[pshrynk]

Biggles slowly came to and found that a rather large German dressed as a Mexican peasant was standing on him and idly wondered how he had gotten back to boarding school. Then things came into sharper focus and he realized that there was a full fledged brawl going on above him. Apparently, the book on Form of the Crane really did not know what it was talking about inasmuch as he had not, in fact "Sent his foes crying from the room as if babies before a maple street paver." He had always wondered at the accuracy of that translation.

Knowing form his schoolboy days that staying on the ground in a fight was the fasted way to not get hit again, he started looking around for what he had to work with. Years of plotting to get back at "Snotty" Corvin soon yielded paydirt. There seemed to be quite a bit of dynamite lying around the floor, quite unclaimed and ready to hand.

He began to busy himself with the sticks and the pant legs of the "peasants." He was trod upon four times, but wrote that off and further experience. The worst that happened was when Vera stepped down on his hand with her stiletto heel. Whimpering to himself, he kept on with the task at hand.

The grey dog that had been following his friend Harv around came up and spt out an unconscious squirrel in a pajama. "Need any help, Bub?"

"You know, unless I knew better, I would swear that this dog just talked to me. Must have been the blow to the head."

"Which one? The one when you mother dropped you as a child?"

"Mumsy never actually handled us as infants, that was why she hired Mrs. Stumble. I must really be going mad. Now I am talking to myself and getting answers."

"Only because you're too boring to talk to myself, pal." The dog wandered off, grumbling.

"Odd that. He seems such an intelligent little lad. Why I could almost believe that he can talk."

In the background noise came a faint reply, "I could almost imagine you could think..." The lat part of the sentence was, thankfully, lost in the noise.

Biggles shrugged and started stuffing peasant pants with sticks of dynamite. He'd worry about his sanity tomorrow, when he had completely forgotten about this incident.