At first the landscape was familiar to the children--there was the white church, and there was Red Hill where they coasted every winter, and there was the road to Indian Rocks, and there was the puppy farm where Nap was born, and now they were way, way out in the country where the duck farm was.
However, it wasn’t long before things changed a great deal, like being in a different part of the United States, the children thought, or maybe in a different country altogether, yet Grandma seemed to recognize things, and her eyes appeared sharper, and her lips caught sparkly expressions like a little pool catching bits of sunshine.
Once in awhile, they would pass through little towns and then through big cities, and then there was something strangely familiar about these places,--places not really known and yet maybe they were pictures in books. Look, surely that place was on page one hundred and two of the American history. All the houses were so old-fashioned, and the people wore such funny clothes. There was that young man Johnathan had put a mustache on with pen and ink in the Fourth reader.
“Merciful heavens!” cried Grandma, suddenly. “Look, children, there’s your father when he was a little boy!”
“Where, Grams?”
“Right there, in front of that gray house with the dormer windows, and the iron stag on the lawn. It was just after he had his curls cut off.”
“Oh, how funny he looks, chasing that big hoop!” giggled Janet Jane.
“He looks just like that tin-type in the brown-plush album,” said Johnathan.
“That picture was taken the very next day after this--Oh, James!” called Grandma, starting up from her rocker, but no sooner had she called than the street and the house with the dormer windows had vanished, and they were out on a long, long stretch of white road.
What fun it was! It was just like riding along on the nicest, smoothest railroad in the world, even nicer than that, because the dragon made no stops and therefore caused no bumps. It was like riding on a great train with Indian rubber wheels that ran on tracks of velvet, and the dragon’s back was so broad and so comfortable, because the further back the dragon went, the broader and broader he became, and longer and longer stretched his tail. You could lie down flat and stare up at the sky, if you wanted to, only the children were too excited to do that. They didn’t want to miss a thing, you know. As long as they lived, they might never do this again.
The long, straight, stretch of road ended in another town, a puzzling town with a funny wooden church made of logs enclosed in a high stockade. All the houses were of logs too. The streets were unpaved, and all chopped up and muddy, and there were no automobiles. The citizens of this town used oxen and shaggy horses to cart in wood and food stuffs from the surrounding forest that was very thick and very black. Men wore coon skin caps and suits of deer skin, and women wore dresses of deer skin also, but now and then a young girl wore a bright print gown and a poke bonnet with flowers. All the men carried rifles.
“Lands alive!” Grandma exclaimed. “There’s your great grandfather, when he was a little boy!”
“Oh, where, Grams?”
“Riding on that cart with his father and his mother, and his little sister Barbara who grew up to be a famous nurse in the Civil war.”
“The little boy with the scar over his eye?” asked Peter.
“Yes. He got that from an Indian arrow.”
Grandma was very excited. “Of course, he won’t know me like this, because he died when I was only a little girl.”
“How could he be dead when he’s right here?” asked Janet Jane.
“Because we’re back when he was alive, I suppose. But that makes me feel very queer,” said Grandma. She tapped sharply on the dragon’s back, and the dragon turned his head to listen as he rounded a sharp corner. “Where on earth are we going, Dragon?” demanded the old lady, leaning far out of her rocking chair to catch the dragon’s reply.
“We’re going backwards,” the dragon said, a twinkle in his eye--“backwards down the road of time.”
“Why, certainly,” said Grandma, taking it as a matter of course. “How stupid of me not to know.”
“Going backwards? Isn’t that rather strange?” asked Janet Jane.
“Well, it isn’t exactly what’s being done every day, but it becomes perfectly natural when you get on a dragon’s back. It’s the natural direction for a dragon to go.”
“How long a trip do you think it’ll be?” asked Peter who was standing up on the dragon’s neck like a sailor at the prow of a ship, letting the wind whistle around his ears and blow his night gown back like a white sail, and ruffle all his sunny hair. In his hand he carried his wooden sword. That was peculiar. How did he happen to have that? He didn’t have it in the nursery, he was sure.
“We’ll probably go as far back as the days of the dragon,” Grandma answered.
A cheer went up from the children, and Nap and Jerry barked, just on general principle, I suppose.
The dragon heard them and turned his head around again, smiling merrily; then dashed on, down more miles of straight road, lined with poplar trees.
Back--back--back--past years--past centuries. “There’s Abraham Lincoln!” Grandma would cry--“There’s Jefferson and Adams--There’s George Washington!”
“Not so fast, Mr. Dragon!” called Johnathan, “I want to get a good look at George Washington!” But I guess the dragon didn’t hear him. At any rate, George Washington was gone in a moment too.
“And here’s the Mayflower! My gracious, we’re going over the ocean!”
At that, the famous rocking chair began to creak and creak and became younger and younger. Its shiny wood looked as if it would sprout green leaves any moment.
It kept the children busy, I tell you, riding past such sights, and their eyes became tired, and their brains reeled with the wonder of it all.
“It’s like reading a big, fat history book,” said Johnathan, just after they had seen Louis the twelfth, “only, of course, it’s much more exciting this way. I wish arithmetic was like this.”
“I’m getting awful hungry,” piped Peter.
“It must be awful late,” said Janet Jane. “Look how dark the sky is.”
“No, it’s not late,” said Grandma, fumbling in her mysterious knitting bag. “It’s just getting dark because we’re coming into the Dark Ages.”
“Wheeeee!” cried Johnathan, “that’s when they had children’s crusades, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and many dragons,” said Grandma. She stopped fumbling in her knitting bag and drew forth some little sandwiches done up in oiled paper, and then some oranges and red, red apples. “Did you say you were hungry, Peter?”
“Oh, yes, Grams--awful!” Peter said.
“I’m hungry too, Grams!” said Johnathan.
“And so am I,” said Janet Jane. “You must remember we didn’t have any breakfast.”
“Then come and eat your luncheon.”
There was a rush and a scramble that the dragon must have felt clear down his spine, because he turned and once more smiled.
“Wouldn’t the dragon like a sandwich too?” asked Peter thoughtfully, before he took his share from Grandma.
“I hardly think so,” Grandma replied. “One of these little sandwiches wouldn’t make much of an impression on him I’m afraid. Besides, I believe he’s headed straight for that great volcano over there. Now that we’re back in the Dark Ages he can eat fire again.”
The children looked, and sure enough, far off against the dark sky was a great, cone-shaped mountain with smoke rising from it.
“It looks like a knight’s helmet with a black plume, from here,” said Johnathan who could always see things like that. He could see trees as turtles, and rocks as old men with whiskers, and he could see the other way around too--old men as rocks, you know.
“Maybe we’ll go right up to the crater,” squealed Janet Jane. “I always wanted to look down a crater.”
“But you can’t if it’s erupting,” said Johnathan.
“Maybe we can on a dragon’s back,” said Grandma. “Just wait and see. Have another sandwich, Peter?”
“Yes, please, Grams. And Nap would like another sandwich too.”
As they rode along, eating and talking at a great rate, they passed strange companies of horsemen on the road, and regiments of armored soldiers.
“Must be having a war,” observed Johnathan, after they had passed their fifteenth company of warriors.
“I think they’re attacking that castle on the hill,” Grandma said, pointing up to the right.
Surely it looked like it, because all the troops were headed in that direction, and many had grouped at the base of the craggy mountain on which the castle perched like a gray bird on top of a church steeple.
“I wish the dragon wouldn’t get too close to them,” said Janet Jane. “We’re not protected very well in these night gowns.”
“Why didn’t Mr. Dragon tell us to bring our armor along?” said Johnathan.
“I’ve got my sword,” Peter piped up, proudly.
But they needn’t have worried because the dragon was only intent on getting his own luncheon, and kept straight as a crow flies toward the volcano.
Now, they were so close to the fiery mountain that they could hear it mumbling and grumbling to itself like an angry old man. Likewise, they could hear it hissing like a whole nest of snakes, and they could smell the fumes of the black smoke and the boiling lava.
Quickly they began to climb the steep mountain, and before they got to the top and to the crater, the dragon was wading in molten fire. But he didn’t seem to mind it a bit, and his back remained just as pleasant to ride on, keeping perfectly cool.
“Home at last,” sighed the dragon as they stopped short on the very edge of the seething crater--“Home at last. No more indigestion.” And at that he stuck his head down into the boiling crater and drank and drank and drank.
