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All the people working in the tea-fields hid under the bushes when they saw those men. Only the tea-bushes didn’t help them much, for they were so frightened that their little pigtails rose straight up in the air like new shoots growing out of the bushes. There were thousands of those pigtails sticking up straight in the air all over the fields. As for the three little friends, Ping Pong, Sing Song, and Ah See, they trembled like leaves in the wind, then threw themselves flat on their bellies in the dusty road.

“Who are those fellows?” asked Marmaduke, beginning to be frightened.

“It’s Choo Choo Choo and his gang, allee velly bad men,” explained Ping Pong, though he found it very hard to say anything, his teeth chattered so.

The wild men with hats like saucers turned upside down and the long mustaches and fingernails, came near. Four of them had big poles laid over their shoulders. From the poles hung a funny carriage like a hammock-swing with beautiful green curtains. It was called a “palanquin.” When they reached the place where Marmaduke stood, they let the palanquin down on the ground, and he heard a terrible swearing going on behind the green curtains.

The curtains opened, and out stepped a man, also with a hat like a saucer turned upside down, only it was made all of gold and had precious stones in its rim. And his eyes were fiercer, his mustaches longer than those of the other men. In fact, his mustaches reached almost to his knees, and he kept pulling and tugging at them with fingernails that were fully a foot long. My! if those fingernails ever reached Marmaduke’s eyes there wouldn’t be much of them left. That’s what Marmaduke was thinking. And they were very much frightened–all except Wienerwurst, who was smelling the funny slippers of the wild strangers.

Choo Choo Choo (for that was their leader’s name) stretched himself. With his drooping sleeves and foot-long fingernails, he looked like the bats that sail under the trees in the twilight and nest, so they say, in people’s hair. He gazed out over the tea-fields and saw not a soul, for every mother’s son and mother’s daughter, too, was hiding tight under the bushes, but a million little pigtails trembled in the air.

“Whee!” shouted the great Choo Choo Choo;

And again,–

“Whee!”

And once more,–

“Whee!”

The million pigtails shook more wildly each time until, at the last, the million little Chinamen rose up from their hiding-places under the bushes, and came running from all over the fields like the inhabitants of a great city running to a fire.

When they reached the road and the green palanquin, they fell on their knees, jabbering and praying the chief Choo Choo Choo not to hurt them with his long curved sword or the curved fingernails, which were worse than the sword.

“Pss-ss-iss-ssst!” exclaimed Choo Choo Choo, who for all his faults liked to see people brave and not cowardly like that.

“Psss-sss-iss-sst!” he said again, then a third time, for in China, especially if you are a robber, you must say things three times if you really mean it, or else people won’t believe you at all.

So, again “Pss-ss-iss-sst!” said this bold Choo Choo Choo.

At this third dread cry, each of the million Chinamen took out of his pocket a penny, a Chinese penny. And a Chinese penny is rather big, with a hole in the centre, and funny chicken-track letters stamped on it.

Before Marmaduke could have said “Jack Robinson,” there were a million of them lying in the road.

Choo Choo Choo scratched his head with his long fingernail. He didn’t know what in the world to do with so many pennies.

After some time he seemed to land on an idea, for he beckoned to one of his soldiers with that nail. And when that nail beckoned, it looked like the long claw of a lobster, waving awkwardly back and forth. It would have been funny indeed, if it hadn’t been quite so dangerous.