Read Ebook: The Adventures of Peterkin by Gabriel Gilbert W Gilbert Wolf Ohrenschall Helen E Illustrator

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Ebook has 481 lines and 29671 words, and 10 pages

Then, suddenly, the Pumperkin, Peterkin and all, shot fifty feet high into the air! Up, up, like a bubble at the top of a mighty geyser, it rose with the stream of the whale's fountain. For the wink of an eye, it seemed to hang there--then down it came again--down with a spatter and splash into the trough of the sea!

Peterkin could stand it no longer. He screamed aloud--with such a scream as the whale had never heard. It was a scream to make every fish in the sea shudder along its fins.

"Oh, dear me!" sighed the whale, "I have made an enemy. I've been hurting somebody's feelings, I fear. I should have been very glad to make a breakfast of that little man and his yellow bubble, if only he hadn't minded and had acted cheerfully about it. But now, since he's so cross and cranky, I shall punish him by going away and never looking at him again. So there!"

Which was just what the big whale did. And it never could understand why the little man clapped his hands and laughed with delight when he saw it dwindle away into the waves of the distance.

PETERKIN'S APPETITE

NOW all this while poor Peterkin had not had a single bit to eat. Not a dry biscuit even. And as for a whole meal, why--that was out of the question. For wasn't his stove drearily cold? And the eggs in his basket all crushed by the many falls his Pumperkin had taken? And he was hungry. So would you be, if you had gone so long without a meal--and Peterkin, for all he lived in a pumpkin, was not so far different from you. He sat and listened to the slap of the waves upon the bottom of his round yellow boat and rubbed his empty stomach mournfully.

Yes, directly ahead of him, the waves were combing into a high, frothy surf thundering down upon a stretch of yellow sands. Behind that, he could see tall trees spreading their broad palm leaves in tufts of brightest green; and a low hill of glistening rock, where purple flowers clung and orange-leaved vines were twining.

"Land!" cried Peterkin in rapture. "Land at last!"

Sure enough, the pumpkin boat gave a last leap in the swirl of the surf and came down on something firm and grating. It was safe on the sands of the shore.

In a jiffy Peterkin had hauled up his ladder and let it down on the other side. Then down he climbed, waded swiftly through the foamy edge of spume and dashed up on the beach. Before he did another thing, he danced a jig--which was Peterkin's way of showing how happy and thankful he was. So you may be sure it was a very merry jig he danced!

Then he went wisely back and pushed and pulled at his Pumperkin until it was high and dry upon the shore. Next he lifted his cold stove out and set it in a dark little cave of the rocks, where the rain might never find it in stormy weather.

"But a lot of good my stove will be to me if I cannot find something to cook on it!" thought hungry Peterkin.

So he searched the length of yellow sand. But he found nothing there excepting a few empty shells, pink and gray, like the glow of a pearl. He searched the mosses under the palm trees--but only a few nuts had fallen from the tufts overhead, and these were so hard and so bitter that the taste of them puckered up his face with sour twists. He climbed the hill of glistening stone until he could see from its summit the tops of thousands and thousands more of just such trees--like so many green and waving feather dusters--a whole forestful, swaying to the horizon's boundary.

And there at last, on the tip top of the rocks, he seized upon a handful of the purple flowers and another of the orange-leaved vine.

"If nothing else," he planned, "I shall make a dainty salad of flower and leaf and eat it from a plate of pearly sea-shell."

But alas! he was still to learn the evil of plucking strange things for salads!

PETERKIN'S COOKING

HIS arms full of leaves and flowers, Peterkin hurried back to the little black cave, where his stove was in hiding.

"This cave shall be my kitchen," he told himself. "Under its shadow I shall cook my meals and brew my broths, and boil and broil and bake.... Only, I quite forgot, I have nothing to cook. Nothing but flowers and leaves."

He thought for a long while, and finally he decided that, instead of having just a cold and fragrant salad, he should heat them all up into a smoking stew. He should have a meal to warm the cockles of his heart.

But, when he had gathered the stalks of withered palm leaves and had crammed them into the cindery throat of his stove, he had to wait another little while before he could figure out just how to make a flame. At length he remembered having read the way to strike a spark with two pieces of sharp rock. So he snatched up a pair of stones and smashed them and crashed them against each other until the fiery sparks were darting down into the mouth of the stove--into the midst of the fuel. There was a sudden bursting into red flame, and the fire was started!

Then Peterkin--clever cook that he was--laid his purple flowers and his orange vines prettily within the cup of a sea-shell, and sprinkled them over with salt water of the surf. Then he laid shell and all upon the stove and waited for results.

Nor had he to wait so long. For, all in a twinkle, there was a monstrous pouf! Great billows of smoke, brown and lavender, gushed up from the heart of the sea-shell and spread themselves across the sky. There came a resounding crackle of flames ... the whole shell, trailing its glowing mists behind it, rose up, up, above the tree-tops, into the clouds, and out of sight! It was gone, forever and aye.

For a long while poor Peterkin could scarcely realize all that had happened so much of a sudden. He stood staring up at the dwindling speck of the sea-shell and wondering ... where could his meal have disappeared? And what must he do now for another?

"And I am so hungry, too," he sighed. "Not a bite to eat since I and my Pumperkin left the patch. Well, there's nothing for it but that I begin to search through the whole forest of green palms. Perhaps I shall find a scarlet cockatoo, or a yellow-tailed dove, to carry back with me for dinner."

But, indeed, he felt so weak from want of food that he could scarcely stand. He lay down on the sunny stretch of the sands and half closed his eyes. He could see, in a blur, that the low line where the sea and the sky met, far away, was smothered in black clouds--and that little streaks of angry red seemed to be flashing in the black. He asked himself, drowsily, was this a storm approaching? Was it a hurricane, or what.... And then, before he had time to answer himself, he fell asleep.

AN HOUR OF STORM

PETERKIN woke up with a start. Something was roaring in his ears. A rushing shower of sand stung his cheeks. The wind was shrieking behind him, across the low hill and in among the palm trees. At his feet, the waves of the surf were hammering down upon the beach in great, black, frothing mountains, until the earth itself seemed trembling. The air was cold and swept across his face in fresh, tossing gusts.

He jumped to his feet and ran. He was afraid of something--he did not know what. He ran, stumbling, to the crest of the hill. He could look out, now, across the sea of gray waves on one side and the sea of green tree-tops on the other. Above him the sky was a mass of heavy, darkening clouds, a field of clashing, rumbling shadows. Every little while it would cleave apart, and down to the sea would spin the forks of blinding lightning in jagged craziness. Then all heaven and earth would mutter and roar and take to trembling.

Palm leaves, torn from the trees, went flying off, high overhead, in somersaulting circles. Eddies of golden sand swirled the length of the shore. The wind, heavy with salt spray, wailed louder and louder.

Then it grew darker than midnight. Peterkin could see nothing now. He knelt among the snapping, creaking vines and buried his face against the beaten-down flowers.

The rain began. A few warm, pattering drops at first--then a sudden heavy downpour, streaming and cold. The vines were floating with drooping leaves upon a lake of rain, and the little flowers disappeared completely. The beach below was guttered with brown water.

Gradually then the rain began to lessen. The clouds turned a lighter gray, until they broke apart in a long, uneven rift and showed a gap of blue. The sunshine came through this gap in a softly beaming shaft. High against the dark hung a curving rainbow, like an arch of jewels.

The rainbow faded, the sunshine grew stronger and more golden, the last wisps of cloud sank away in the blue of the sky. The sea was calm now and blue. Nothing seemed to be moving upon it excepting the tiny darts of gleaming sunbeams. All was peace again....

Only--something--far out at sea--Oh! what was it? Something round and yellow! A tiny yellow spot, sailing out, out toward the horizon!

Peterkin looked down at the shore, his heart jumping into his throat. Yes, alas! His Pumperkin was gone! His pumpkin house had been swept away by the storm--swept out to sea!

Yes, his house, his boat, his darling Pumperkin was sailing away from him--was lost and gone! Ah, what would his fate be now?

PETERKIN ESCAPES

PETERKIN was hungrier than ever. He had lost his faithful pumpkin, too! Oh, what could he do? He pondered a long while. He could try to cook some more flowers and vines on his stove. But, no ... he remembered what had happened the last time he tried. And, it seemed, there wasn't anything else to eat on all the shore.

He must escape, then. He must flee this lonely beach. He must wander away to somewhere ... he didn't know where--just somewhere else.

But how? For he had no Pumperkin now. His yellow house of a boat had been swept off on the waves, out beyond the horizon. At last, as he stood in deep thought, a merry idea came popping into his head. Indeed, it was an idea so full of mad adventure that, when it came to him, he had to burst out laughing and clapped his hands in glee. For he remembered what a comical thing had happened at the stove an hour before.

So he hastened to kindle a roaring fire in the black iron throat of its oven. Then he ran this way and that on the beach until, half sunk in the sands, he found a huge, pearly sea-shell. He tore it out and carried it back and set it on the stove. To make sure, he added a sprinkling of vines and flowers and silver sea froth. Then he climbed up on the top of his stove and sat himself down in the cup of the shell. Ouch! it was hot!

Just as before, there was a little curl of lavender smoke, a little shivering and rocking--then POUF! Up went shell and Peterkin and all!

Up, up, sailing up! Peterkin, clutching madly at the sharp sides of the shell, could feel the rush of wind against his face. He dared not look down, but he knew that the shore and all the wide-spread trees upon it were growing smaller and more distant. Something gray and filmy spun over his eyes, like a silken veil. He was in the clouds. Up, up, into the sunny blue again, where he could see the clouds below him now in great lazy billows. Up, up, always up!

Once the fragile shell groaned, as if it would give way into shatters and send its rider hurtling toward the hidden earth. Once it bumped against the great black, cindery side of a dead star and nearly turned topsy-turvy. Once its pearly lining cracked dangerously under the heated blaze of the nearby sun.

Now the flying shell and its rider were floating forward. And down, too. Down in a slow, curving line of grace--slowly, slowly down and forward, through the clouds and below them. Peterkin could see the high hills of a strange country now--a country where all the fields were yellow with grain, set in quaint squares like a checker board, and all the hills were soft with the green of pines. A silver thread of a river ran through the middle of the valley, and Peterkin could make out now the twinkling red roofs of cottages. It was the most peaceful scene he had ever come upon.

"Oh, how I wish I were there!" he sighed.

Which no sooner uttered than down dived his sea-shell straight upon the soft breast of a yellow haystack. Deep into the hay it landed, with never a bump or a scrape. Peterkin was safe in the valley.

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