"We’ll serve them out nicely, if they bother us this spring," grunted Fred, who was likewise pulling.
"We’ll beat them as we did in the snowball fight," cried Shiner.
"Aw, we’ll spell it all right, won’t we, Ginger?" demanded Sparrow Bangs.
"Let me at them—that’s all," boasted Fred.
When they got to the upper island, there was nobody there. They pulled their boats ashore and went up into the wood. There was the shack they had built the previous fall, almost as good as new.
Of course, the roof was rotting and wet, but it was pretty dry inside and they patched up the walls and roof in a little while.
Then they built a fire, made cocoa, opened a can of condensed milk, and spread out the sandwiches and pie that Mary had furnished. In the midst of the picnic, a chunk of sod popped right into the tin cup out of which Pee Wee was drinking.
"Oh! who did that?" demanded the fat boy.
In a moment a big sod came slap into the fire, and scattered the burning brands. Then followed a fusillade from the woods on two sides of the camp!
"The Bedlamites! I see that Larry Cronk!" yelled Howell Purdy.
The feast was spoiled. The boys from the rival school had pulled up a lot of soft, wet turf, and they bombarded the boys from Rockledge nicely.
It was an uneven fight at first, for the picnickers had been totally unprepared for such an attack.
Nobody wanted to run, however, and Bobby and Sparrow stemmed the tide of defeat with pine-cones, until their mates could cut clubs and come to close quarters.
The Rockledge boys were driven out of their camp. With great hilarity, Larry Cronk and his mates held the camp, and drove off their antagonists every time they attacked.
"They’re too many for us," growled Fred, when the Rockledge crew finally retired. "Why! there are four boatloads of them."
"I tell you," whispered Shiner, "let’s get back at them."
"Crickey! we’ve been back at them enough," complained Pee Wee. "I’m beaten black and blue. And look at our clothes—all mud! We’ll hear about this, when we get back to the school."
In fact, it was a sorrowful and angry group that went down to the boats. These were on one side of the island, while those belonging to the Belden boys were beached on the other side.
Shiner had whispered his bright idea to Bobby and some of the others. Bobby was a little slow to accept it, but finally was convinced. The Beldens were watching them from the summit of the rocks.