her strict ideas of propriety among the quality, never having seen girls in bathing suits; and not only were we in disgraceful dishabille, but we were engaged in a distressing brawl.
"My Gawd! My Gawd!" she wailed. "Here I been a-slumberin' an' sleepin' an' Miss Maria done tol' me to shopper-roon. I trus'ed de white folks an' look at 'em!" She covered her face with her hands and wept aloud.
I fancy we were something to look at. Bathing caps were off and hair wet and tangled streaming down our backs. Dee had lost a stocking in the tussle and Rags had been bereft of more than half of his shirt, so that his white back gleamed forth in a most immodest abandon. Shorty had tapped Harvie on the nose and that scion of a noble race was bleeding like a stuck pig. The gore added color to the scene, and had not Aunt Milly already been certain that this was a real war we were raging, the blood of her young master would have convinced her.
"Hi, you! You!" she called. "Quit dat!"