“This is a dickens of a place to spend the summer,” they all began saying. “What are we going to do? We can’t get the car either way now. It might just as well have broken through the trestle and gone down into the marsh. It’s no good to us here.” “I say let’s leave it here and come on up to Temple Camp,” Hunt Manners said. “We’ve had trouble enough with it. Let it stay here and rot.” I said, “Don’t let’s get discouraged. Consider the busy little mosquitoes. See how happy they are.” “Sure,” Westy said; “and so would we be if we were in their shoes.” “In their _shoes_?” Pee-wee yelled. “They ought to wear rubbers down here,” I said. “Let’s have a meeting of the general staff to decide what we’ll do. We’re in the midst of the enemies.” Dorry Benton said, “I vote that we go inside and shut the doors and the windows. S—lap! There’s one.” All around we could hear bzzzzzzz, bzzzzz—— I said, “S—_lap_! There goes another.” “Bzzzzzz—sl—_ap_!” Gee whiz, that was all I could hear. We looked like a class in physical training. “Come on inside,” I said. “This is getting terrible.” It wasn’t so bad inside with the doors and windows shut. We chased some of them out and killed a lot of others. It was our lives against theirs. “Don’t give them any quarter,” one fellow shouted. “Don’t give them even a dime,” I said. “Don’t give them a cent,” Pee-wee shouted, slapping at them right and left. Talk about the Huns! Oh, boy! After a terrible massacre we got most of them out of the car. Then we sat down to talk about what we had better do. We were in a pretty bad fix, that was sure. It looked as if that was the end of our dear old car, anyway for a meeting place in the summer, because we couldn’t stand against an army of several million billions. A scout is brave, but—— It was quite late in the afternoon and we were getting hungry. The mosquitoes had finished their supper. I hope they enjoyed it. Pretty soon it began to rain outside and the wind began to blow. One good thing, it blew the mosquitoes away. That hour or so that we spent in the car behind closed doors is known in scout history as the Siege of Cat-tail Marsh. And, believe me, we didn’t like it very much. I’m not so stuck on history anyway. CHAPTER XXXIII—WE SEPARATE “One thing sure, I won’t desert this car,” Pee-wee said. “It’s our car and I’m going to stick to it. I’m not going to leave it here to rot after all the fun we’ve had in it.” I said, “You’re welcome to take it with you for all I care. Maybe you know some new kind of strategy to move it. I don’t see that our appetites are going to do us any good down here. Here’s the car in the middle of the marsh and that’s all there is to it. If there should happen to be an earthquake maybe that would move it.” “Let’s have an earthquake,” the inventor piped up. “Maybe when the earth revolves a little it will start the car, hey?” Pee-wee shouted. “Maybe if we wait till to-morrow morning——”