The Marvelous Land of Oz
It flopped its four huge wings and rose slowly into the air; and then,
while our little band of adventurers clung to the backs and sides of
the sofas for support, the Gump turned toward the South and soared
swiftly and majestically away.
“The scenic effect, from this altitude, is marvelous,” commented the
educated Woggle-Bug, as they rode along.
“Never mind the scenery,” said the Scarecrow. “Hold on tight, or you
may get a tumble. The Thing seems to rock badly.”
“It will be dark soon,” said Tip, observing that the sun was low on the
horizon. “Perhaps we should have waited until morning. I wonder if the
Gump can fly in the night.”
“I’ve been wondering that myself,” returned the Gump quietly. “You see,
this is a new experience to me. I used to have legs that carried me
swiftly over the ground. But now my legs feel as if they were asleep.”
“They are,” said Tip. “We didn’t bring ’em to life.”
“You’re expected to fly,” explained the Scarecrow. “not to walk.”
“We can walk ourselves,” said the Woggle-Bug.
“I begin to understand what is required of me,” remarked the Gump; “so
I will do my best to please you,” and he flew on for a time in silence.
Presently Jack Pumpkinhead became uneasy.
“I wonder if riding through the air is liable to spoil pumpkins,” he
said.
“Not unless you carelessly drop your head over the side,” answered the
Woggle-Bug. “In that event your head would no longer be a pumpkin, for
it would become a squash.”
“Have I not asked you to restrain these unfeeling jokes?” demanded Tip,
looking at the Woggle-Bug with a severe expression.
“You have; and I’ve restrained a good many of them,” replied the
insect. “But there are opportunities for so many excellent puns in our
language that, to an educated person like myself, the temptation to
express them is almost irresistible.”
“People with more or less education discovered those puns centuries
ago,” said Tip.
“Are you sure?” asked the Woggle-Bug, with a startled look.
“Of course I am,” answered the boy. “An educated Woggle-Bug may be a
new thing; but a Woggle-Bug education is as old as the hills, judging
from the display you make of it.”
The insect seemed much impressed by this remark, and for a time
maintained a meek silence.
The Scarecrow, in shifting his seat, saw upon the cushions the
pepper-box which Tip had cast aside, and began to examine it.
“Throw it overboard,” said the boy; “it’s quite empty now, and there’s
no use keeping it.”
“Is it really empty?” asked the Scarecrow, looking curiously into the
box.
“Of course it is,” answered Tip. “I shook out every grain of the
powder.”
“Then the box has two bottoms,” announced the Scarecrow, “for the
bottom on the inside is fully an inch away from the bottom on the
outside.”
“Let me see,” said the Tin Woodman, taking the box from his friend.
“Yes,” he declared, after looking it over, “the thing certainly has a
false bottom. Now, I wonder what that is for?”
“Can’t you get it apart, and find out?” enquired Tip, now quite
interested in the mystery.
“Why, yes; the lower bottom unscrews,” said the Tin Woodman. “My
fingers are rather stiff; please see if you can open it.”
He handed the pepper-box to Tip, who had no difficulty in unscrewing
the bottom. And in the cavity below were three silver pills, with a
carefully folded paper lying underneath them.
This paper the boy proceeded to unfold, taking care not to spill the
pills, and found several lines clearly written in red ink.
“Read it aloud,” said the Scarecrow. so Tip read, as follows:
“DR. NIKIDIK’S CELEBRATED WISHING PILLS.
“_Directions for Use:_ Swallow one pill; count seventeen by twos; then
make a Wish. The Wish will immediately be granted.
CAUTION: Keep in a Dry and Dark Place.”
“Why, this is a very valuable discovery!” cried the Scarecrow.
“It is, indeed,” replied Tip, gravely. “These pills may be of great use
to us. I wonder if old Mombi knew they were in the bottom of the
pepper-box. I remember hearing her say that she got the Powder of Life
from this same Nikidik.”
“He must be a powerful Sorcerer!” exclaimed the Tin Woodman; “and since
the powder proved a success we ought to have confidence in the pills.”
“But how,” asked the Scarecrow, “can anyone count seventeen by twos?
Seventeen is an odd number.”
“That is true,” replied Tip, greatly disappointed. “No one can possibly
count seventeen by twos.”
“Then the pills are of no use to us,” wailed the Pumpkinhead; “and this
fact overwhelms me with grief. For I had intended wishing that my head
would never spoil.”
“Nonsense!” said the Scarecrow, sharply. “If we could use the pills at
all we would make far better wishes than that.”
“I do not see how anything could be better,” protested poor Jack. “If
you were liable to spoil at any time you could understand my anxiety.”
“For my part,” said the Tin Woodman, “I sympathize with you in every
respect. But since we cannot count seventeen by twos, sympathy is all
you are liable to get.”
By this time it had become quite dark, and the voyagers found above
them a cloudy sky, through which the rays of the moon could not
penetrate.
The Gump flew steadily on, and for some reason the huge sofa-body
rocked more and more dizzily every hour.
The Woggle-Bug declared he was sea-sick; and Tip was also pale and
somewhat distressed. But the others clung to the backs of the sofas and
did not seem to mind the motion as long as they were not tipped out.
Darker and darker grew the night, and on and on sped the Gump through
the black heavens. The travelers could not even see one another, and an
oppressive silence settled down upon them.
After a long time Tip, who had been thinking deeply, spoke.
“How are we to know when we come to the pallace of Glinda the Good?” he
asked.
“It’s a long way to Glinda’s palace,” answered the Woodman; “I’ve
traveled it.”
“But how are we to know how fast the Gump is flying?” persisted the
boy. “We cannot see a single thing down on the earth, and before
morning we may be far beyond the place we want to reach.”
“That is all true enough,” the Scarecrow replied, a little uneasily.
“But I do not see how we can stop just now; for we might alight in a
river, or on, the top of a steeple; and that would be a great
disaster.”
So they permitted the Gump to fly on, with regular flops of its great
wings, and waited patiently for morning.
Then Tip’s fears were proven to be well founded; for with the first
streaks of gray dawn they looked over the sides of the sofas and
discovered rolling plains dotted with queer villages, where the houses,
instead of being dome-shaped—as they all are in the Land of Oz—had
slanting roofs that rose to a peak in the center. Odd looking animals
were also moving about upon the open plains, and the country was
unfamiliar to both the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow, who had formerly
visited Glinda the Good’s domain and knew it well.
“We are lost!” said the Scarecrow, dolefully. “The Gump must have
carried us entirely out of the Land of Oz and over the sandy deserts
and into the terrible outside world that Dorothy told us about.”
“We must get back,” exclaimed the Tin Woodman, earnestly. “we must get
back as soon as possible!”
“Turn around!” cried Tip to the Gump. “turn as quickly as you can!”
“If I do I shall upset,” answered the Gump. “I’m not at all used to
flying, and the best plan would be for me to alight in some place, and
then I can turn around and take a fresh start.”
Just then, however, there seemed to be no stopping-place that would
answer their purpose. They flew over a village so big that the
Woggle-Bug declared it was a city, and then they came to a range of
high mountains with many deep gorges and steep cliffs showing plainly.
“Now is our chance to stop,” said the boy, finding they were very close
to the mountain tops. Then he turned to the Gump and commanded: “Stop
at the first level place you see!”
“Very well,” answered the Gump, and settled down upon a table of rock
that stood between two cliffs.
But not being experienced in such matters, the Gump did not judge his
speed correctly; and instead of coming to a stop upon the flat rock he
missed it by half the width of his body, breaking off both his right
wings against the sharp edge of the rock and then tumbling over and
over down the cliff.
Our friends held on to the sofas as long as they could, but when the
Gump caught on a projecting rock the Thing stopped suddenly—bottom side
up—and all were immediately dumped out.
By good fortune they fell only a few feet; for underneath them was a
monster nest, built by a colony of Jackdaws in a hollow ledge of rock;
so none of them—not even the Pumpkinhead—was injured by the fall. For
Jack found his precious head resting on the soft breast of the
Scarecrow, which made an excellent cushion; and Tip fell on a mass of
leaves and papers, which saved him from injury. The Woggle-Bug had
bumped his round head against the Saw-Horse, but without causing him
more than a moment’s inconvenience.
The Tin Woodman was at first much alarmed; but finding he had escaped
without even a scratch upon his beautiful nickle-plate he at once
regained his accustomed cheerfulness and turned to address his
comrades.
“Our Journey had ended rather suddenly,” said he; “and we cannot justly
blame our friend the Gump for our accident, because he did the best he
could under the circumstances. But how we are ever to escape from this
nest I must leave to someone with better brains than I possess.”
Here he gazed at the Scarecrow; who crawled to the edge of the nest and
looked over. Below them was a sheer precipice several hundred feet in
depth. Above them was a smooth cliff unbroken save by the point of rock
where the wrecked body of the Gump still hung suspended from the end of
one of the sofas. There really seemed to be no means of escape, and as
they realized their helpless plight the little band of adventurers gave
way to their bewilderment.
“This is a worse prison than the palace,” sadly remarked the
Woggle-Bug.
“I wish we had stayed there,” moaned Jack.
“I’m afraid the mountain air isn’t good for pumpkins.”
“It won’t be when the Jackdaws come back,” growled the Saw-Horse, which
lay waving its legs in a vain endeavor to get upon its feet again.
“Jackdaws are especially fond of pumpkins.”
“Do you think the birds will come here?” asked Jack, much distressed.
“Of course they will,” said Tip; “for this is their nest. And there
must be hundreds of them,” he continued, “for see what a lot of things
they have brought here!”
Indeed, the nest was half filled with a most curious collection of
small articles for which the birds could have no use, but which the
thieving Jackdaws had stolen during many years from the homes of men.
And as the nest was safely hidden where no human being could reach it,
this lost property would never be recovered.
The Woggle-Bug, searching among the rubbish—for the Jackdaws stole
useless things as well as valuable ones—turned up with his foot a
beautiful diamond necklace. This was so greatly admired by the Tin
Woodman that the Woggle-Bug presented it to him with a graceful speech,
after which the Woodman hung it around his neck with much pride,
rejoicing exceedingly when the big diamonds glittered in the sun’s
rays.
But now they heard a great jabbering and flopping of wings, and as the
sound grew nearer to them Tip exclaimed:
“The Jackdaws are coming! And if they find us here they will surely
kill us in their anger.”
“I was afraid of this!” moaned the Pumpkinhead. “My time has come!”
“And mine, also!” said the Woggle-Bug; “for Jackdaws are the greatest
enemies of my race.”