Samuel Crockett - The Surprising Adventures of Sir Toady Lion with Those of General Napoleon Smith

So at the headquarters of its general, the army of Windy Standard formed up. Sir Toady Lion wished to get within supporting distance of Prissy, and accordingly kept snuggling nearer all the time, so that he could get a furtive hold of her skirts at awkward places in the examination. This he could do the more easily that General Field-Marshal Smith was prevented by the bandages over his right eye, and also by the projecting edges of the pillow, from seeing Toady Lion's left hand.

"Now, Priscilla," began her father, "tell Mr. Davenant Carter and Mr. Mant what happened in the castle, and the names of any of the bad boys who stole your pet lamb."

"Wasn't no lamb – Donald was a sheep, and he could fight," began Toady Lion, without relevance, but with his usual eagerness to hear the sound of his own piping voice. In his zeal he took a step forward and so brought himself on the level of the eye of his general, who from the pillow darted upon him a look so freezing that Sir Toady Lion instantly fell back into the ranks, and clutched Prissy's skirt with such energy as almost to stagger her severe deportment.

"Now," said the Chief Constable of Bordershire, "tell me what were the names of the assailants."

He was listening to the tale as told by Prissy with his note-book ready in his hand, occasionally biting at the butt of the pencil, and anon wetting the lead in his mouth, under the mistaken idea that by so doing he improved its writing qualities.

"I think," began Prissy, "that they were – "

" A-chew! " came from the bed and from under the bandages with a sudden burst of sound. Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith had sneezed. That was all.

But Prissy started. She knew what it meant. It was the well-known signal not to commit herself under examination.

Her father looked round at the open windows.

"Are you catching cold with the draught, Hugh John?" he asked kindly.

"I think I have a little cold," said the wily General, who did not wish all the windows to be promptly shut.

"Don't know all their names, but the one that hurted me was – " began Toady Lion.

But who the villain was will never be known, for at that moment the bedclothes became violently disturbed immediately in front of Sir Toady Lion's nose. A fearful black countenance nodded once at him and disappeared.

"Black Sambo!" gasped Toady Lion, awed by the terrible appearance, and falling back from the place where the wizard had so suddenly appeared.

"What did I understand you to say, little boy?" said Mr. Mant, with his pencil on his book.

"Ow – it was Black Sambo!" Toady Lion almost screamed. Mr. Mant gravely noted the fact.

"What in the world does he mean?" asked Mr. Mant, casting his eyes searchingly from Prissy to General Napoleon and back again.

"He means 'Black Sambo'!" said Prissy, devoting herself strictly to facts, and leaving the Chief Constable to his proper business of interpreting them.

"What is his other name?" said Mr. Mant.

"Soulis!" said General Smith from the bed.

The three gentlemen looked at each other, smiled, and shook their heads.

"What did I tell you?" said Mr. Davenant Carter. "Try as I will, I cannot get the simplest thing out of my Sammy and Cissy if they don't choose to tell."

Nevertheless Mr. Smith, being a sanguine man and with little experience of children, tried again.

"There is no black boy in the neighbourhood," said Mr. Smith severely; "now tell the truth, children – at once, when I bid you!"

He uttered the last words in a loud and commanding tone.

"Us is telling the troof, father dear," said Toady Lion, in the "coaxy-woaxy" voice which he used when he wanted marmalade from Janet or a ride on the saddle from Mr. Picton Smith.

"Perhaps the boy had blackened his face to deceive the eye," suggested Mr. Mant, with the air of one familiar from infancy with the tricks and devices of the evil-minded of all ages.

"Was the ringleader's face blackened? – Answer at once!" said Mr. Smith sternly.

The General extracted his bruised and battered right hand from under the clothes and looked at it.

"I think so," he said, "leastways some has come off on my knuckles!"

Mr. Davenant Carter burst into a peal of jovial mirth.

"Didn't I tell you? – It isn't a bit of use badgering children when they don't want to tell. Let's go over to the castle."

And with that the three gentlemen went out, while Napoleon Smith, Prissy, and Sir Toady Lion were left alone.

The General beckoned them to his bedside with his nose – quite an easy thing to do if you have the right kind of nose, which Hugh John had.

"Now look here," he said, "if you'd told, I'd have jolly well flattened you when I got up. 'Tisn't our business to tell p'leecemen things."

"That wasn't a p'leeceman," said Sir Toady Lion, "hadn't no shiny buttons."

"That's the worst kind," said the General in a low, hissing whisper; "all the same you stood to it like bricks, and now I'm going to get well and begin on the campaign at once."

"Don't you be greedy-teeth and eat it all yourself!" interjected Toady Lion, who thought that the campaign was something to eat, and that it sounded good.

"What are you going to do?" said Prissy, who had a great belief in the executive ability of her brother.

"I know their secret hold," said General-Field-Marshal Smith grandly, "and in the hour of their fancied security we will fall upon them and – "

"And what?" gasped Prissy and Toady Lion together, awaiting the revelation of the horror.

"Destroy them!" said General Smith, in a tone which was felt by all parties to be final.

He laid himself back on his pillow and motioned them haughtily away. Prissy and Sir Toady Lion retreated on tiptoe, lest Janet should catch them and send them to the parlour – Prissy to read her chapter, and her brother along with her to keep him out of mischief.

And so the great soldier was left to his meditations in the darkened hospital chamber.

GENERAL SMITH, having now partially recovered, was mustering his forces and arranging his plans of campaign. He had spoken no hasty word when he boasted that he knew the secret haunt of the robbers. For, some time before, during a brief but glorious career as a pirate, he had been brought into connection with Nipper Donnan, the strongest butcher's boy of the town, and the ringleader in all mischief, together with Joe Craig, Nosie Cuthbertson, and Billy M'Robert, his ready followers.

Hugh John had once been a member of the Comanche Cowboys, as Nipper Donnan's band was styled; but a disagreement about the objects of attack had hastened a rupture, and the affair of the castle was but the last act in a hostility long latent. In fact the war was always simmering, and was ready to boil over on the slightest provocation. For when Hugh John found that his father's orchards, his father's covers and hencoops were to be the chief prey (being safer than the farmers' yards, where there were big dogs always loose, and the town streets, where "bobbies" mostly congregated), he struck. He reflected that one day all these things would belong to himself. He would share with Prissy and Sir Toady Lion, of course; but still mainly they would belong to him. Why then plunder them now? The argument was utilitarian but sufficient.

Though he did not mention the fact to Prissy or Sir Toady Lion, Hugh John was perfectly well acquainted with the leaders in the fray at the castle. He knew also that there were motives for the enmity of the Comanche Cowboys other and deeper than the town rights to the possession of the Castle of Windy Standard.

It was night when Hugh John cautiously pushed up the sash of his window and looked out. A few stars were high up aloft wandering through the grey-blue fields of the summer night, as it were listlessly and with their hands in their pockets. A corn-crake cried in the meadow down below, steadily, remorselessly, like the aching of a tooth. A white owl passed the window with an almost noiseless whiff of fluffy feathers. Hugh John sniffed the cool pungent night smell of the dew on the near wet leaves and the distant mown grass. It always went to his head a little, and was the only thing which made him regret that he was to be a soldier. Whenever he smelt it, he wanted to be an explorer of far-off lands, or an honest poacher – even a gamekeeper might do, in case the other vocations proved unattainable.