Even Madge could not suggest a remedy for the pigs' excessive drowsiness. Words, or rather shouts, seemed thrown away upon their dull ears, and more active interference was impossible with Barton hovering in the neighbourhood. The chase threatened to come to a stand-still, when Betty burst into an agitated war-cry.
"The enemy are upon us! No, I forgot! The elephants, I mean! They are galloping towards us! We shall be overwhelmed!"
She waved her stick defiantly as she screamed, in the spirit of one prepared to perish sooner than surrender.
This time the alarm had sufficient foundation in fact to be very exciting. A young heifer, attracted by the noise, and probably thinking that it had some connection with Barton and hay, set off trotting across the field, followed at a discreet pace by all the milking-cows. In the distance, with the help of a little imagination, they made quite a formidable array.
"We are outnumbered! There is no dishonour in flight!" shouted Madge in the grand phrases gained from books, that were always employed on these occasions. "Rush for the fort!" she continued. "The fort under the oak-tree!"
The children needed no further instructions. They had well-established settlements under several of the trees, consisting of fallen branches that had been chopped into logs and piled in a heap to remain there until wanted. In a few minutes more they were defying elephants and everything else from the summit of a log-pile fully five feet high, their backs planted firmly against the solid trunk of the oak-tree. So safe did they feel that it was annoying of the cows not to come on faster, and they took it as nothing short of a direct insult when the leading heifer, to whom they had all along alluded as a mad bull, gave up the pursuit and began quietly to eat.
"There's no spirit in anything, elephants or bulls! I never saw anything like it!" said Madge in a tone of utter disgust. "If they won't run away how can one hunt them?"
"But what is that coming in and out of the farmyard doorway? It isn't there always," said John, screwing up his eyes and trying to see across the field in the blinding sunshine.
"I think it's a dog! I am almost sure it is," observed Betty nervously. "I do hope it is not a mad dog that has strayed in off the road."
"That's not very likely," laughed Madge. "There aren't many mad dogs on the road, in fact I know people are obliged to keep them shut up at home, or muzzled, or—"