THE RUNAWAY EQUATOR
[Illustration: “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
[Illustration]
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_
_September, 1911_
TO
JIMMIE BELL, JUNIOR
SECOND INFANTRY, U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IN WHICH BILLY MEETS NIMBUS 3
II. THE ENCHANTED TROLLEY CAR 13
III. THE EQUATOR IS LOOSE 23
IV. THE EQUINE OX AND THE EVENING STAR 37
V. IN PURSUIT 47
VI. ON THE PASSIVE VOLCANO 55
VII. JACK FROST 63
VIII. THE COMPASS 73
IX. THE TRAIL OF THE RUNAWAY 83
X. WHERE NIGHT IS SIX MONTHS LONG 93
XI. THE END OF THE CHASE 105
XII. ACROSS THE RAINBOW 115
ILLUSTRATIONS
“THEY SAW THE EQUATOR MAKING OFF A MILE OR TWO AWAY” _Frontispiece_
Facing
Page
“WE’LL TAKE THIS SUNBEAM WITH US” 6
“NIMBUS FOLDED THE TRANSFER INTO A TINY WAND AND SAID:
‘THIS CAR FOR THE EQUATOR!’” 10
“BOTH THE PLUMBER’S APPRENTICES JUMPED HASTILY TO THE GROUND” 14
“STRAIGHT INTO A GREAT PILE OF SNOW WENT THE CAR” 28
“PRESENTLY THEY BEGAN TO CRY AS HARD AS EVER THEY COULD” 32
“NOW, SIR, WHERE IS THAT EQUATOR?” 40
“THERE SUDDENLY APPEARED SEVEN LITTLE CHAPS” 48
“WITH A GREAT CRACKLING NOISE THEY SHOT INTO THE VOID” 50
“BILLY TOOK A SHARP STICK AND POKED THE EQUATOR SMARTLY” 60
“SEATING HIMSELF ON THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF, HE SANG” 66
“CONFRONTING THE EQUINE OX WAS THE CONDUCTOR, WAVING
HIS HANDS AND SHOUTING” 76
“THEY TIED THE TROLLEY ROPE TO HIS HORN AND SECURED HIM
TO THE CAR” 78
“A METEOR DROPPED AMONG THEM” 80
“‘LISTEN,’ SAID THE EQUINE OX, AND THROWING BACK HIS
HEAD, HE SANG” 84
“THE EQUINE OX CROWDED INTO THE REAR DOOR” 90
BILLY MEETS NIMBUS
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 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:
“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. 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.
[Illustration: “We’ll take this sunbeam with us”]
“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.”
“I never had an Equine Ox
To glad me with its soft brown eye,
But when I stroked its brindled locks
It always rudely asked me why.
“I never whispered fondly in
The creature’s smooth and velvet ear,
That it did not absurdly grin
And shed a cadent, mirthful tear.
“I never clasped its crumpled horn,
Nor gazed on it with loving look,
That it did not give moos of scorn
And sometimes even try to hook.
“So, though I love the Equine Ox,
I must admit that, on the whole,
His conduct very often shocks
My trusting and confiding soul.”
“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.
“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 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.”
[Illustration: “Nimbus folded the transfer into a tiny wand and said:
‘This car for the Equator!’”]
THE ENCHANTED TROLLEY CAR