THE EQUINE OX AND EVENING STAR
CHAPTER IV
THE EQUINE OX AND THE EVENING STAR
“I EXPECTED it,” said Nimbus with a sigh. “I might have known the Equine Ox couldn’t hold him.”
“I don’t suppose it is any use to go to the Equator now, is it?” asked Billy. “I don’t see how we can go there if we don’t know where it is.”
“Well, we know where it was, and there’s where we’ll go,” snapped Nimbus. “I have a little speech to make to the Equine Ox that he ought to hear.”
The motorman and the conductor had now got a nice, clean path shoveled through the snow, so they boarded the car and it soon slid off the snow cloud and sped on again.
Presently Billy, looking downward, saw that they were coming closer to the Earth all the time. And what a different Earth it was from any he had ever seen outside of a geography! A curving coast-line laced with filmy surf lay below him, and on the hills that rose from it he could see countless palm trees, each with a little tuft at the top like the long blades of blue grass about the edge of the garden at home, well beyond the reach of the lawn mower.
“Gracious! We must be near where the Equator was,” he exclaimed. “It looks like a conservatory outdoors down there.”
“It’s not,” said Nimbus. “It’s the grandstand. That’s where the procession of the Equine Oxen was to be held.”
“Of course it won’t be held now?” timidly suggested Billy.
“It will, if I have anything to do with it. Just because we never did have a procession without an Equator is no reason we shouldn’t have one. Besides, now that there’s no Equator to watch, unless they parade, those good-for-nothing creatures won’t earn their cuds.”
The car by this time was grating on a hillside, and soon brought up between a couple of slender palm trees.
“I’ve been expecting you,” said a voice—a sad voice that seemed to come from directly above the car.
Looking out of the car window, Billy saw a bright light among the branches of the tree—a light that surrounded like a halo the figure of a very pretty girl.
“Why,” said Nimbus briskly, lifting his hat, “it’s the Evening Star.”
“Yes,” said the Evening Star, “it is I. I came to complain about the Equine Ox. He’s very disconsolate, and he’s singing continually. I wish you’d stop him.”
Billy was very much surprised to find the Evening Star all alone. He was about to ask Nimbus why it was when she said:
“You see, Papa—he’s the Sun—never comes out at night; and Mrs. Moon, who’s my mamma, isn’t up yet, so I had to come alone. Is there anything else you’d like to know, little boy?”
Billy was very much abashed at thus having a question answered before he had asked it, and especially by a young lady whom he had never met. But there was one thing he wanted to know very much, so he said politely:
“Yes, thank you. I should like to know why the Equine Ox sings when he is unhappy.”
“Oh, that’s so people can tell he’s the Equine OX,” said the Evening Star. “He always does things backward. When he’s very angry he rolls on the ground and roars with laughter. When he’s pleased about anything he weeps bitterly, and when he’s unhappy he sings.”
“There he is now,” said Nimbus, who had been listening intently. “Don’t you hear him?”
Billy heard something that first sounded like a long-drawn-out moo, but which he soon recognized as a very familiar air.
“Come on,” said Nimbus.
“Us, too?” inquired the motorman and conductor. “We don’t want to be left alone in these here foreign parts.”
“Yes,” said Nimbus, “come ahead!” and he led the way down a winding pathway that opened through the trees.
The singing grew louder and louder as they proceeded, and shortly they came out into a little open space overgrown with flowers and surrounded by a very dense tropical growth. In the center of it stood a creature that looked a little like an ox, a little like a horse, and very much like a map of the solar system. Billy and the street-car men stopped at a signal from Nimbus. The Equine OX was singing.
How dear to my heart was my home in the tropics,
The pythons that wreathed in fantastic festoons;
The parrots discoursing on trivial topics,
The smug armadillos and sweet-faced baboons;
The ostrich, the emu, the suave alligator,
Flamingoes with necks that were cleverly curled;
But dearest of all was the charming Equator,
The dear old Equator that ran round the world!
CHORUS
The queer old Equator,
The dear old Equator,
The quaint old Equator
That ran round the world.
From sunset to moonset I look for it vainly,
I seek it at noontide, I hunt it at dawn;
And when I don’t find it I see very plainly,
Too plainly, alas, that it’s probably gone!
I bade it good-night with the fondest affection,
And lay down beside it to take a brief nap,
But leaving no clew that could lead to detection
The queer old Equator slid right off the map.
“Now, Sir, where is that Equator?”
CHORUS
The queer old Equator,
The dear old Equator,
The quaint old Equator,
Slid right off the map.
Directly the song was finished Nimbus strode up to the Equine Ox and, shaking his fist angrily at him, demanded:
“Now, sir, where is that Equator?”
“That’s the question,” said the Equine Ox; “where is he? Who knows the answer?” Then seeing Billy, he added: “Maybe you do!”
“Why, no, sir,” replied Billy in confusion. “I don’t. Not at all.”
“Pay no attention to him,” said Nimbus. “He’s merely trying to avert suspicion from himself.” Then turning to the Equine Ox, he proceeded: “Tell us how he got away. Be quick, there is no time to lose.”
“Oh, yes, there is,” said the Equine Ox; “any quantity of it! I lose a great deal every day and hope to lose a great deal more. As for finding time, now that is another——”
“How did the Equator get away?” said Nimbus sternly.
“Well, you see, it was this way. Night fell on the tropics and the tropics broke.”
“Ho, ho!” exclaimed the conductor. “That’s a joke. Ho, ho!”
“What is the gentleman angry about?” uneasily asked the Equine Ox, who always laughed when he was angry.
“Nothing,” said Nimbus; “go ahead with your explanation.”
“Then a few waves broke,” continued the Equine Ox, “and then day broke and, well—what could the Equator do but break, too?”
“Did you sit on it?” asked Billy eagerly.
The Equine Ox regarded him gravely.
“Did you ever sit on an Equator?” he asked.
“Why, no,” said Billy, embarrassed. “I didn’t.”
“Neither did I,” said the Equine Ox. “Far be it from me to sit on an Equator when it is going anywhere.”
“So it’s completely gone, has it?” asked Nimbus. “Which way did it go?”
“Shall I answer both of those questions first?” said the Equine Ox.
“I’ll answer the last,” volunteered the Evening Star. “It went south and slipped off the South Pole. I saw it.”
Nimbus fell back with a groan and Billy ran forward to catch him.
The motorman and conductor gathered around. “Jab him in the ribs with the crank handle,” suggested the conductor. “It’s the way we do when they faints on the car.”
But Nimbus revived before this became necessary.
“It gave me such a start,” he said.
“The Equator’s got a better one,” said the Equine Ox.
“Everything’s easy once you get a start,” commented the motorman.
Nimbus was now himself, and a very energetic little self he was. First he placed the conductor and the motorman in charge of the Equine Ox, with orders not to let him out of their sight.
“He must be here to-morrow,” he said, “or the procession cannot go on, and if the procession does not go on it will always be summer and the sea will dry up.”
The motorman and the conductor were scarcely eager to undertake the charge, but something in Nimbus’s manner convinced them that it was necessary, so they consented.
“You,” said Nimbus to the Evening Star, “will please go and tell your father that the Equator is off the Earth and that I will try to catch him.”
“And you,” he said to Billy, “come with me. As soon as the Equator is off the Earth, he will shrink up to the size of a barrel hoop, and the meanness in his disposition condensed into that small space will make a perfect fiend of him. He is liable to drop right down on us this very minute and burn us into a cinder before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.’ He gets so hot when he’s angry that he has been known to set an iceberg on fire. By the way,” he added, “how quickly can you say ‘Jack Robinson’?”
“Jackrobinson!” said Billy.
“I thought so!” said Nimbus. “You’d have been dry ashes before you got to a-c-k.”
Hardly had he left off speaking when a Meteor dashed in with a message from the Dog Star.
“Equator coming back to Earth vowing vengeance against Nimbus and Evening Star,” it said.