y horizontal, with arms
joined and straight out in front of them, and almost at the same instant
seven or eight more plunged into the ball from above, as if taking
headers. The boys were out.

I stopped squirting, for I did not know whether the water would fell
them as it felled the bats; but a shrill cry rose from below:

"Go on, M! go on, M!"

So I aimed again, and it was time, for a knot of bats just then detached
itself from the main body and flew full-face towards me. My shot caught
the middle one on the snout, and as I swung the squirt to left and
right, it disabled four or five others, and discouraged the rest.
Meanwhile the ball was cloven again and again by the arms of the flying
squadrons, which shot through it from side to side and from top to
bottom (though never, as appeared later, quite through the middle), and
though it kept closing up again, it was plainly growing smaller as more
and more of the bats outside, which were exposed to the squirt, dropped
away.

I suddenly felt something alight on my shoulder, and a voice said in my
ear, "Wag says if you _could_ throw a shoe into the middle now, he
believes it would finish them. Can you?" It was, I think, Dart who had
been sent with the message.

"Horseshoes, I suppose he means," I said. "I'll try."

"Wait till we're out of the way," said Dart, and was off.

In a moment more I heard--not what I was rather expecting, a horn of
Elf-land, but two strokes on the bell. I saw the figures of the boys
shoot up and away to left and right, leaving the bat-ball clear, and the
bats shrieked aloud, I dare say in triumph at the enemy's retreat.

There were two horseshoes left. I had no idea how they would fly, and I
had not much confidence in my power of aiming; but it must be tried, and
I threw them edgeways, like quoits. The first skimmed the top of the
ball, the second went straight through the middle. Something which the
bats in the very centre were holding--something soft--was pierced by it,
and burst. I think it must have been a globe of jelly-like stuff in a
thin skin. The contents spurted out on to some of the bats, and seemed
to scald the fur off them in an instant and singe up all the membranes
of their wings. They fell down at once, with broken screams. The rest
darted off in every direction, and the ball was gone.

"Now don't be long," said a voice from the window-sill.

I thought I knew what was meant, and looked to the leaden casket. As if
to make