Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial402dodg).pdf/701



“, ta-ta-ra!” blared the trumpet in silvery tones; and “All aboard—and hurry up—for the Isle of Between,” cried a herald in scarlet and gold, dancing and skipping lightly along. (Almost every one would have called him a sweetgum autumn leaf, I suppose; which only goes to show how blind it is possible to be!) ‘'Ta-ta-ra, ta-ta-ra, ta-ta-ra!”

“My goodness!” cried a tall young veronica, “I ’m nat half ready! When does it start, I wonder?”

“When the evening star has set,” came the answer from very close by. And right there was another herald, without a trumpet—one clad in a velvety-purple tunic—bowing before her. Indeed, they were everywhere, all among the garden-folk, rushing about, urging the importance of haste, taking charge and directing.

“Your very life depends upon it, indeed it does,” cried one, jumping up and down in a perfect fever of anxiety.

“It may not seem so now,” explained another, “but General Pine-tree and his troops only succeeded in turning the invaders back after a day and a night and almost another day's desperate fighting, as you all know. And, of course, they ‘ll return with reinforcements as soon as they can muster them.”

As a matter of fact, no one needed urging, for the sounds of that dreadful attack and repulse, and the threats and boasts that roared through it, rang in every one’s ears; and the sick terror which benumbs helpless things that can neither defend themselves against a deadly peril nor flee from it, still hung over them. So the warnings were most carefully heeded, and the preparations for departure advanced apace.

Shivering horrors! how they had raged and threatened and boasted, those two—terrible North Wind and his clever, whining ally, the sharp-tongued Jack Frost, And how the faithful pines had reeled and bent and twisted in their terrific efforts to toss them back with their giant, out-spread arms, as they hurled themselves forward, seeking the lives of the tender, terror-stricken little garden-folk beyond and below. Such memories made even the maddest haste seem slow.

But they were ready on time, after all; the weakest and tenderest, who were to go first, of course, waiting, indeed, to embark. And silently they slipped away, on the ships that no one can see, that sail on seas no one may know—out and away to the lovely, stilly Isle of Between; that isle that is bounded on the near side by this summer and on the far side by next; that isle which lies off the coast of the famous Land of Nod.