A rattling, ripping sound outside, beginning softly, waxed louder and louder so as almost to drown their voices. It was the drum, and it announced the beginning of the circus. The Spangled Child put his head in and said, “Hurry up or you’ll miss my Infant Prodigious Act on the Horse with the Tambourines,” and took his head out again.
“Oh, dear,” said Mavis, “and we haven’t arranged a single thing about rescuing you.”
“No more you have,” said the Mermaid carelessly.
“Look here,” said Francis, “you do want to be rescued, don’t you?
“Of course I do,” replied the Mermaid impatiently, “now I know about the llama rope. But I can’t walk even if they’d let me, and you couldn’t carry me. Couldn’t you come at dead of night with a chariot—I could lift myself into it with your aid—then you could drive swiftly hence, and driving into the sea I could drop from the chariot and escape while you swam ashore.”
“I don’t believe we could—any of it,” said Bernard, “let alone swimming ashore with horses and chariots. Why, Pharaoh himself couldn’t do that, you know.” And even Mavis and Francis added helplessly, “I don’t see how we’re to get a chariot,” and “do you think of some other way.”
“I shall await you,” said the lady in the tank with perfect calmness, “at dead of night.”
With that she twisted the seaweed closely around her head and shoulders and sank slowly to the bottom of the tank. And the children were left staring blankly at each other, while in the circus tent music sounded and the soft heavy pad-pad of hoofs on sawdust.
“What shall we do?” Francis broke the silence.
“Go and see the circus, of course,” said Bernard.