The boys at our school divided themselves into two parties:  one was the Early Settlers and the other the Pequots, the latter the most numerous.  The Early Settlers built a snow fort on the hill, and a strong fortress it was, constructed of snowballs, rolled up to a vast size (larger than the cyclopean blocks of stone which form the ancient Etruscan walls in Italy), piled one upon another, and the whole cemented by pouring on water which froze and made the walls solid.  The Pequots helped the whites build it.  It had a covered way under the snow, through which only could it be entered, and it had bastions and towers and openings to fire from, and a great many other things for which there are no names in military books.  And it had a glacis and a ditch outside.

When it was completed, the Early Settlers, leaving the women in the schoolhouse, a prey to the Indians, used to retire into it, and await the attack of the Pequots.  There was only a handful of the garrison, while the Indians were many, and also barbarous.  It was agreed that they should be barbarous.  And it was in this light that the great question was settled whether a boy might snowball with balls that he had soaked over night in water and let freeze.  They were as hard as cobble-stones, and if a boy should be hit in the head by one of them, he could not tell whether he was a Pequot or an Early Settler.  It was considered as unfair to use these ice-balls in open fight, as it is to use poisoned ammunition in real war.  But as the whites were protected by the fort, and the Indians were treacherous by nature, it was decided that the latter might use the hard missiles.

The Pequots used to come swarming up the hill, with hideous war-whoops, attacking the fort on all sides with great noise and a shower of balls.  The garrison replied with yells of defiance and well-directed shots, hurling back the invaders when they attempted to scale the walls.  The Settlers had the advantage of position, but they were sometimes overpowered by numbers, and would often have had to surrender but for the ringing of the school-bell.  The Pequots were in great fear of the school-bell.

I do not remember that the whites ever hauled down their flag and surrendered voluntarily; but once or twice the fort was carried by storm and the garrison were massacred to a boy, and thrown out of the fortress, having been first scalped.  To take a boy’s cap was to scalp him, and after that he was dead, if he played fair.  There were a great many hard hits given and taken, but always cheerfully, for it was in the cause of our early history.  The history of Greece and Rome was stuff compared to this.  And we had many boys in our school who could imitate the Indian war whoop enough better than they could scan arma, virumque cano.

XII

THE LONELY FARMHOUSE