The Admiral's Caravan

by Charles E. Carryl

"Run away!" said the Admiral, promptly; and without another word the Caravan took to their heels and disappeared around a corner. Dorothy hurried after them, but by the time she turned the corner they were quite out of sight; and as she stopped and looked about her she discovered that she was once more in the Ferryman's street, and, to her great delight, quite as large as she had been when she left the Blue Admiral Inn.

CHAPTER XI

THE DANCING ANIMALS

It seemed to be evening again, and, although the Ferryman was nowhere in sight, Dorothy knew the place the moment she looked up and saw the peaked roofs outlined against the sky. The houses were quaint, old-fashioned-looking buildings with the upper parts jutting far out beyond the lower stories and with dark little doorways almost hidden in the shadows beneath; and the windows were very small casements filled with diamond-shaped panes of shining green glass. All the houses were brilliantly lighted up, and there were great iron lamps swung on chains across the street, so that the street itself was almost as bright as day, and Dorothy thought she recognized it as a place she had once read about where nobody but astrologers lived. There was a confused sound of fiddling going on somewhere, and as Dorothy walked along she could hear a scuffling noise inside the houses as if the inhabitants were dancing about on sanded floors. Presently, as she turned a corner, she came upon a number of storks who were dancing a sort of solemn quadrille up and down the middle of the street. They stopped dancing as she came along, and stood in a row gazing gravely at her as she passed by and then resumed their quadrille as solemnly as before.

The strangest thing about the fiddling was that it seemed to be going on somewhere in the air, and the sound appeared to come from all directions at once. At first the music was soft and rather slow in time, but it grew louder and louder, and the fiddles played faster and faster, until presently they were going at such a furious rate that Dorothy stopped and looked back to see how the storks were getting on in their dancing; and she could see them in the distance, scampering up and down the street, and bumping violently against one another in a frantic attempt to keep time with the music. At any other time she would have been vastly amused at this spectacle; but just then she was feeling a little afraid that some of the astrologers might come out to see what was going on, and she was therefore quite relieved when the storks presently gave up all hope of finishing their quadrille, and rising in the air with a tremendous flapping of wings, flew away over the tops of the houses and disappeared. Strangely enough, the sound of the fiddling followed them like a traveling band, and grew fainter and fainter until it finally died away in the distance.

But the scuffling noise in the houses continued, and Dorothy did just what you'd suppose such a curious little child would have done—that is, she stole up and peeped in at one of the windows; but she could see nothing through the thick glass but some strange-looking shadows bobbing confusedly about inside. Of course you know what she did then. In fact, after hesitating a moment, she softly opened the door of the house and went in.

The room was full of animals of every description, dancing around in a ring with the greatest enthusiasm; and as Dorothy appeared they all shouted, "Here she is!" and, before she could say a single word, the two nearest to her (they were an elephant and a sheep, by the way) seized her by the hands, and the next moment she was dancing in the ring. She was quite surprised to see that the elephant was no bigger than the sheep; and, as she looked about, it seemed to her, in the confusion, that all the animals in the room were of precisely the same size.

"AN ELEPHANT AND A SHEEP SEIZED HER BY THE HANDS, AND THE NEXT MOMENT SHE WAS DANCING IN THE RING."