until you have been punished!" exclaimed the Boolooroo sternly.
"You are my prisoners."
"Beg parding, your Majesty," said Cap'n Bill, "but you're takin' a good
deal for granted. We've tried to be friendly and peaceable, an' we've
'poligized for hurtin' you, but if that don't satisfy you, you'll have
to make the most of it. You may be the Boolooroo of the Blues, but you
ain't even a tin whistle to us, an' you can't skeer us for half a
minute. I'm an ol' man, myself, but if you don't behave, I'll spank you
like I would a baby, an' it won't be any trouble at all to do it,
thank'e. As a matter o' fact, we've captured your whole bloomin' blue
island, but we don't like the place very much, and I guess we'll give
it back. It gives us the blues, don't it, Trot? So as soon as we eat a
bite of lunch from our basket, we'll sail away again."
"Sail away? How?" asked the Boolooroo.
"With the Magic Umbrel," said Cap'n Bill, pointing to the umbrella that
Button-Bright was holding underneath his arm.
"Oh, ho! I see, I see," said the Boolooroo, nodding his funny head. "Go
ahead, then, and eat your lunch."
He retreated a little way to a marble seat beside the fountain, but
watched the strangers carefully. Cap'n Bill, feeling sure he had won
the argument, whispered to the boy and girl that they must eat and get
away as soon as possible, as this might prove a dangerous country for
them to remain in. Trot longed to see more of the strange blue island,
and especially wanted to explore the magnificent blue palace that
adjoined the garden and which had six hundred tall towers and turrets;
but she felt that her old friend was wise in advising them to get away
quickly. So she opened the basket, and they all three sat in a row on a
stone bench and began to eat sandwiches and cake and pickles and cheese
and all the good things that were packed in the lunch basket.
They were hungry from the long ride, and while they ate they kept their
eyes busily employed in examining all the queer things around them. The
Boolooroo seemed quite the queerest of anything, and Trot noticed that
when he pulled the long curl that stuck up from the top of his head, a
bell tinkled somewhere in the palace. He next pulled at the bottom of
his right ear, and another faraway bell tinkled; then he touched the
end of his nose, and still another bell was faintly heard. The
Boolooroo said not a word while he was ringing the bells, and Trot
wondered if that was the way
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