ACROSS THE RAINBOW
“Oh, if I could only get over there!” moaned Billy. He had not stopped
to think what he would do if he were there. His eagerness to help the
Evening Star was so keen that he was almost ready to leap the abyss
before him. He even went to the brink and tried to calculate his
chances of getting across with a running jump, but he saw that the best
jumper in the world could not have got half way over before he would
have tumbled into the icy depths below. So, with a sigh, he sat down to
think.
Billy did not mean to cry--he never meant to cry--but the sight of the
Equator hovering so closely over the Evening Star and melting down the
snow mountain like a wax taper brought an unbidden tear or two to his
eyes, and they rolled slowly down his cheeks.
One of them fell on his stocking, where it quickly froze, and Billy,
looking at it disconsolately, observed that it shone with the hues of
the rainbow in the light thrown off by the Equator.
Suddenly he leaped to his feet, dancing for joy.
“The Rays!” he cried, “they will build me a bridge!”
And he called them by name one after another:
“Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red!”
Instantly the little people stood before him, and Red, who was their
spokesman, asked him what he desired.
“A bridge!” cried Billy. “A bridge as quickly as you can.”
It was the work of a second. The little people all sprang into the air
together and lo! in front of Billy stretched a slender rainbow bridge,
leading from his feet to the snow mountain on which was the imprisoned
Evening Star. And at each end was a great pot of yellow gold as large
as a preserve kettle.
Bravely Billy started to cross the bridge. It trembled violently in the
strong light, as rainbows will, for they are flimsy things at best.
Billy hesitated. He was not frightened, but it was so hard to keep his
balance.
And then he heard a cheery shout behind him, and up came Jack Frost
running as fast as his legs could carry him, and fairly panting with
excitement.
“It’s all right, Billy, go ahead!” he called, laying a steadying hand
on the rainbow, which at once hardened under his cold.
Thus encouraged Billy proceeded. As he went on he noticed that the snow
mountain had ceased to melt. Indeed, it was beginning slowly to rise in
the air again, thanks to the influence of Jack Frost, who was freezing
the water far faster than the Equator could melt it.
Up, up it went, its peak narrowing to a needle point. Above it the
Equator, unused to the cold, shriveled and shrank. Now he was the size
of a hoop, now of a doughnut, presently he was scarcely larger than a
ring.
“Slide!” shouted a familiar voice behind Billy. “Slide, Evening Star,
slide for your life!”
The Evening Star heard the voice, and she, as well as Billy, recognized
it as the voice of Nimbus.
“The snow mountain is the North Pole!” cried Nimbus. “I just asked an
Eskimo where it was and he pointed it out. I came just in time, didn’t
I?”
The last question was addressed to the Evening Star, who had followed
his advice and slid right into his arms.
“I jumped the gully,” said Nimbus, pointing to the abyss. “There wasn’t
time to come over the bridge. And now I think we’ve got the Equator
where we want him.”
“Where do you want me?” snarled the Equator.
“Over this Pole,” said Nimbus, and as he spoke he slid up the North
Pole as a sailor slides down a rope, grasped the Equator and impaled
him upon it.
He rolled him down and down until Jack Frost could reach him and help
hold him, and the Equator, feeling himself stretched like an elastic
over the conical snow peak, saw that he was doomed to be rolled back
around the earth and resume his post of duty in the center.
“I won’t do it,” he protested. “I’ll never do it!”
He struggled and twisted in his efforts to escape, but Nimbus held him
fast, and Jack Frost kept him small by the clutch of his icy fingers.
Billy danced up and down in his excitement, for once the Equator almost
got away.
“Go on down! Go on down!” shouted Billy. “My mother says you are only
an imaginary line, anyway!”
* * * * *
“Why, Billy,” said his mother, “look at the way you have eaten up your
poor North Pole!”
And at the sound of his mother’s voice Nimbus put a sunbeam into
Billy’s mouth which tasted just like lemon candy. The clang of the
enchanted trolley car sounded in his ears as the whole lot of his new
friends stepped aboard and vanished from his sight. He looked around.
But, instead of Nimbus and the Evening Star and Jack Frost and the
Equator, he found his mother smiling down at him as he lay under the
lilac bush, and the conductor was just ringing the bell for the trolley
car to stop at the corner.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
The illustrations listed on pages 28, 32, 48, and 78 in the List of
Illustrations do not exist in the original text.
Alternate or archaic spelling has been retained from the original.