CHAPTER VI
THE ELEPHANT’S TRUNK
THERE was even a larger crowd standing around the elephants than in front of the lions’ cage. It took Billy a minute or two to wiggle his way through. While he was doing this as quietly and gently as he could, for you can well believe that he was on his good behavior, a little thing happened that came near upsetting all his calculations and bringing to an untimely end the adventures of this red letter day at the Circus.
Without in the least intending it, he brushed against the skirts of a young lady who with her best beau was taking in the sights. She glanced down to see what the trouble was and, of course, discovered our Billy. Not knowing him and being very much excited anyway, she jumped to the conclusion that one of the wild beasts had escaped and that she was about to be eaten alive. But instead of running as you or I would have done, she shut her eyes and gave a little squeal and then tumbled over.
Billy knew that no serious harm had been done and so, instead of stopping to lend a helping hand, he took advantage of the commotion to forge ahead and very soon found himself standing close to the head of the biggest of all the elephants.
Some of my readers know how funny it feels to be right close up to one of these great beasts. Billy felt the same way, only more so. He didn’t dare to move for fear of attracting attention. The thought passed through his mind that, big as he was, he would not make more than five or six bites for the monster. He remembered again the story that Bob had told him of the way he ran and hid when he saw the elephant marching toward him. He no longer despised Bob for this and only wished he could do the same thing.
But bye and bye, as nothing seemed to happen, he began to feel better and to take notice. Then it was that he first discovered the elephant’s great trunk.
“I declare,” said Billy to himself, “that must be his hitching strap, and he is loose too, I believe that I will hold on to it till his keeper comes. That will make me all solid with him. There is nothing like standing in with the management. Perhaps he will give me something to eat for I am getting awfully hungry. I hadn’t thought of it before but I am. There has been so much going on all day that I have quite neglected my health. I’ll be sick tomorrow when I get home if I am not careful, and then Polly Parrot, as likely as not, will spread the story all over Cloverleaf Farm that I have been off on a spree. She is mean enough to do anything, that bird is!”
By this time Billy had advanced to the place where the end of the elephant’s trunk was dragging on the ground and quick as scat he had planted his two feet on it.
Poor Billy, he little knew what that bit of mistaken kindness was to cost him.
To his utter amazement and horror the supposed hitching strap began to curl up and before he knew what was happening, the big elephant had him tight around the waist and he was sailing up through the air. He had just time to think that he would be dashed to pieces the next second when he found himself planted firmly and securely right in the middle of the great elephant’s back.
What a shout went up! How the boys and girls laughed! How the people came rushing that way!
In the midst of all the excitement and din, Billy heard first of all, and it seemed to him louder than all, Tom Treat, who yelled at the top of his voice:
“Look, Harry, it’s Billy Whiskers!”
“Holy smoke!” was all Harry could say in reply, he was so astonished.
Though he was greatly confused and didn’t yet know where he was or what had really happened, Billy’s first thought was that he must get out of sight quick or that he would be a goner. He looked about and saw that he was not far from the platform where all the freaks were, and that it was the only place he could jump and not light right on top of some of the people.
“It’s the biggest jump I’ve ever tried but I have got to do it now and trust to luck. If I once get to that platform, I can scoot to the other side of it, drop down behind and hide till all the hubbub blows over. Here goes!”
With that he suddenly pulled himself together in a sort of a bunch and shot straight out into the air right over the heads of a lot of astonished people. Tom Treat, when telling his chum, Jack Wright, about it next day, said that Billy could not have gone further or faster if he had been fired out of a gun.
Billy imagined that if he were able to reach the platform his troubles would all be over, but in this he was sadly mistaken.
When the freaks, the human skeleton, the hairy man from Borneo, the giant, the dwarf, the fat lady and all the rest discovered Billy on the elephant, they laughed fit to kill and clapped their hands, but when they saw him coming right at them through the air like a cannon ball, they were scared enough. The fat lady, who thought that he must surely hit her, tried to get out of the way all of a sudden. Of course she could hardly move when she wasn’t excited. In trying to be quick about it now, she only succeeded in upsetting her chair and tumbling over backwards. Down she went right through the floor of the flimsy old platform, nearly scraping her sides off. Her sudden upset made all the boards of the floor fly up, throwing the rest of the freaks every which way, all more or less in a heap.
On top of them all landed Billy Whiskers. Of course he wasn’t hurt, and, as good luck would have it, none of the others were, not even the fat lady seriously, though she had hysterics and cried and laughed by turns and threw her fat arms, which looked like bologna sausages, wildly about and kept calling on the giant to protect her. This was after Billy Whiskers, the unwilling cause of all the commotion, had pulled himself safely out of the wreck and had hidden completely out of sight in a big empty box which he had luckily found on the other side, and quite near the scene of the great catastrophe.
“I’ll slip in here and wait till things quiet down a bit,” thought Billy. “If I try to get out now the whole crowd will be after me. Where there is so much excitement and so many things to see, a little commotion like this doesn’t last long.”
It was while he was waiting for things to subside that he saw and heard the queer antics of the fat lady after they had pulled her out of the hole she had made in the platform. It seemed to the watching and listening Billy that she was more mad than hurt.
“Where is that horrid goat?” she screamed. “I want to sit down on him just once for luck. I’ll teach him to jump at folks like that! There won’t be a grease spot left when I get through with him. Why don’t some of you bring him to me?”
Then she began to laugh and cry and toss her fat arms about. All of a sudden she stopped short.
“Come to me, Don Orsino,” she said to the giant. “I’m going to faint and you must hold me.”
Billy never could believe that he heard correctly what the big giant replied, but it sounded to him as though he told her to shut up and not be a fool, and that she looked like the old scratch and that she had better look out or she’d lose her job.
Billy was so indignant that any lady should be treated in such a manner that he came very near rushing out of his hiding-place and going for the giant, big as he was, with fire in his eye and head down.
“One punch, if he didn’t see me coming, would knock him off his perch and teach him some manners. I’ll try it.”
But just then Billy remembered what the fat lady had said about sitting down on him, and how there wouldn’t be a grease spot left when she did, and so he thought better of his rash resolve to go to her rescue.
It is fortunate for both him and us that he reconsidered for had he not, this story would have come to a sudden and very flat ending.
Billy, safely stowed away in the big pine box, had time to think matters over and lay a few plans. Presently he began to laugh to himself the way the elephant had fixed him.
“The very idea of calling that long thing, which I now know must be his nose, a hitching strap,” whispered Billy to himself. “It’s enough to make a dog laugh.”
You see that Billy did not even yet know that it was the elephant’s trunk, but called it his nose.
“I wish the Treat boys hadn’t been there,” Billy went on. “They will tell everybody at Cloverleaf Farm how it all happened and Polly Parrot at least will never be through laughing at it.”
Billy needn’t have worried over this for it was many a day before he was to see his friends at Cloverleaf Farm again, and when he finally returned they were all so glad to see him that nobody, not even Polly Parrot, for a long time thought of making fun of him.
But I am getting away ahead of my story. There are many adventures to relate before the memorable home-coming was brought to pass.