"GREAT SULT ANNA O'QUEEN"
Jerry knew that he was in the circus tent although he had not expected
it to be anything like that. A band was playing and hundreds and
hundreds of persons, mostly children, were sitting on boards, each one
raised a little higher than the others, and whistling and clapping their
hands. And clear around the tent were other sections of seats, all
filled with men and women and children. Eyes wide open with wonder at
the smell and the bigness of the tent and the paraphernalia used by the
performers, Jerry rose to his feet. He looked back of him, but only the
canvas side of the tent met his gaze. Whiteface, the clown, had entirely
disappeared!
The lively air the band was playing seemed to get right inside of Jerry,
for his heart began to pound fast and his eyes were dancing.
He was going to see the circus! The clown had got him in without a
ticket! He saw many boys and girls and older persons, too, hurrying to
find places on the board seats and he joined the throng. He remembered
that Whiteface had told him to take any seat there he could find and he
sat down in one in the second row between a boy a good deal older than
himself and a man with a black mustache.
He had hardly got seated when, from the farther side of the tent, there
entered a gorgeous carriage drawn by a pair of milk-white horses. When
the carriage got around in front of him, Jerry saw that it contained Mr.
Burrows, the man who had let him carry water for the elephants even if
he was too young, but he didn't pay much attention to him, for there was
such a variety of different things to absorb his attention,--beautiful
women in richly colored garments on horses and on sober, humpbacked
camels, and even in little houses on the elephants, just as he had seen
them in the street parade.
There was the sword-swallower and the fat lady, the giant and the dwarf,
and so many other things that Jerry couldn't remember them all. When the
last of them had passed out at the other side of the tent, he became
aware of a smell that was most enticing, quite different from the smell
of the circus,--the sawdust and the animals and the crowd. He had just
identified it as the smell of freshly roasted peanuts when a boy in a
white coat in the aisle asked if anybody there wanted freshly roasted
peanuts for five cents, only a half a dime.
Jerry did, and after watching other small boys buying bags of the
delicacy, he fished out the dime from his blouse pocket and gave it to
the boy, who handed him back a bag of peanuts and a nickel.
Jerry had just cracked his first peanut shell and was munching the two
nuts in it when he suddenly became aware that the circus was going on.
In fact, there was so much going on that he could not see it all. He
watched the trapeze performers for a minute, swinging and turning
somersaults and throwing each other about in the air, and then his eyes
wandered to the acrobats going through the most surprising contortions
on a platform. He hadn't seen half enough of that when his attention was
captured by the form of a woman sliding down a wire that went clear to
the top of the tent and she was not holding on to the wire at all! She
was hanging from it by her teeth! He expected to see her dash into the
crowd of people when she reached the end of the wire, but two men
stopped her.
Fast and furiously the circus stunts were performed. Men in shaggy
trousers on horses threw ropes about each other and picked up
handkerchiefs from the ground while their horses were running
lickety-split. They just leaned over in the saddle until Jerry thought
they were falling off, and picked up the handkerchiefs.
And there was a tight-rope walker. It was a woman with no skirts on at
all, and the rope was way up much higher than a man's head and she
didn't touch the ground with her balancing pole at all. Nora could never
walk the rope like that. And the dancing ponies and the trained seals
and the dog that wound in and out among the spokes of a buggy wheel and
all the other acts thrilled Jerry and made him almost dizzy, they came
so fast; but best of all he liked the clowns with their funny faces and
droll antics. He did not pick out Whiteface the first time the clowns
came out, there were so many of them and they looked so much alike with
their white faces and red mouths.
But just after the dancing horses had left the tent and the clowns
swarmed in again, Jerry saw one of them stop and look up at the boys
above him. He had a bulldog under his arm.
Jerry, unmindful of those about him, stood up and shouted:
"Whiteface! Here I am!"
The clown turned to him, made that funny clicking noise in his mouth and
bowed.
"Jerry Elbow," said the clown and clapped his hands.
"It's Jerry!" exclaimed Danny's startled voice somewhere among the
hundreds of boys and grown-ups back of Jerry. Then Danny added in an
awed voice, "The clown spoke to him!"
Jerry suddenly sat down, for all eyes were directed towards him. He
didn't look around for Danny and Chris, for he was too confused to face
all those pairs of eyes.
Four or five of the other clowns gathered about Whiteface, looked up at
Jerry and clapped their hands, too. Jerry shut his eyes for a moment,
and when he opened them Whiteface and the other clowns were all doing
something there right in front of him.
Whiteface was placing his bulldog down on the ground and Jerry kept
fascinated eyes on him. He never could tell afterwards what the other
clowns did then except that as they left to go to another part of the
circus, one of them, who wore the biggest and longest and flattest shoes
Jerry had ever seen, stepped on his own foot and couldn't get off!
Another clown had to help him off his own foot!
But everything that Whiteface did Jerry saw and remembered, for he knew
that Whiteface was playing just for him alone. The bulldog stood
perfectly still until Whiteface held out a stick; then the clown jerked
upon the strap which he held in his right hand, one end of which was
fastened to the dog's collar, and the dog jumped right over the stick!
Next time Whiteface raised the stick much higher, but when he signaled
to the dog by jerking on his collar that it was time for him to jump,
the dog jumped over the stick again.
Jerry heard the crowd laughing and applauding. He thought no one could
help laughing at the ludicrous expression on the clown's face as he
looked up at the spectators every time the dog jumped the stick. Jerry
did not awake to the fact that the bulldog was a stuffed toy one, and
not a real dog, until the clown took it by the tail and struck another
clown on the back with it.
The gasp of astonishment that came from many small throats told Jerry
that others had thought it a real dog, too. He joined in the laughter at
the easy manner in which the clown had fooled them. The look that
Whiteface turned on Jerry sent a warm glow surging over his body. He
liked Whiteface and was happy in the knowledge that Whiteface liked him.
He watched the clown fasten the life-size toy bulldog to the back of his
costume. How he did it, Jerry could not tell, but the mock terror
depicted on Whiteface's features when he found the bulldog with what
seemed to be a death-grip on the seat of his clothes caused Jerry and
the rest of the children to shriek with laughter. With that look of mock
terror on his face, the clown started to run to get away from the dog,
and he ran and cavorted and leaped so ludicrously that many eyes besides
Jerry's followed him all the way around the arena until he disappeared
through the entrance.
Then Jerry found that there were several acts going on, of which he had
missed much. When they had finished, another clown came along with a big
head that looked like some kind of a bird's head. It was way up in the
air on a long neck with a wide yellow bill that every now and then
opened and showed a red tongue.
Almost in front of Jerry, the clown stopped, bent down his bird-head
sidewise and suddenly gave a loud kiss to a little girl sitting on the
end of the first row.
The little girl gave a shriek of surprise and terror and jumped from the
seat and ran up the aisle back of Jerry, amid a roar of delight from the
crowd. The girl hid her face and refused to go back to the front row,
despite the coaxing of her mother.
Jerry offered to let her have his seat. He wasn't afraid of the clowns.
Then the boy next to him got up and the woman and the girl took their
seats while Jerry and the boy sat down in the front row, Jerry at the
very end. He would be close enough to touch Whiteface the next time he
came around.
He had forgotten all about Danny and Chris and the trick Celia Jane had
played on him. He was so happy that he would willingly have shared with
them the pleasure of seeing the circus and getting acquainted with
Whiteface, if that had been possible. He wished Kathleen and Nora and
Mother 'Larkey could see it. Never in all his life had he been so
excited and so happy. He wanted more and more. If only the circus would
never end!--Anyway, not until he was too tired to stay awake one second
longer.
Suddenly the band struck into a different air,--one that set Jerry's
pulse to beating even faster. It was like an echo from the past; he had
heard it before. It was the music he had thought he heard when he stood
before the circus poster of the elephant jumping the fence!
Unconsciously Jerry began saying something softly under his breath.
And the elephants were coming! Several clowns were running ahead. Among
them Jerry espied Whiteface, and in his excitement rose to his feet, as
they came closer and closer.
As the band played on, words seemed to be coming of themselves to
Jerry's tongue, and in a sort of rhythmical chant he was repeating in
time to the music as the elephants got directly in front of him:
"Great Sult Anna O'Queen, in the jungle, Carryin' water for the
ellifants, Great Sult Anna O'Queen, in the jungle Carryin' water for the
ellifants."
Jerry was aware that he was crooning, but did not know that he had risen
to his feet and was repeating those two lines of verse out loud.
The band suddenly stopped playing, and in the ensuing silence the
childish treble of Jerry's voice was heard by every one in that section
of seats saying:
"Great Sult Anna O'Queen, in the jungle,
Carryin' water for the ellifants."
He had hardly finished the words when the leader in the line of
elephants turned small, beady eyes towards Jerry, lifted up its trunk
and trumpeted aloud. Jerry was not frightened at all by that cry, but
held out his arms toward the elephant, crying, "Up! Up! Sult Anna!" as
though that were the most natural thing in the world to do and he had
been doing it all his life.
The elephant trumpeted again and lumbered heavily towards the tier of
seats where Jerry stood, lowered its trunk and curled it about Jerry's
body.
A great gasp went up from the people about Jerry and then some women and
men cried out and a girl screamed.
"It's mad! It's run amuck!" some one cried, and in an instant there was
an uproar of terror as the people left their seats and surged back to
higher tiers where they hoped the elephant could not reach them.
"It's Jerry! It's Jerry!" came an agonized scream which Jerry, from his
seat high in the air on the elephant's trunk, recognized as the voice of
Chris.
"He'll be killed!" cried Danny's remorseful voice, high and shrill
above the uproar. "And it's all my fault!"
"Up! Up! Sult Anna!" commanded Jerry, and laughed aloud and waved his
arms. Why were all those people afraid? Sult Anna wasn't going to hurt
him!
All the clowns had come running about the elephant.
"It's Jerry Elbow!" exclaimed Whiteface.
"It's Gary!" cried a woman's voice from the palanquin on the elephant's
back. Jerry looked at her. She was a very pretty woman in a most
wonderful sparkling dress, and she leaned forward, extending her arms
towards him.
Jerry heard the strident voice of the elephant-tender commanding Sult
Anna to lower him and the man started to jab the elephant in the trunk,
but Whiteface shouted:
"Don't touch the elephant! She knows the boy!"
"He's not hurt at all!" cried an amazed voice in the crowd.
"Take your seats! There is no danger!" Whiteface called to the
frightened and huddled mass at the top tiers of seats.
Then the band struck into a lively air and circus attendants and
spectators ran up to the elephants. Among those who arrived early were
Danny and Chris, frightened but curious, and Mr. Burrows. The
performance was going on in other parts of the big tent and the
spectators there seemed already to have forgotten the incident, but the
unreserved seat section still seethed with interest, apprehension and
curiosity.
"What's all this fuss?" asked Mr. Burrows, puffing from the speed with
which he had hurried to the scene. "We can't have the performance held
up this way and the people frightened."
"As the elephants came along," explained Whiteface, "a boy was singing
some of the words of my elephant song, and Sultana, I believe,
recognized him. She trumpeted twice, reached out her trunk and carried
him high into the air. He kept crying, 'Up! Up! Sultana!' She has not
hurt him at all."
Mr. Burrows looked up at Jerry, still sitting on the elephant's trunk.
"Why, bless my soul!" he exclaimed. "It's the orphan boy who helped
carry water for the elephants this morning!"
"Robert, it's Gary!" again cried the beautiful lady in the palanquin on
the elephant's back.
Jerry looked up at her and found her weeping. He wondered why she was
crying and who Gary might be.
"The other elephants are getting restless," said Mr. Burrows. "Get the
boy down, Bowe, and take him with you to the dressing rooms. The act
must go on."
Whiteface went up to the elephant and began talking to her gently,
patting her shoulder. Her keeper approached and ordered her to put Jerry
down.
"Down, Sult Anna, down!" cried Jerry.
Hardly were the words out of his mouth when Jerry was literally placed
by the elephant in the arms of Whiteface.
"Who are you?" asked the clown of Jerry, looking long into his eyes.
"He's Jerry Elbow," said Danny who, with Chris, had edged in close to
the little crowd surrounding the elephant. "He's a orfum and lives with
us."
"When did his parents die?"
"He ain't got no parents," replied Danny. "Have you, Jerry?"
"No," said Jerry.
"Robert, help me down!" called the beautiful lady on the elephant.
Whiteface set Jerry down and with two of the elephant keepers went to
Sultana's side and caught the woman as she half slid, half jumped from
her high seat.
As soon as she touched the ground, the lady ran to Jerry and he found
himself gathered convulsively in her arms.
"Oh, Gary, my son! Don't you know me? I am your mother!"