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.
“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.
[Illustration: “Both the plumber’s apprentices jumped hastily to the
ground”]
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 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.
“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.”
“Well,” said Nimbus, “as nearly as I can remember it runs something
like this:
“Dog Star, Dog Star, burning bright,
You can neither read nor write,
Yet you frolic just the same,
And have not a thought of shame.
“When I say: ‘Add one and one,’
You reply: ‘It can’t be done.
Sums are flat and grammar stale,
I prefer to chase my tail.’
“When I ask: ‘Who built the ark?’
You turn somersaults and bark:
Or you growl, with drooping tail,
‘Was it Jonah or the Whale?’
“Dog Star, Dog Star, you don’t know,
Euclid, Vergil, Scipio,
Algebra or Calculus,
My! But you are frivolous.”
“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 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.
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