CHAPTER X
A THRILLING EXPERIENCE
AS early as eleven o’clock sneaking dogs and cats, galloping horses, mules and donkeys as well as slow walking cows could have been seen entering the park by all entrances and hurriedly hiding themselves behind and under bushes or in dark shady nooks. And it was a good thing that there were few policemen guarding the park at that time of night, and that what were, were mostly fast asleep on the benches in secluded spots, else all these loose animals without any owners would have excited comment and they would have been caught and carried off to the pound in the patrol wagon. But as they were only seen alone and not in groups and then only by disinterested autoists bent on getting home as quickly as they could, they were not molested. They kept coming and coming until scarcely a bush, tree or statue but concealed an animal hiding behind it waiting for the hour of twelve to strike.
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.
“I thank you, friends, for your close attention and I will now step aside and give Stubby a chance to tell you of one of his hairbreadth escapes.”
With pawing the ground and bellowing in lieu of handclappings, the animals made night hideous for awhile with their applause. And at last Billy had to baa for them to stop or they would bring the police down upon them.
Stubby being so small, they could not see him if he stood on the ground, so he had to jump up on Billy’s back and from there to a horse’s back and from there to a high vase of flowers. There he was above the heads of the animals and they could all see him when he talked. And he certainly looked cunning with his saucy little face, one ear cocked high on one side peeping out from among the flowers.
“My dear friends,” began Stubby, “I am trembling in every limb at the thought of addressing such a distinguished crowd. Especially after my friend Billy, who is a noted after-dinner speaker. I am no speaker and what I have to tell you will seem tame indeed after the recital of his wonderful escape.”
“We are not critical,” called out the animals. “Go ahead and tell us anything, for we know you have been through the War and must have had many narrow escapes.”
“Yes, I have. If you would care to hear of one of them I can tell you of one of the closest shaves which was at one of the battles Billy and I were in when we were in the war between Japan and Russia, and it happened when we were close up against the enemy trenches and not fighting at long distance. It was a couple of days before the final battle when my master was assigned some spy duty. This meant creeping out in the dead of night close up to the enemy’s front. I heard the order given and I determined to follow him. I knew he would forbid my going for fear I would be shot or maimed in some way, not because he was afraid I would give him away, for I had been with him on too many just such dangerous duties. So when he started I pretended to be asleep on the foot of his bed where I always slept.
“But what do you think he did to keep me behind in case I should wake up? He threw a blanket over me and pinned me in with big safety pins, and then sneaked out. I only waited long enough for the sound of his footsteps to die away in the distance when I tried to get out of the blanket. I felt sure there was some hole I could crawl through where the pins were not too close together. But alas! He had done his work too thoroughly. There was not a space I could even get my head through, so I rolled over on my back and began to scratch and claw at that blanket like mad, but the fuzz and dust got in my eyes and my nose so I had to stop or be suffocated, pinned in as I was. Consequently I stopped the clawing and scratching and tried to think of some other way to get out. I did not want to bark as that would awaken the soldiers and they would find out my master was missing. This I did not want them to know, for when an officer goes out on a secret task, the fewer that know it the better.
“As I lay there resting and wondering what I should do, the thought struck me: ‘Use your sharp teeth, chew a hole in the blanket and when big enough for you to get your nose through, tear it the rest of the way.’ And in a jiffy I was doing this and in another jiffy I was out and nosing around to get on the scent of my master.
“This was easy to do, but to my surprise I found he had crawled under the back of the tent instead of going out the front way. What was more, I soon perceived that he was wiggling along on his stomach instead of walking. He did this until he had crossed the bare place where the tents were pitched and had entered a thick woods. Now of all dangerous places, this woods was the worst as it was filled with spies of both armies trying to find out the number of men on the opposite side or secure any information they could pick up. And one was as likely to be picked off by a bullet from one of his own men as by an enemy, unless he gave the proper signal and gave it quickly at that. When my master was well into the woods, he stood up and seemed to move cautiously from tree to tree, selecting big ones to hide behind. All of a sudden I came to a bush that had had half of its branches broken off, and all around it where the branches were off I could smell my master’s tracks.
“‘Heigho!’ I thought, ‘I know what he is up to now. I have seen him play this same trick on the enemy before. He is covering himself with branches so when he stands still he will look like a bush and the enemy’s sentinel will pass him in the dark.’ To find his own way he had a tiny little electric searchlight which he could flash on for a minute at a time but so small was it that it had the appearance at a distance of being a firefly, should anyone see him using it.
“But all of a sudden he seemed to be running and taking long bounds, for he could not possibly have taken such long steps as I found he was taking. It made it very hard to keep on his trail. Once when I lost it completely and was sniffing round for it I came upon the scent of a Russian police dog. And I knew immediately what had caused my master to use long steps and jumps. He was in flight. Probably he had found he was discovered and followed, or else a soldier and his dog had passed along the same trail, not knowing a man was fleeing before them. But I should soon find out. With my heart in my mouth, I started to trail the police dog, fearful of coming upon my dead master at every bend in the trail. Suddenly I came upon a big tree and there lying at its foot was a Russian soldier and his police dog, both dead but still warm. I knew from that that they had just been killed. And I thanked God that it was they and not my master that was dead.
“I did not waste much time on them but began to hunt around to see in which direction my master had gone. But though I sniffed and sniffed and ran around like mad, I could not pick up the scent. Every scent led to the big tree where I had found the dead soldier and dog. All of a sudden, chancing to look up in the tree, what should I see but a firefly in the midst of a thick bunch of leaves! And of course I knew it was no firefly but my master’s little electric searchlight. He must have seen me at the same time I spied him, for in a second he came climbing down the tree and when he was down he patted me on the head and whispered in my ear: ‘Stubby, I thank God it is you! I heard you running around in the dead leaves under the tree and I thought you were another Russian or a police dog.’
“Just then he went white and nearly fell over in a faint. At the same time I smelled fresh blood and on looking down I saw a bullet hole in his boot-leg from which the blood was oozing. The next second I licked his face and jingled my collar on his nose. He felt the cold contact of the bottle that was around my neck and raised himself enough to unfasten it and take a drink. This revived him enough for him to detach the adhesive plaster and sterilized cotton he had carefully rolled up in a tin box and fastened to my collar alongside the flask of brandy I always wore when out on scout duty for just such emergencies. My master had fixed it all up himself but had never had occasion to use it before. And my! but wasn’t I thankful that he had, and also thankful that I had insisted on following him?
“With the brandy and the stopping of the flow of blood he soon was himself and he began to search the Russian soldier for any valuable papers he might have on him. To his joy, he found the man was not a common soldier but one of their most valued spies. For hidden in his helmet which had a false top, he found exceedingly valuable papers telling of the movement of the very division of the army that his division was now fighting. And just as he was finishing searching the spy, he chanced to look at the police dog and saw under his long bushy hair a leather collar fastened round his neck. For some reason he took it off and examined it. And lo and behold! folded between the lining and the outside he found other dispatches but they were in cipher.
“At this moment I heard stealthy footsteps approaching and we just had time to sneak farther into the woods when another Russian soldier appeared and close on his heels was another police dog. The soldier passed us unheeded, taking my master for a bush. Not so the dog. He smelled me and also my master, and in the twinkling of an eye was upon me. He was three times my size and one of those long, wire-haired dogs with short, pointed ears, sharp nose and sharper teeth. He should have been named Sharp, for of all the dogs I ever came in contact with, this breed of dog is the sharpest witted for police service.
“But luckily for me, when he flew at my throat, his teeth closed not on my throat, which would have ended my life then and there, but on my metal collar and the tin box. He bit so hard that he broke the points off several of his teeth. And while he was preparing for a second bite and his master was approaching to bayonet me, my master bayoneted him as he was leaning against my master thinking he was a bush. The soldier fell dead. With the next thrust my master killed the dog and then we both hurried back to camp with no more mishaps, where we arrived just as the sun was coming up. And I think that was one of the closest calls to being killed I had while in the war, but of course I had many others.
“I thank you all for caring to hear my story and will now bid you all good-night.”
“My, oh me!” sighed an old cow. “I am all in a quiver from hearing that exciting tale and I don’t believe I have drawn a long breath since he began speaking.”
“Nor I!” replied the cow by her side, while a third one said: “And here they are starting out to cross the continent in quest of new adventures. Wouldn’t you think they had had enough excitement and narrow escapes to last them for the rest of their lives?”
“I surely would,” said the fourth cow.