Then the dogs in the skiffs were brought ashore and released from their two days' confinement, and Abel's train and Skipper Ed's train, after the manner of Eskimo dogs, immediately engaged in a pitched battle. They began by snarling and snapping at one another with ugly, bared fangs, and then followed a rush toward each other and they became a rolling, tumbling mass of fearsome, fighting creatures, and had to be beaten asunder with stout sticks before they could be induced to settle into their quiet and uneventful summer existence.