The officers all agreed with the General and that very night several men were sent out, when it was quite dark, to start the work.
The little soldiers had gone but a short distance when they were seen by the wild men, who sent a shower of arrows at them, and Gogo was slightly scratched on the arm, while one of the wild men’s arrows splintered the Old Soldier’s wooden leg, so the General ordered the work stopped for the time being.
The Old Soldier was quite an engineer and when he had whittled out a new wooden leg, he set to work trying to scheme out some way by which the men could dig the trenches without being hit by the wild men’s arrows.
“I have it,” he cried after he had puzzled over the matter for a time. “We can make a big screen out of sticks, one that is quite arrow-proof.”
“How are you going to move it?” asked the Turk. “It will be too heavy for the men to carry.”
“That will be easy,” smiled the Old Soldier. “There’s a spool of thread among our supplies and all we have to do is to remove the thread and—”
“Use the spool as a sort of wheel to roll the screen on,” put in the Cook.
“Right,” laughed the Old Soldier. “We can push it ahead of us on the spool and be quite safe from the wild men’s arrows.”
The General ordered the screen made and at once, under the watchful eye of the Old Soldier, the men set to work building it. In a remarkably short time the screen was finished and early the next morning the Old Soldier, with six chosen men, started to push it toward the wild men’s fort.