"I'm very sorry--I didn't mean to hurt you," he explained, "I just fell down that hole."

At this he looked up the sides of the hole. It seemed as if he were at the bottom of a great round stove-pipe, or a well with brown sides.

Far, far above him was a little circle of light blue, the top of the hole where he had fallen in.

After he had begged their pardon so nicely, the three little yellow men said, all together,--

"Little Mellican boy velly politely; he has honorable ancestors."

Marmaduke looked around again and saw that they were standing, not on the bottom of the hole, but on a little landing like that on a stairway. Below them the hole kept on descending into the darkness, curving round and round like a corkscrew or the stairways in old castles--down, down, down.

"Little Mellican boy like see China?" asked Ping Pong.

"Very much, thank you," replied Marmaduke, trying to be as polite as they were.

But the Toyman would miss him. He looked way up at the circle of light at the top of the hole and shouted:

"Say, Toyman, can I go to China--just for a little while?"

The Toyman's face appeared in the circle of light at the top.

"Sure, sonny, have a good time," he shouted back, and his voice coming way down that hole sounded hollow, as if he were hollering down a well.

Marmaduke waved to him.

"Goodbye, I won't be long," he called.

Then, turning, he saw that the three Chinamen had flat-irons in their hands. They were fitting the handles to them. Ah See handed Marmaduke a fourth iron for himself.

"Mellican boy wide on this--now, velly caleful," said he.

"But how can I ride on such a small iron?" asked Marmaduke.

"Watchee and see, Allee samee as me."

And at once all the three little Chinamen mounted the irons and curled their tiny slippered feet under them. And Marmaduke curled up on his iron just as they did.

"Allee weady!" shouted Ping Pong, and all-of-a-sudden they started scooting down that curving brown hole, round and round, down through the deep earth. Wienerwurst had no iron to slide on, but he did pretty well on his haunches, and how swiftly the brown sides of the earth slipped by them! How fast the air whistled past!

After a fine ride they saw ahead of them a great red light. It looked like the sky that time when Apgar's barn was on fire.

They stopped with a b.u.mp and a bang. Marmaduke waited until he had caught his breath, then he looked around. They had stopped on a gallery, or sort of immense shelf, that extended around a tremendous pit or hole in the earth. In the centre of it stood a big giant, shovelling coal in a furnace. The furnace was as high as the Woolworth Building in New York City, which Marmaduke had seen on picture post-cards. And the Giant was as big as the furnace himself.

He had a beard, and eyes as large and round as the wheels of a wagon; and he was naked to the waist. Great streams of sweat, like brooks in flood-time, poured off his body. When these rivers of sweat struck the ground, they sizzled mightily and turned into fountains of steam that rose in the air like the geysers in Yellowstone Park, it was so hot in the place.

Marmaduke felt pretty warm himself, and he mopped his face with the handkerchief which he had won in the Jack Horner pie at the church sociable. It had pictures of pink and blue ducks and geese on it, and it looked very small beside the handkerchief with which the Giant was mopping his face. That was as big as a circus tent. Marmaduke himself looked very small beside the stranger. When the little boy stretched out his hand, he just reached the nail on the Giant's great toe.

The three little yellow men were exclaiming:--

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Which meant that this was the centre of the Earth.

"But what is he doing that for--shovelling all that coal in the furnace when it's so hot already we're most roasting!" complained their little American guest.

His voice was almost lost in the tremendous place. It was strange that it ever reached the Giant's ear, which was hundreds of feet above Marmaduke's head, but nevertheless the Giant did hear it, for he called:--

"Now, you three Chinamen keep your jabbering tongues still," he said, "and let me have a chance to talk. It's so long since I've seen a boy from up on the Earth that I'd like to talk a spell myself--to limber up my old tongue. It's grown pretty stiff all these years."

Then he looked way down at Marmaduke, who was standing there, no higher than the Giant's great toe.

"Come up," he invited the boy, "and have a seat on my shoulder."

Marmaduke looked up and hesitated, for the distance up to that shoulder was so great. He might as well have tried to climb a mountain rising straight up in the air. But the Giant helped him out.

"Don't be scared," he said, "I'll give you a boost."

And he reached down his mighty hand and placed it under the seat of Marmaduke's trousers. The little boy looked no bigger than the kernel of a tiny hazelnut rolling around in the big palm. But very gently the big fingers set him on the tall shoulder, way, way above the bottom of that pit, but very safe and sound. Marmaduke grabbed tight hold of one of the hairs of the Giant's beard to keep from falling off. He had hard work, too, for each hair of that beard was as stout and as thick as the rope of a ship.

"Kind of cosey perch, ain't it?" asked the Giant.

Now it didn't strike Marmaduke as quite that, when he had such hard work to hold on, and he was so far from the ground, but nevertheless he answered,--

"Y-y-yes, s-s-sir."

His lip quivered like the lemon jelly in the spoon, that time he was so sick. If he had fallen from that shoulder, he would have dropped as far as if he had been thrown from the top gilt pinnacle of the Woolworth Building. And so tremendous was the Giant's voice that when he talked the whole earth seemed to shake, and Marmaduke shook with it as if he were blown about by a mighty wind.

"Now," the Giant was saying in that great voice like thunder, "you want to know what I'm heating up this furnace for?"

"Y-y-yes," replied Marmaduke, his lips still trembling like the lemon jelly.

"You see it's this way," the Giant tried to explain, "my old friend, Mr. Sun, keeps the outside of the Earth warm, but I keep the inside nice and comfy."

It seemed strange to hear the Giant use that word, "comfy." It is a word that always seems to sound small, and the Giant was so huge.

"I haven't seen my chum, Mr. Sun, for quite a spell," the Giant went on, "let me see--it was the other day when I last saw him."

"What day?" asked Marmaduke, "last Sunday?"

"Oh, no, a little before that. I guess it was about a million years ago."

"A million! Whew!" Marmaduke whistled. "That was quite a long time."

"Oh, no," responded the Giant, "not as long as you think. No more than three shakes of a lamb's tail--when you come to look at it right."

"But where do you get all the coal?" was Marmaduke's next question. "I should think you'd use it all up quick, you put on such big shovelsful."

"See there," the Giant said, for answer pointing in at the sides of the pit. Little tunnels ran from the sides into the dark Earth. And in the tunnels were little gnomes, with stocking caps on their heads, and they were trundling little wheelbarrows back and forth. The wheelbarrows were full of coal, and when they had dumped the coal on the Giant's pile they would hurry back for more. In their foreheads were little lights, and in the dark tunnels of the Earth these shone like fireflies or little lost stars.

"Would you like to see a trick?" asked the Giant.