Kabumpo in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson (best books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📕
"Bombshells!" cried the King angrily.
"The cake disappeared before the party, your Majesty!" cried Eejabo.
Everyone jumped at the sudden interruption, and Eejabo, who had crept in unnoticed, stepped before the throne.
"Disappeared," continued Eejabo hoarsely, dripping blue water all over the royal rugs. "One minute there it was on the pantry table. Next minute- gone!" croaked Eejabo flinging up his hands and shrugging his shoulders.
"Then, before a fellow could turn around, it was back. 'Tweren't our fault if magic got mixed into it, and here we have been dipped for nothing!"
"Well, why didn't you say so before!" asked the King in exasperation.
"Fine chance I had to say anything!" sniffed Eejabo, wringing out his lace ruffles.
"eh-rr-you may have the day off, my good man," said Pompus, with an apologetic cough-- "
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“Sing the National Air for them,” said the Candle King carelessly and the Candlemen, in their queer crackling voices, sang the following song, swaying rhythmically to the tune:
“Flicker, flicker, Candlemen,
Cheer our King and cheer again!
Neat as wax and always bright,
Cheer’s the King of candle light!
Kindle lightly windle slightly,
Here we burn both day and nightly,
Here we have good times to burn
Till each one goes out in turn.”
“Thank you,” said Pompa, mopping his head with his silk handkerchief.
“Thank you very much,” Kabumpo groaned plaintively, for the great elephant was nearly stifled.
“How is it you are so tall and thin?” asked Pompa after an awkward pause.
“How is it you are so short and lumpy and unevenly dipped?” responded King Cheer promptly. “If I were in your place,” he gave Kabumpo a contemptuous glance, “I’d have myself redipped. Where are your wicks? And how can you walk about without being lighted?”
“We’re not fireworks,” puffed Kabumpo indignantly and then he gave a shrill scream. Ten Candlemen tottered and went out, falling to the ground with a great clatter. Then Pompa leaped several feet in the air and his scream put out five more.
“Stop!” cried King Cheer angrily. “Stand where you are!” But Kabumpo and Pompa neither stopped nor stood where they were. The Elegant Elephant rushed over to the Prince and threw his heavy robe over his head. And just in time, for Pompa’s golden locks were a mass of flames. Then the Prince tore off his velvet jacket and clapped it to Kabumpo’s tail, which also was blazing merrily.
“Great Grump!” rumbled the Elegant Elephant furiously, when he had extinguished Pompa and Pompa had extinguished him. “I’ll put you all out for this!” He raised his trunk and pointed it straight at the Candlemen, who cowered in the far corner.
“I was only trying to light you up,” wailed a little fellow, holding out his hands pleadingly. “I thought that was your wick.” He pointed a trembling finger at Kabumpo’s tail and another at Pompa’s head.
“Wick!” snorted Kabumpo in a rage while the Prince ran his hand sorrowfully through his once luxuriant pompadour, of which nothing but a short stubble remained-“Wick! What would we be doing with wicks?”
“I don’t think he meant any harm,” put in. Pompadore, whose kind heart was touched by the little Candleman’s terror. “And it wouldn’t help us any.”
“Thought it was my wick,” shrilled Kabumpo, glancing over his shoulder at his poor scorched tail. “He’s a wicked little wretch. He’s ruined your looks.”
“I know!” Pompa sighed dismally. “No one will want to marry me now. It’s all coming true, Kabumpo, just as Count It Up said. Remember? ‘If a thin Prince sets out on a fat elephant to find a Proper Princess, how many yards of fringe will the elephant lose from his robe and how bald will the Prince be at the end of the journey?’ And we’ve scarcely begun!”
“Great haystacks!” whistled Kabumpo, his little eyes twinkling. “So I have lost every bit of fringe from my robe and my tail and half the back of my robe besides. This is nice, I must say.
“We only tried to give you a warm welcome,” said the King timidly.
“Warm welcome! Well I should think you did,” sniffed Kabumpo. “How do we get out of here?”
“Oh, that’s very simple,” said the King, cheering up. “Tommy, go for the Snuffer.”
Before Kabumpo or Pompa realized what this would mean a little Candleman named Tommy Tallow had returned with a tall black candle person. He stepped to the side wall, quickly jerked a rope and down over Kabumpo dropped a great brass snuffer and over the Prince another.
“That ought to put the cross old things out,” Pompa heard the King say just before his snuffer reached the floor.
“This is terrible,” fumed the poor Prince, thumping on the sides of the huge brass dome. “I might as well have stayed at home and disappeared comfortably. My poor old father and my mother! I wonder where they are now?”
Sunk in gloomy reflection, Pompadore leaned against the side of the snuffer. And one cannot blame him for feeling dismal. The fall down the deep passage, the shock of losing his hair and now imprisonment under a stifling brass dome were enough to extinguish the hopes of the stoutest hearted adventurer.
“I shall never find a Proper Princess!” wailed Pompa, tying and untying his handkerchief. But just then there was a creak from without and the great dome lifted as suddenly as it had fallen-so suddenly in fact that Pompa fell flat on his back. There stood Kabumpo winding up the long rope with his trunk and grumbling furiously all the while.
“Takes more than a snuffer to keep me down,” wheezed the Elegant Elephant, hurrying over and jerking the Prince to his feet. “Three humps of my shoulders and off she goes! What makes it so dark?”
“The Candlemen have all gone,” sighed Pompa, brushing his hand wearily across his forehead. “All except that one.”
In a distant corner sat Tommy Tallow and the light from his head was the only light in the great chamber. He was reading a book with tin leaves and looked up in surprise when he saw the Elegant Elephant and Pompadore approaching. Then he started to sputter and ran toward a bell rope at the side of the chamber.
“Stop!” shouted Kabumpo, “or I’ll blow off your head!” At that the little Candleman trembled so violently that his flame head almost went out.
“Now suppose you show us the way out,” snapped the Elegant Elephant, stamping one big foot until the floor trembled.
“You could burn out!” gasped Tommy faintly. “That’s what we do!”
“Don’t say out,” whispered Pompa anxiously. “We want to go away from here,” he explained earnestly. “Back on the top of the ground, you know.”
“Oh!” whistled Tommy Tallow, his face lighting up. “That’s easy-this way, please!” He almost ran to a big door at one side of the room and tugging it open, waved them through.
“Goodbye!” he called, slamming the door quickly behind them.
Kabumpo and the Prince found themselves in a wide dim hallway. It slanted up gradually and there were tall candle guards stationed about a hundred yards apart all of the way.
“Are you going to a birthday party or a wedding?” asked the first guard, as they passed him.
“Wedding,” sniffed Kabumpo. “Why?”
“Well, hardly any of the candles go out of here unless they’re needed for a birthday or a wedding,” explained the guard, shifting his big feet. “You’re mighty poorly made though. What kind of candles do you call yourselves?”
“Roman,” chuckled Kabumpo with a wink. “We roam around,” he added ponderously.
“Do all the candles used above ground come from here?” asked Pompa curiously.
“Certainly,” replied the guard. “All candles come from Illumi and they don’t like to leave either because as soon as they strike the upper air they shrink down to ordinary cake and candlestick size. Distressing, isn’t it?”
“I suppose it must be,” smiled Pompadore. “Goodbye!” The guard touched his flame hat and Kabumpo quickened his pace.
“I want air,” rumbled the great elephant, panting along as fast as he could go. “I’ve seen and felt about all I care to see and feel of the Illumi Nation.”
“So have I!” The Prince of Pumperdink touched his scorched locks and sighed deeply. “I’m afraid Ozma will never marry me now, and Pumperdink will disappear forever!”
“Don’t be a Gooch!” snapped the Elegant Elephant shortly. “Our adventures have only begun.”
They passed the rest of the guards without further conversation, and after about two hours came to the end of the long tiled passageway and stepped upon firm ground again.
Kabumpo was terribly out of breath, for the whole way had been up hill. For a full minute he stood sniffing the fresh night air. Then, turning around, he looked for the opening through which they had come. Not a sign of the passage anywhere!
“That’s curious,” puffed the Elegant Elephant. “But never mind. We don’t want to go back anyway.
“I should say not,” gasped the Prince wearily. “Where are we now, Kabumpo?”
“Still in the Gilliken country, I think, but headed in the right direction. All we have to do is to keep going South,” said the Elegant Elephant cheerfully.
“But we’ve had nothing to eat since morning,” objected Pompadore.
“That’s so,” agreed Kabumpo, scratching his head thoughtfully, “and not a house in sight!”
“But I smell something cooking,” insisted the Prince, sniffing hungrily.
“So do I,” said the Elegant Elephant, lifting his trunk, “and it smells like soup. Let’s follow our noses, Pompa, my boy.”
“Yours is the longest,” laughed the Prince, as Kabumpo swung him upon the elephant’s back. So, guided by the fragrant whiffs that came floating toward them, Kabumpo set out through the trees.
Strange puffed Kabumpo, swinging along rapidly.
“I hear water,” answered Pompa, peering out over Kabumpo’s head, “and there it is!” Rippling silver under the rays of the moon, which shone brightly, lay a great inland sea.
The trees had thinned out, and a smooth, sandy beach stretched down to the shore. A slight mist hunt in the air and all around was the delicious fragrance of vegetable soup.
“Somebody’s making soup,” sighed the Prince, “but who, and where?”
“Never mind, Pompa,” wheezed the Elegant Elephant, walking down to the water’s edge, “perhaps you can catch some fish, and while you cook them I’ll go back and eat some leaves.”
With a jerk of his trunk, Kabumpo pulled a length of the heavy silver thread from his torn robe and handed it up to Pompa. Fastening a jeweled pin to one end, the Prince cast his line far out into the waves. At the first tug he drew it in. “What is it?” asked the Elegant Elephant, as
Pompa pulled the dripping line over his trunk.
“Oh, how delicious! How wonderful!” exclaimed the once fastidious Prince of Pumperdink. Kabumpo could hear him munching away with relish.
“What is it?” he asked again.
“A carrot! A lovely, red, delightful, tender carrot!”
“Carrot! Who ever heard of a sea carrot?” grunted Kabumpo. “I’m afraid you’re not yourself, my boy. Let me see it.”
Snaps and crunches, as Pompa consumed his strange catch, were the only answer, and in real alarm the Elegant Elephant moved away from the shore, and in doing so bumped against a white sign, stuck in the sand.
“Please Don’t Fall In,” directed the sign politely. “It Spoils the Soup.
“Soup!” sputtered Kabumpo. Then another sign caught his eye: “Soup Sea-Salted To Taste-Help Yourself”
“Come down-come down here directly!” cried the Elegant Elephant, snatching the Prince from his back. “Here’s the soup—a whole sea full. Now all you need is a bowl.”
Swallowing convulsively the last bit of carrot, Pompa stood staring out over the tossing, smoking soup sea. Every now and then a bone or a vegetable would bob out of the waves, and the poor hungry Prince of Pumperdink thought he had never seen a more lovely sight in his life.
“We’ll probably be awarded a china medal for this,” chuckled the Elegant Elephant. “Won’t old Pumper’s eyes stick out when we tell him about it? But now for a bowl!”
Swinging his trunk gently, Kabumpo walked up the white beach, and had not gone more than a dozen steps before he came to a cluster of huge shells. He turned one over curiously. “Why, it’s a soup bowl,” whistled the Elegant Elephant. He rushed back with it to Pompadore, who still stood dreamily surveying the soup.
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