A stir among the Camanches and then a wild affray. Crack! crack! go the Diggers' bastings. Crack! feathers fly over the heads and into the eyes of the Camanches, and there many of them stick. The Camanches realize the disadvantages of unprovoked assault with no rules of warfare agreed upon beforehand. Here and there a Camanche drops his arms and flies to the farther end of the hall, only to fumble unavailingly at the fastenings of the iron door, while a victorious Digger belabors him with the weapon he has just cast aside. All at once there is descried in the dim light of the hall the boots and never-to-be-mistaken striped pantaloons of Captain Hale swinging through the trap-door! Captain Hale is drill-sergeant and professor of gymnastics. He has seen years of army service, and is thoroughly imbued with the military spirit. The boys are more afraid of him than of the president and entire board of trustees,--as afraid as they would be of old Nick, himself, in boots and striped pantaloons. In a flash every Digger had disappeared into his own room and locked the door after him, and the Camanches are left alone, gasping among their feathers, the captain in their midst. There is a moment of bewilderment followed by a wild stampede toward the iron door, but the Captain has cut off the retreat. "Young gentlemen, you will remain and clear up the hall. Williams, go to the coal-cellar and bring up the two-bushel basket." Williams is "nobbiest" of third-story boys, bravest of Camanche warriors, but Williams doesn't dare refuse to go for that basket. During his absence his fellow-savages express strong doubts as to his ever re-appearing upon the battle-field, but he does return, like Regulus to his barrel of spikes. The Captain has borrowed a number of brooms and dust-pans from the Diggers who, to a man, had retired and been snoring sweetly. "Now, gentlemen, clear up these feathers!" orders the Captain, as if he was crying, "Forward, march!" Clearing up those feathers was a tedious and trying process. Any one who has ever chased a worn-out but still lively feather up and down a long hall can imagine the scene with hundreds of them flying about. "They're the meanest lot of feathers,--pretty much all fuzz," said one exhausted brave. When the last handful had been crowded into the basket, Williams attempted opening the door. "No; you're to make your exit the same way you made your ingress," announced the Captain. Williams stared blankly at the trap-hole in the ceiling. Dropping down through a trap-door and going up through the same, with no visible means of support but the floor, are naturally different exercises. "You're fertile in expedients; can't you devise some good way of getting out?" coolly asked the Captain. "We might stand on each other's shoulders," suggested one small savage, whom the blood-thirsty Williams afterward confessed he longed to scalp at this juncture. "Very well, do so," ordered the Captain.