Billy Whiskers Out for Fun

by Frances Trego Montgomery

At last off in the city somewhere a clock was heard striking and on the last stroke of twelve, away out in the still moonlight night Billy, Stubby and Button and the gray cat stole out from some bushes they had been hiding in and proceeded to the center of the park. All the other animals did likewise and now there were three hundred of them standing in a semi-circle around Billy, Stubby, Button and the gray cat, who introduced the Chums to the assembled multitude as soon as the crowd became quiet. Billy began:

“My dear friends! I feel most flattered to have been invited to address such a distinguished audience. And it will give me much pleasure to tell you of my adventures in foreign lands.”

“One of the most exciting and thrilling adventures I ever had in my whole life was when I was in the Island of Sicily where the earthquake occurred that buried Messina, one of its largest cities, under the mud and dirt that was carried over the fallen city by the huge tidal wave which swept along the shore of that beautiful city, burying it under a coat of soft mud many, many feet deep. The earthquake was bad enough, but the tidal wave was much worse. Then to add to the worries and troubles of the inhabitants, Mount Etna, one of the largest active volcanoes in the world, was in a state of eruption and might at any moment cause another earthquake or throw out a shower of hot ashes that would bury the remaining inhabitants under it as Vesuvius had buried the inhabitants of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

“Now for the part I had in this excitement. As it happened, I chanced to be on the Island when all this occurred and not only on the Island, but in the very city of Messina. For days Mount Etna had been throwing out huge volumes of black and yellow smoke and occasionally great bowlders would be seen flying up with the smoke, followed by tremblings of the earth for many miles around. The smoke increased in volume, the rumbling and trembling of the earth became more severe with each earthquake and two or three small cone-shaped holes appeared on its sides through which molten lava poured forth like rivers of fire. When this happened, the peasants who lived on the mountain sides left their vineyards and fled from the fast traveling rivers of lava before they could overtake them and bury them as well as their vineyards under their creepy, crawly molten streams.

“I had always wished to see a volcano in action, and I was now to get my fill of the sight, for I came near staying too long and being buried also. I was standing gazing at its many cones—for Etna, unlike Vesuvius, has many, many small cones on its sides through which smoke and lava escape when it is in a state of activity. Well, as I said before, I was standing near the base of the mountain when I was thrown violently to the ground by an upheaval of the earth, and directly where I had been standing appeared a fissure crack three feet wide and many feet long that ran up the volcano’s side to a small cone. As I was picking myself up I saw the slow-moving, thick stream of lava begin to roll out through the crevice just made and come toward me.

“Perhaps I did not pick myself up and begin to run! At least that is what I tried to do, but alas! I could not walk, much less run, for the constant shaking of the earth which threw me down repeatedly and shook me up as easily as if I had been a rag goat. Bruised and bleeding as I was, I kept on trying to get off the mountain on to steady ground, but it seemed as if the whole mountain for a time was but a trembling mass ready to fly to pieces and destroy everything on it.

“At last like a drunken man I stumbled and fell and as the sides of the volcano were very steep here, I rolled clear to the bottom, hitting stones and stumps and bouncing through the rows of grape-vines in the vineyards like a rubber ball. But at last I reached the bottom more dead than alive and stopped rolling. Not waiting to discover how badly I was hurt, I took to my legs and ran as I never have run before or since.

“And while I was doing this, the big earthquake had laid Messina low and the tidal wave had swept over it and washed the sides of their plaster homes away, leaving the inside of their front rooms exposed to view, showing the bedrooms with bed, dresser and chair just where the inhabitants had left them. But alas, the water had washed the plaster from the walls around and over them so that they were completely embedded in the soft plaster and mud and could not be gotten out by one unless they ran the danger of pulling the whole house down on their heads. And many, many people were caught in their homes and buried in this soft mud, the same as the furniture. The tidal wave had come too fast for them to escape. My narrow escape from being dropped into that boiling, sizzling crater of molten lava was the most exciting adventure of my life.