THE RUNAWAY EQUATOR

“They saw the Equator making off, a mile or two away”

THE RUNAWAY EQUATOR And the Strange Adventures of a Little Boy in Pursuit of It

BY LILIAN BELL AUTHOR OF “THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID,” “THE EXPATRIATES,” “ABROAD WITH THE JIMMIES,” “HOPE LORING,” “AT HOME WITH THE JARDINES,” ETC.

Illustrated by PETER NEWELL

NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1910, 1911, by The Curtis Publishing Company Copyright, 1911, by Frederick A. Stokes Company

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian

TO JIMMIE BELL, JUNIOR SECOND INFANTRY, U.S.A.

ILLUSTRATIONS

[x]

BILLY MEETS NIMBUS

[2]

[3]

THE RUNAWAY EQUATOR

CHAPTER I IN WHICH BILLY MEETS NIMBUS

MOTHER had been helping Billy with his geography lesson, sitting in the garden on a lovely day early in spring, and showing Billy how the earth revolves on its axis. To illustrate this difficult matter and to make it interesting, she had taken a big yellow orange to represent the Earth and had used a stick of lemon candy for the Pole. She made the Equator out of a black rubber band such as you put around fat envelopes.

Then, when Billy said that he understood, Mother dug a hole in the orange and stuck the lemon stick in it and, handing it to Billy, said with a droll twinkle in her blue eyes, which always seemed to be laughing:

“Would you like to eat up the Earth through the North Pole?”

Now Billy had never before tasted the joys of an orange eaten through a stick of lemon candy; so when Mother, who had a trick of remembering nice things from her own[4] childhood, showed Billy how it was done, he settled down to a blissful half hour in which he meant to devour the whole earth.

It tasted so good that he rolled over on the short grass, under a lilac-bush in full bloom, and only took his lips from the North Pole long enough to tell his mother that it tasted “bully.”

“Well,” said his mother, standing up and shaking out her blue dress, “I must go now. Here is your geography. Don’t forget to bring it in when you come, and don’t lose the Equator off the Earth, even if you are eating it. I don’t know what would become of us if the Equator really should get away!”

Billy laughed aloud. It really was no trouble at all to understand things when Mother made them appear so funny.

He lay on his back looking up into the sky, which was just the color of his mother’s blue dress. White clouds, like mountains of white feathers which must be very soft to sleep on, were over his head.

A bee was buzzing lazily over the lavender blossoms of the lilacs. A soft wind was blowing. It was indeed very pleasant.

What if the bee should turn into a fairy!

“Why don’t you?” said Billy aloud.

The bee, being puzzled, scratched his head with his left hindfoot and answered:

[5]“Why don’t I what?”

“Why don’t you be one?”

“I am one bee!” answered the bee, striking a match on Billy’s orange and lighting a grapevine cigarette.

“Could you be a fairy?” asked Billy.

“I am always beeing things—flowers and honey—so of course I could bee a fairy. How do you know that I am not one? Look at me!”

Billy sat up and looked.

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Billy. “A minute ago I thought you were a bee!”

“I can bee anything I choose,” said the Fairy. “That’s why you thought I was a bee. Because I can bee!”

“Who are you now?” asked Billy.

“I am the Geography Fairy,” answered the stranger.

He held out his hand and then looked at it.

“It’s not raining yet,” he observed; “still——”

Without finishing his sentence he unfolded a pink parasol and tossed it into the air. It sailed away, slowly at first, then more rapidly as the light wind caught it and carried it out of sight beyond the lilac-bush.

“I won’t need it till it begins to rain,” he explained, “so they might as well have it.”

“Who?” gasped Billy.

“The sunbeams. If a sunbeam gets wet he’s done for. Haven’t you ever noticed that?”

Billy thought he had noticed something of the kind.[6] Anyway the sunbeams all disappeared directly it began to rain. But being just an ordinary little boy, he was much more interested in the conversation of the wonderful stranger than he was in sunbeams, and that is why he asked:

“What is your name, if you please?”

“My name is Nimbus and I live in the clouds with the other fairies. I was named after one of the clouds.”

“But,” objected Billy, “I don’t believe in fairies.”

“Very well,” said Nimbus briskly, “keep right on don’t believing. It doesn’t disturb me in the least.”

“And besides,” said Billy, “there couldn’t be such a thing as a Geography Fairy.”

“How do you know?” demanded Nimbus.

“Because,” said Billy, “I have never seen one.”

“Nonsense!” returned Nimbus. “Did you ever see a noise?”

“No,” Billy admitted, “I don’t think I ever did. At least I don’t remember ever having seen one.”

“Well, do you believe that there aren’t any noises?”

Billy had no reply that seemed suitable, and so he said nothing.

Apparently not caring whether he got an answer or not, Nimbus leaped lightly from the lilac blossom and, picking up an irregular sunbeam that filtered through the bush, he set it carefully on edge against the brim of Billy’s hat.

“We’ll take this sunbeam with us”

[7]“They get tired lying flat on their backs so much,” he said. “We’ll take this one with us when we go. When we’re hungry we’ll eat it.”

“But we’re not going anywhere,” said Billy. “At least I am not. I’ve got to go into the house and put the toys away in a few minutes.”

“Tut! tut!” said Nimbus. “Doesn’t the proverb say ‘Never do anything to-day you can just as well put off until to-morrow’? Let’s enchant a trolley car and go look after the Equator. I ought to be there now. That’s my job, looking after the Equator. I’ve left the Equine Ox there, but he has such a habit of getting indigestion in one of his four stomachs, and sometimes in all of them, that he is very inattentive to business.”

“Indigestion in four stomachs must be terribly distressing,” said Billy. “But what is an Equine Ox?”

“You surely see one twice a year,” said Nimbus. “But they are always around. They have to be somewhere.”

“I suppose they do,” said Billy, “but what are they?”

“Their names are Vernal and Autumnal. Here’s a poem I wrote about them once. My friends say I am conceited about my poetry, but I’m not. I don’t think it is as good as it really is.”

“That,” said Nimbus, “will give you an excellent idea of the Equine Ox. Now let us enchant that trolley car and be off about our business.”

“Pooh!” said Billy, “you can’t enchant a trolley car.”

“There you go again,” said Nimbus, “never believing in things. Bring me a trolley car and I’ll show you whether or not I can enchant it.”

“I can’t bring you a trolley car,” said Billy. “You’ll have to hail one on the street if you want one. Anyway they don’t go to the Equator; they only go to town.”

“We’ll see where they go,” returned Nimbus. “If I were going alone I’d go on a cloud, but I don’t suppose you could sit on a cloud, could you?”

He regarded Billy doubtfully.

[9]“I’m sure I couldn’t,” said Billy. “Besides, what’s the need of going at all?”

“Oh, I really must go! A foolish Spring Tide broke one of the tropics the other day, and if the other gets broken there will be nothing to hold the Equator down but the meridians, and you know they’re very fragile.”

Billy didn’t know that, but he nodded intelligently. It is always best to pretend to know more about geography than you really do.

“We’ll be back in time for dinner,” continued Nimbus; “that is, if I don’t have to fasten up the tides again.”

“Why,” said Billy, “you don’t mean to say you have to fasten the tides?”

“Certainly!” replied Nimbus. “You know the tides are always trying to put out the Moon, and they go chasing around the Earth after her night and day. Of course the shore stops them after a while and drives them back, and that’s what makes them high and low. They’re high when they run up and try to wash over the shore, and low when the shore drives them back again. But to keep them from going too far we tie them down with meridians. That’s why they call them tides. Each one is tied, don’t you see?”

“Gracious!” exclaimed Billy. “I hope they can’t get untied and put the Moon out.”

“Oh, they won’t,” Nimbus assured him, “while I’m watching them! Sometimes they sneak up on her out of the ocean in little drops that we call mist, but the Sun[10] always catches them at it, and sends them scurrying down in rain again.”

“I almost believe I’ll go,” said Billy, “if you’re sure we can be back in time.”

“Not a doubt of it,” said Nimbus; “I’ll send you back on a meteor if I have to stay.”

Billy excused himself for a minute and ran into the house to tell his mother, but she was nowhere to be found. So he wrote a note in which he explained that he had gone away for a little while with the Geography Fairy. Returning to the garden, he found that Nimbus had now grown to be as large as a middle-sized baby. He was strolling across the lawn on his way to the front gate.

Billy trudged along by his side, and soon they were at the street corner awaiting the coming of a big red trolley car, which Billy hailed at Nimbus’s suggestion.

When the two got in the conductor looked at the queer little stranger in amazement.

But Nimbus only nodded at him coldly, leaped up on the seat and began digging into his pocket, from which he presently pulled a huge blue transfer.

This he held out when the conductor came for the fare.

“That ain’t no good,” said the conductor.

For reply Nimbus folded the transfer up into a tiny wand, touched the conductor on the cap with it and said:

“This car for the Equator. Passengers desiring transfers for the Arctic Circle or the North Pole will kindly mention it before we get to Cuba.”

“Nimbus folded the transfer into a tiny wand and said: ‘This car for the Equator!’”

THE ENCHANTED TROLLEY CAR

[12]

[13]

CHAPTER II THE ENCHANTED TROLLEY CAR

OF COURSE such an announcement as that made a great commotion in the trolley car. The other passengers, a thin deacon, two plumber’s apprentices and a burglar, wanted to get off immediately.

“I was going back to the shop to get the tools,” said one of the plumber’s apprentices.

“I was on my way to a horse trade,” explained the deacon.

“And I,” said the burglar, “was just looking about for a nice easy house to rob. They don’t have any houses at the Equator, so I would have absolutely nothing to do.”

“Tut! tut!” said the conductor peevishly. “Keep your seats, gents. There ain’t no such a place as the Equator on this line. You’re on the wrong car, young chaps,” he added, turning to Billy and Nimbus.

Billy was troubled at this. Could it be that Nimbus really couldn’t enchant the trolley car after all?

But the Fairy only smiled as the car, which had started away suddenly, came to a stop, as if it had run into something.

“I thought we wouldn’t get past it,” he said.

[14]“Get past what?” inquired Billy and the plumber’s apprentices in a breath.

“That imaginary line,” said Nimbus. “I drew it across the track.”

“But,” said Billy, “no imaginary line really goes anywhere except the Equator.”

“Neither will the trolley car until I let it,” replied Nimbus. “So they are in the same fix.”

The motorman now came into the car.

“Not enough juice,” he growled. “She turns all right, but she don’t get nowhere.”

“Try her again,” advised the conductor anxiously. He was looking at Nimbus and Billy with suspicion. “You kids ain’t been soapin’ the track, have you?” he inquired suddenly.

“Oh, no, sir!” said Billy. “I’m not allowed to do that.”

The motorman again turned on the power, but although the wheels hummed and whirred on the track, not an inch forward did the car go.

“There’s something wrong,” he said, “but I don’t know what it is. She turns all right, and she acts all right, but she don’t go ahead none.”

“She won’t,” said Nimbus, “till these people get off. It would be a shame to take them to the Equator.”

“Certainly it would,” said the deacon. “I for one am going to get off.”

“Me, too,” said the burglar.

“Both the plumber’s apprentices jumped hastily to the ground”

[15]And both of them did.

“It’s all right with us,” said the plumber’s apprentices, settling back in their seats. “Our time will go on just the same.”

“Well, it ain’t with me,” said the motorman. “I’m going to see what’s stopping her.”

He went to the rear door and was about to swing off the steps when he uttered a cry of alarm.

“Great rabbits!” he shouted. “She’s risin’ off’m the track!”

At this both the plumber’s apprentices ran to the platform and jumped hastily to the ground.

The motorman and conductor hurried to the front platform, but when they reached it the car had risen thirty feet in the air and was sailing merrily through space.

The conductor reeled back into the car and sank breathless on a seat. The motorman followed him.

“What kind of a way to do is this?” demanded the conductor of Nimbus. “And me with a wife and five children.”

“There is no danger at all,” said Nimbus soothingly. “We’ll have to come down again, you know. Everything does, that goes up.”

The conductor had got a little over his fright, and was looking out of the window.

“I don’t know where we’re going, Tommy,” he said to the[16] motorman, “but it does look as if we was on our way, don’t it?”

“It’s an outrage!” said the motorman, “and I’ve a good mind to chuck this little feller overboard. It’s all his doings.”

But Nimbus paid no attention to him at all.

“You see,” he said to Billy, “that a trolley car can be enchanted if you go at it right. I could enchant the conductor and motorman if I wanted to. I think I’d turn the motorman into a bull.”

The motorman grew pale at this.

“Now, don’t do nothing like that,” he said. “I like this flying business, honest I do.”

“Very well,” said Nimbus, “but I think you had better go out on the platform and look for stars. We may be running into one any time.”

The motorman was glad to return to his post, and the conductor arose and walked unsteadily to the rear platform, where he held fast to the dashboard rail and gazed with open-mouthed wonder at the scene below.

“We’ll soon be coming to the Dog Star,” Nimbus told Billy. “His name is Sirius, but he isn’t. He’s almost eight million years old, but he still behaves like a Puppy Star at the snow-making season. He worries the Snow Fairies half to death.”

“What are Snow Fairies?” asked Billy.

[17]“They are the people that make the snow. Didn’t you ever hear the proverb, ‘Make snow while the moon shines’?”

Billy wasn’t quite sure. He had heard one very much like that, though, about hay, and he wondered if they made snow in fields and left it out to dry in the moonshine.

“Yes,” said Nimbus, although Billy had not spoken, “it is very much the same. The snowflakes grow on the little stalks that shoot up from the clouds, and the Snow Fairies harvest them and dry them in the moonlight. Then they sift it down on the land and sea, whenever Jack Frost says the little boys and girls are tired of nutting and making autumn-leaf bonfires, and want to coast and throw snowballs.”

“Do they make hail that way, too?” asked Billy.

“Oh! gracious, no. They break the hail off the rain clouds with their hammers, and it freezes on the way down. They soon tire of that, though, so they never keep it up long. That is why you hear people say ‘Hail and Farewell.’ You have to say good-by to a hailstorm almost before you’ve had time to say hello to it.”

“I think it is very ill-mannered of the Dog Star to worry them,” said Billy.

“Oh, Dog Stars have no manners. That is very well shown in the poem I wrote about the Dog Star. Did you ever happen to hear it?”

“No,” said Billy. “I never did.”

[18]“Well,” said Nimbus, “as nearly as I can remember it runs something like this:

“You see,” continued Nimbus, “the Dog Star cares absolutely nothing for manners. He even barks at O’Taurus.”

“And who,” inquired Billy, “is O’Taurus?”

“He’s the Irish Bull,” said Nimbus. “I’ll tell you more about him later. I’ve got to go to meet this Meteor now.”

Billy had noticed that for some time it had been getting[19] brighter and brighter, although the Sun had hidden himself behind a great wall of blue-black clouds. Now he looked through the front windows and saw a great star sweeping rapidly down on them, swishing a long tail behind him.

“Is—is it a comet?” he asked in affright, observing that the motorman rushed into the car, slamming the door after him.

“Comet nothing!” said Nimbus. “It’s only a fourth- class Meteor with a message for me. They’re the A.D.T. boys up here, and he’s probably brought some word from the Equine Ox.”

The Meteor came alongside and Billy read in gold letters across his glowing cap the words:

PLANETARY MESSENGER SERVICE No. 7,622,451

“My!” he exclaimed, “there are a lot of them, aren’t there?”

“Seven million nine hundred thousand six hundred and three,” said Nimbus. “What have you got, boy?”

“Message, sir,” said the Meteor briskly, taking off his cap and extracting a blue envelope.

Nimbus took it and ran his eye over it hastily.

“Here’s a pretty kettle of fish,” he said, handing the paper to Billy.

[20]This is what Billy read as he held the paper in his trembling fingers:

“Accidentally went to sleep and the Spring Tide broke the other tropic. Equator trying to get away, and think I can’t hold him long. Please come or send help as soon as possible. “Regretfully, Vernal E. Ox.”

So! The Equator was trying to do the very thing Mother told Billy not to let him do! He was trying to slip off the earth by way of the South Pole!

THE EQUATOR IS LOOSE

[22]

[23]

CHAPTER III THE EQUATOR IS LOOSE

“BOTHER that Equine Ox,” said Nimbus. “I might have known he’d do something like that, and just before procession week, too.”

“Procession week?” said Billy wonderingly.

“Yes, the week of the procession of the Equine Oxes. The Sun and the Moon and their oldest daughter, the Evening Star, were coming down to see it, and Jack Frost and Aurora Borealis ought to be there now. And that miserable Equine Ox has gone and spoiled it all. He isn’t fit for anything but a barbecue.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Billy, while the conductor and the motorman gaped in a dazed silence.

“Do? Why, fix it, of course. I only hope we can get there before he breaks away altogether. It would be a beautiful state of affairs to have an Equator charging up and down the world, wouldn’t it?”

“I think it would be fun,” ventured Billy.

“Oh, certainly!” said Nimbus. “When you played under the trees in your front yard, do you think it would be fun to have cocoanuts drop on you instead of acorns? Instead[24] of rabbits and chipmunks in the woods, do you think it would be fun to see lions and tigers and boa-constrictors and laughing hyenas, to say nothing of hippopotamuses with teeth like banisters? Yes, it would be real jolly now, wouldn’t it?”

Billy saw that Nimbus was seriously disturbed and he kept silent.

The Meteor, who had entered the car unasked and taken a seat on the floor, now got up and began to shoot violently from one door to another, sometimes zigzagging so that he bumped the windows. His blazing tail trailed after him, and once or twice Billy had to draw back quickly to keep his face from a severe switching.