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“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 bump 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:–

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.