Such a fire department as they turned themselves into! Or, rather, they set out as a kind of police brigade to fight a crowd of young incendiaries, and save Captain Hollowboy's house from being set on fire and burned up. They were at least determined that not one of those boys should get any nearer the house they had so carefully built for themselves against the eaves.
"Mud! mud!" shouted Steve, in half a minute. "Boys, where does the Captain keep his mud?"
"Have they stung you?"
"Oh, my nose!"
Steve had just started to run for some mud, when he gave another shrill whoop, "Yow! he's in my neck!" and there was no such thing as any other boy helping him, for each one of them was thrashing away at the nearest hornet. That is, except Van, for he had been after some more sticks, and was just putting them on the fire when he felt as if some one had dropped a live coal right on his left ankle.
"Wah!" yelled Van; "I've burned a hole in one of my stockings. Ou! it's burned another! Oh, boys, it's two hornets lit right side by side. Oh dear!" and there he was, rolling over in the grass, and striking with a bunch of weeds at something he saw in the air above him.
SMOKING THE HORNETS' NEST.—Drawn by S. G. McCutcheon.
Harman Strauss had been the wisest of them all, for he had pulled a couple of damp towels off the clothes-line, and had wrapped his head in one, and given the other to Bill Ogden.