“Ho! ho! ef you all do dat you be a dill in er pickle, ho! ho!”
“Who is dot vot you calls a bickle? By chiminy, nigger, look idt out midt yourself!”
Without more words the redoubtable Heiny Pumpernick Dill let fly with his fists at Jupe who, for his part, was ready enough to begin hostilities. Now it so happened that this Homeric battle took place on the banks of the large lake mentioned in other volumes of this series. It was a body of water used for experimenting with models of craft of various kinds and had been the scene of the testing out of the diving torpedo boat, as readers of the volume dealing with that invention will recollect.
The fist of the exasperated German youth, as it leaped out, landed on a spot on Jupe’s anatomy which, while it was not calculated to do him much injury, still gave him plenty to think about.
“Woof! Wha’ fo’ yo’ alls hit me in der stomick?” indignantly roared out Jupe. Without more ado he dropped the basket he had been burdened with and the lid burst open. Instantly the ground was covered with a score of lively hard-shell crabs, but in the heat of their anger neither of the combatants noticed this.
Jupe’s retaliation for the German youth’s blow was vigorous.
“Gollyumptions! Ah makes yo’ all call me a genelman ob color befo’ ah kicks yo’n off’n these hayar groun’s,” he cried indignantly.
The next minute it was Mr. Dill’s turn to cry “Oof!”
But he quickly recovered and then, closing in, the two pugilistic heroes engaged in a tussle which speedily brought them in a rolling, kicking, struggling heap to the ground. Over and over they rolled on the banks of the lake and their struggles speedily brought them among some of the escaped crabs. These lost no time in dealing with the combatants. One fastened itself into young Dill’s long yellow hair while another seized Jupe by the back of the neck. Two piercing yells went up simultaneously.