"Get on the poop-deck; we can lick them there.

Run!" Tod darted back, and the two defenders clearing the intervening rotten timbers with a bound, sprang upon the roof of the old cabin--Archie's "poop." With a whoop the savages followed, jumping over the holes in the planking and avoiding the nails in the open beams.
In the melee Archie had lost his pole, and was now standing, hat off, his blue eves flashing, all the blood of his overheated little body blazing in his face.

The tears of defeat were trembling under his eyelids, He had been outnumbered, but he would die game.

In his hand he carried, unconsciously to himself, the big-bladed pocket knife the captain had given him.

He would as soon have used it on his mother as upon one of his enemies, but the Barnegat invaders were ignorant of that fact, knives being the last resort in their environment.
"Look out, Sandy!" yelled Scootsy to his leader, who was now sneaking up to Archie with the movement of an Indian in ambush;--"he's drawed a knife." Sandy stopped and straightened himself within three feet of Archie.