Before any one could express surprise at this astonishing information a third Meteor and a fourth alighted.
“It is ninety degrees in the shade in Winnipeg,” said the third Meteor, “and they are picking cocoanuts in Quebec. The baseball season has opened in Iceland.”
“Hotter still in Norway,” said the fourth Meteor, who had just arrived; “oldest inhabitant never remembers such sultry weather. Eskimos are now wearing mosquito nets instead of furs, and they’re catching crocodiles in the Arctic Ocean. The icebergs have begun to boil.”
“This won’t do!” cried Jack Frost excitedly. “All the work that I’ve been at for centuries is being undone. I’ll soon have to organize a syndicate to attend to my business if this keeps up. Whatever can have happened?”
Another Meteor came in just then with still more tidings.
“Great schools of whales are passing Cape Nome,” he said, “all going north. They’re picking strawberries off the tundras there, and they are advertising hot springs for rheumatism in a glacier.”
Nimbus, who had been sitting with knitted brows, suddenly leaped to his feet, and slapped the conductor on the back with such violence that that gentleman fell forward against the Equine Ox.
“I know what it is,” shouted Nimbus. “The Equator is up there. That’s what’s making all this trouble!”
“Then far be it from me to stay here,” said Jack Frost, preparing to start at once. “I’m not going to have all my good icebergs and glaciers melted like ice cream. It took me countless centuries to make some of them.”
“Oh, never mind your old icebergs and glaciers,” said Nimbus. “The point is that we’ve located the Equator and we can stop him before he catches the Evening Star. He can only thaw a radius of a few miles at one time, now that he’s shrunk so, so you don’t need to worry at all about his undoing your work.”