something else to think about. Trouble seemed to be in the wind. For a
little way ahead of them, up the zigzaging white road, they saw an
odd-looking group of men. They had swords curved like sickles, hats
like great saucers turned upside down, and fierce eyes, and drooping
mustaches. Their finger nails were six inches long and stuck out, when
they talked, like the claws of wild beasts.

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.