Mark Tidd's Citadel

I turned and ran toward the citadel, with the whole pack of them at my heels. Just as we got to the bridge The Man Who Will Come, with a couple of his men at his back, came tear...

Motu and I soon disposed of the two Japanese and their ladder. As soon as they had picked themselves up we heard The Man Who Will Come calling to them. Motu said he was telling...

“I don’t see,” says I, “why we couldn’t just as well pile into a boat and row to the far end of the lake. From there we could make tracks for town and save all this bother.”

The Japanese came stamping and jabbering around under us, but that didn’t do any particular good that I could see, and after a while they quieted down. I guess they were pretty...

The next day passed without a sight of a single Japanese. Motu told us it was probably because the four were pretty badly scared by what happened the night before, and were wait...

I started to swim back, pushing my dishpan ahead of me. The sun began to warm things up and it was a lot more comfortable than it had been on my first trip across. I just poked...

There didn’t seem to be much of anything for us to do but wait till the besiegers made the first move. It wasn’t as though we had a strong garrison and could make sorties. The b...

The enemy rowed back and got out of their boat. Some of them acted pretty lame, too. They hunched around and rubbed sore spots, while we gave them the laugh. All of them went up...

The hammering down below kept on steadily for an hour or so. Then there was silence for quite a while, I expect while The Man’s army was getting rested and recovering its grit....

I went out and took a look at the lake. It began to look wider to me. That’s always the way with things. If you’re not going to jump across a hole the hole don’t look wide, but...

“The first thing to remember just n-now,” says Mark, “is to act like we didn’t have any worry. They don’t know Motu’s here. So we’ve got to act natural and do just like we would...

Plunk sort of flushed. “I wasn’t thinkin’ about gettin’ to town,” says he. “I was hopin’ he’d remember to fetch a lantern or somethin’ to give us a little light.”

He talked to his dog and after a while got close enough to him to hang on while we pulled out the quills. The dog yelped some, but we explained to him that it was necessary, and...

Nothing happened the rest of the night. Whatever it was that had been prowling around the hotel didn’t prowl any more. By daylight it all seemed like a joke. But it hadn’t been...

“The only way you could r-r-run and get away would be straight up,” says Mark, “and we’re just out of flyin’-machines. No, you won’t run, Motu. You’ll stay and we’ll s-s-stand a...

“They are tolerable hot,” says Mark, with an uncomfortable grin. “But I guess so long as Motu wants to mind his own b-business pretty strict, we’d better do the same. He knows w...

Next morning we saw a little procession come out of the hotel. Walking ahead was The Man, as jaunty as ever, or at least trying to be. A man can’t be very jaunty with a limp in...

Our supper was a little late that night, but it tasted all the better for that. Before we ate, Mark insisted on our building the two watch-fires, and somebody was keeping his ey...

It took two of us to carry it, and when we got down with it we saw Mark outside staring at the little bridge. We stared, too. It was about two feet wide, and maybe twenty feet l...

Next morning Mr. Ames got us out of bed before a rooster had time to crow. He had the wagon all loaded and the horses hitched when we got down-stairs, and all there was for us t...

All four of us, Mark, Plunk Smalley, Binney Jenks, and Tallow Martin, which is me, stood and looked at the big, ramshackle summer hotel and then looked at one another—and three...

We got home with our fish just as Plunk and Binney were getting ready to eat. They had cooked dinner and waited for us until they couldn’t stand it any longer. Mark and I were p...