After Marmaduke and Wienerwurst, Ping Pong, Sing Song, and Ah See, had
scooted down the long hole for a few thousand miles or so, they began
to see light below them, a little circle of blue, just at the other
end, on the other side of the world. When their long journey was over,
they got up from their flatirons and stretched themselves, and
Wienerwurst got up from his haunches and stretched himself. Then one
by one they stuck their heads out of the bottom of the hole to take a
look at China.
A very pretty country it was, yet quite strange. The strangest thing
about it all was that now, though they were on the opposite side of
the world from the White House with the Green Blinds by the Side of
the Road, they weren't standing upside down. They could stand up
straight, with their heads--not their feet--in the air, and look at
the sun, at the bottom of the hole just as they did at the top, on the
farm back home.
When all five had climbed out, they found that they were near a great
wall. It was built of very old stones and was as wide as a road on
top. Several horses could ride abreast on it.
A company of Chinese soldiers with guns and swords guarded the gate,
and the three little Chinamen, Ping Pong, Sing Song, and Ah See, were
afraid to enter with the American boy. The soldiers might have let
Wienerwurst in because he was yellow like themselves, but Marmaduke
was much too white.
Of course, he was disappointed, but his disappointment didn't last
long, for Ping Pong just clapped his hands, and all three crouched
down as boys do when they are playing leapfrog, or like the acrobats
in the circus. Sing Song climbed on the back of Ping Pong, and Ah See
on top of Sing Song. But at that Ah See's head reached only half way
up the great wall.
He leaned down towards Marmaduke.
"Come up, little Mellican boy," said he.
And Marmaduke climbed up on the three backs and stood on the shoulders
of Ah See, who exclaimed in delight to his friends,--
"Why, he not flaidlily at all."
Then he told Marmaduke to catch hold of his pigtail. Which the little
boy did, and Ah See swung his head round and round, and his pigtail
with it, like David's slingshot in the Bible story.
When the little boy was spinning around through the air, fast as fast
as could be, Ping Pong cried,--
"Velly fine--now--one-two-thlee! let him go!"
Marmaduke obeyed instantly, letting go of the pigtail and flying
through the air like a shot. The three little Chinamen all tumbled in
a heap at the foot of the wall, but Marmaduke flew over on the other
side and landed safely on his feet, inside the great country of China.
He was pleased to see little Wienerwurst, whom the soldiers had let in
through the gate, wagging his tail right beside him; and soon the
three little Chinamen came running up, too, and one and all started to
explore this great country of China.
As far as their eyes could see, stretched green valleys and blue hills
under a pale silver sky, and thousands of men and women, as little and
as yellow as Ping Pong, Sing Song and Ah See, worked among the
tea-fields on every side.
"See that bush," said Ping Pong, "some day Mellican boy's mother drink
cup tea from that. Taste velly fine too."
"And this bush," he went on, pointing to another, "make cup for Missee
F-f-f-"--he found it hard to say that name--"for Missee Fizzletlee."
And Marmaduke thought it quite wonderful to see the very tea plants
which his mother and Mrs. Fizzletree would drink up some day, on the
other side of the world, twelve thousand miles away. But there was
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.
[Illustration]
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;