A wad of yellow fire hit the Pig, which squealed and bolted. The gentlemanly attendant tried to head off the Porcine Marvel, but it ran between his outspread feet and knocked him off the stand. A rain of lettered blocks followed.
The frantic Pig bunted into Ping, tripped him, and hurled him against Carl. Both boys went down, and Carl rolled over and over, discharging red, white, and blue balls as he revolved.
Up to that moment the Ossified Man had escaped. But now his turn had come. He was said to have been turning to stone for thirty years, and was supposed to be so brittle that he had to be handled with extreme care.
The first ball that struck him, however, caused him to jump off his board slab with a yell. From the way he rushed to get out of the tent, it was pretty certain that he was as wiry and pliable as the average.
The Educated Pig, to an accompaniment of yells, howls, and screams, and with the lurid glare of the popping balls lighting the smoky interior of the tent, ran on blindly, overturned the stage set aside for the Zulu chief and the Armless Wonder, showered broken glass over everybody, and then tore through the tent wall and out into the open.
Naturally, this Bedlam, suddenly turned loose in the tent, had excited the wonder and curiosity of the ticket seller, the "barker," and the man at the door.
As the man at the door looked in, the last of the balls struck him below the belt, and he collapsed in the arms of the "barker," who was crowding in behind him.
The last of the balls! That hollow, pasteboard tube seemed to have been a perfect mine of shooting stars. It had disgorged itself of a dozen. Carl had not counted them—he was too busy with other matters—but it seemed to him as though the tube had been fully an hour getting rid of its contents.
A madder assortment of freaks it would have been harder to find than wrangled and protested, there in the side-show tent, while they rubbed their bruises and shook the kinks out of themselves.
"It was one of the Armless Wonder's Roman candles," came in sepulchral tones from the Ossified Man as he climbed back to his slab.