"You had a narrow escape that time," said Righty, as they excitedly watched the toboggan speeding on its way, and which, by the way, was filled with a lot of little youngsters no bigger than Tom himself, children of all colors, apparently, red, white and blue, green, yellow and black. "If I hadn't yanked you away you'd have been run over."
"But where are we?" Tom asked, bewildered by the experience.
"We're on the Crescent Moon at last," said Lefty. "It's the boss toboggan slide of the universe."
"A toboggan slide?" cried Tom.
"The very same," said the Poker. "Didn't you know that this dazzling whiteness of the Crescent Moon is merely the reflection of the sun's light on the purest of pure white snow? It's too high up for dust and dirt here, you see, and so the snow is always clean, and so, equally of course, is dazzling white."
"But the tobogganing?" asked Tom.
"It's like swinging and letting the old cat die," explained the Righthandiron. "You see, it's this shape," and he marked the crescent form of the moon on the snow and lettered the various points.
"Now," he continued, "you start your toboggan at A and whizz down to C. When you get there you have gathered speed enough to take you up the hill to B. Then of its own weight the toboggan slides back to D, from which it again moves forward to E, and so it keeps on sliding back and forth until finally it comes to a dead stop at C. Isn't that a fine arrangement?"
"Magnificent," said Tom. "And do they call it tobogganing here?"
"No," said Righty, "it's called oscillating, and the machine is known as the oscycle"—