The Admiral’s Caravan/Chapter XI
It seemed to be evening again, and, although the Ferryman was nowhere in sight, Dorothy knew the place the moment she looked up and saw the peaked roofs outlined against the sky. The houses were quaint, old-fashioned-looking buildings with the upper parts jutting far out beyond the lower stories and with dark little doorways almost hidden in the shadows beneath; and the windows were very small casements filled with diamond-shaped panes of shining green glass. All the houses were brilliantly lighted up, and there were great iron lamps swung on chains across the street, so that the street itself was almost as bright as day, and Dorothy thought she recognized it as a place she had once read about where nobody but astrologers lived. There was a confused sound of fiddling going on somewhere, and as Dorothy walked along she could hear a scuffling noise inside the houses as if the inhabitants were dancing about on sanded floors. Presently, as she turned a corner, she came upon a number of storks who were dancing a sort of solemn quadrille up and down the middle of the street. They stopped dancing as she came along, and stood in a row gazing gravely at her as she passed by and then resumed their quadrille as solemnly as before.
The strangest thing about the fiddling was that it seemed to be going on somewhere in the air, and the sound appeared to come from all directions at once. At first the music was soft and rather slow in time, but it grew louder and louder, and the fiddles played faster and faster, until presently they were going at such a furious rate that Dorothy stopped and looked back to see how the storks were getting on in their dancing; and she could see them in the distance, scampering up and down the street, and bumping violently against one another in a frantic attempt to keep time with the music. At any other time she would have been vastly amused at this spectacle; but just then she was feeling a little afraid that some of the astrologers might come out to see what was going on, and she was therefore quite relieved when the storks presently gave up all hope of finishing their quadrille, and rising in the air with a tremendous flapping of wings, flew away over the tops of the houses and disappeared. Strangely enough, the sound of the fiddling followed them like a traveling band, and grew fainter and fainter until it finally died away in the distance.
But the scuffling noise in the houses continued, and Dorothy did just what you’d suppose such a curious little child would have done—that is, she stole up and peeped in at one of the windows; but she could see nothing through the thick glass but some strange-looking shadows bobbing confusedly about inside. Of course you know what she did then. In fact, after hesitating a moment, she softly opened the door of the house and went in.
The room was full of animals of every description, dancing around in a ring with the greatest enthusiasm; and as Dorothy appeared they all shouted, “Here she is!” and, before she could say a single word, the two nearest to her (they were an elephant and a sheep, by the way) seized her by the hands, and the next moment she was dancing in the ring. She was quite surprised to see that the elephant was no bigger than the sheep; and, as she looked about, it seemed to her, in the confusion, that all the animals in the room were of precisely the same size.
An elephant and a sheep seized her by the hands, and the next moment she was dancing in the ring
“Isn’t it rather unusual—” she said to the Sheep (it seemed more natural, somehow, to speak to the Sheep)—“isn’t it rather unusual for different animals to be so much alike?”
“Not in our set,” said the Sheep, conceitedly. “We all know who’s who. Of course we have to mark the pigs, as they’re so extremely like the polar-bears;” and Dorothy noticed that two pigs, who were dancing just opposite to her, had labels with “pig” on them hung around their necks by little chains, as if they had been a couple of decanters—“only,” she thought, “it would have been ‘sherry’ or ‘madeira’ instead of ‘pig,’ you know.”
“I suppose you all came out of a Noah’s Ark,” she said presently, at a venture.
“Of course. Largest size, I believe. How very clever you are!” said the Sheep, admiringly. “By the way,” she added, confidentially, “do you happen to know what a tapir is?”
“I believe it’s something to light, like a candle,” said Dorothy.
“Does it ever go out of its own accord?” inquired the Sheep.
“It ought not to,” said Dorothy.
“Then that accounts for the trouble we’ve had,” said the Sheep, with a satisfied air. “Those two tapirs dancing over there are always in everybody’s way, and we’ve had to put them out over and over again.”
This sounded like a joke; but the Sheep was so serious that Dorothy didn’t dare to laugh, so she said, by way of continuing the conversation, “I don’t see any birds here.”
“Oh dear, no!” exclaimed the Sheep; “you see, this is really a quadrupedrille. Of course you’re all right, because it’s precisely as if you were dancing on your hind feet. In fact,” she added, nodding approvingly, “you look almost as well as if you were.”
“Thank you!” said Dorothy, laughing.
“There was a seal that wanted to join,” the Sheep went on. “He pressed us very hard, but he never made the slightest impression on us;” and there was a twinkle in the Sheep’s eyes as she said this, so that Dorothy felt morally certain it was a joke this time; but, before she could make any reply, the Elephant called out “Recess!” and the animals all stopped dancing and began walking about and fanning themselves with little portfolios which they produced in such a mysterious manner that Dorothy couldn’t see where in the world they came from.
“Now, look here,” said the Elephant,—he seemed to be a sort of Master of Ceremonies, and the animals all clustered about him as he said this,—“why can’t she dance with the Camel?” and he pointed out Dorothy with his portfolio.
“She can!” shouted the animals in chorus. “Come on, Sarah!”—and the Camel, who had been moping in a corner with her head against the wall, came forward with a very sulky expression on her face.
“Her name is Sahara,” whispered the Sheep, plucking at Dorothy’s frock to attract her attention, “but we call her Sarah to save time. She’s kind of grumpy now because the other Camel stayed away, but she’ll titter like a turtle when she gets to dancing.”
“I don’t know what relation she is to Humphrey,” thought Dorothy, as the Camel took her by the hand, “but she’s certainly big enough to be his great-grandmother ten times over.” Before she had time to think any more about it, however, the Elephant called out, “Ladies change!” and the dancing began again harder than ever.
It was a very peculiar dance this time, and, as near as Dorothy could make it out, consisted principally in the animals passing her along from one to another as if they were each anxious to get rid of her; and presently she discovered that, in some unaccountable manner, she had been passed directly through the fireplace into the next house; but as this house was quite as full of dancing animals as the other, this didn’t help matters much except that it got Sarah out of the way—“and that,” said poor little Dorothy to herself, “is certainly something!”
Just then the Elephant, who had mysteriously appeared from a pantry in one corner of the room, shouted out, “All cross over!” and the animals began to crowd out of the house into the courtyard, and then, pushing in great confusion through a large gateway, rushed across the street and into the house on the other side of the way. Dorothy was quite taken off her feet in the rush, but, watching her chance, she hid behind a large churn that was standing conveniently in the middle of the street; and when they had all passed in, she ran away down the street as fast as she could go.
The animals crossing over
She ran on until she had got quite out of the Ferryman’s street, and was walking along in the open country, feeling quite pleased with herself for having so cleverly escaped from the dancing-party without having to take the trouble of saying “Good night” to the Elephant, when she saw, in the moonlight, something white lying beside the road, and going up to it, she discovered it was a letter.