Edgar B. P. Darlington - The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings - or, Making the Start in the Sawdust Life

Titel: The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings : or, Making the Start in the Sawdust Life

von ca. 337-422 Faxian, Sir Samuel White Baker, Sax Rohmer, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Maria Edgeworth, Saint Sir Thomas More, Herodotus, L. Mühlbach, Herbert Allen Giles, G. K. Chesterton, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Rudyard Kipling, A. J. O'Reilly, William Bray, O. Henry, graf Leo Tolstoy, Anonymous, Lewis Wallace, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack London, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Jules Verne, Frank Frankfort Moore, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Anthony Trollope, Henry James, T. Smollett, Thomas Burke, Emma Goldman, George Eliot, Henry Rider Haggard, Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay, A. Maynard Barbour, Edmund Burke, Gerold K. Rohner, Bernard Shaw, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Bret Harte, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jerome K. Jerome, Isabella L. Bird, Christoph Martin Wieland, Rainer Maria Rilke, Ludwig Anzengruber, Freiherr von Ludwig Achim Arnim, G. Harvey Ralphson, John Galsworthy, George Sand, Pierre Loti, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Giambattista Basile, Homer, John Webster, P. G. Wodehouse, William Shakespeare, Edward Payson Roe, Sir Walter Raleigh, Victor [pseud.] Appleton, Arnold Bennett, James Fenimore Cooper, James Hogg, Richard Harding Davis, Ernest Thompson Seton, William MacLeod Raine, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Maksim Gorky, Henrik Ibsen, George MacDonald, Sir Max Beerbohm, Lucy Larcom, Various, Sir Robert S. Ball, Charles Darwin, Charles Reade, Adelaide Anne Procter, Joseph Conrad, Joel Chandler Harris, Joseph Crosby Lincoln, Alexander Whyte, Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin, James Lane Allen, Richard Jefferies, Honoré de Balzac, Wilhelm Busch, General Robert Edward Lee, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, David Cory, Booth Tarkington, George Rawlinson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, Christopher Evans, Thomas Henry Huxley, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Erskine Childers, Alice Freeman Palmer, Florence Converse, William Congreve, Stephen Crane, Madame de La Fayette, United States. Army. Corps of Engineers. Manhattan District, Willa Sibert Cather, Anna Katharine Green, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charlotte M. Brame, Alphonse Daudet, Booker T. Washington, Clemens Brentano, Sylvester Mowry, Geoffrey Chaucer, Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow, Gail Hamilton, William Roscoe Thayer, Margaret Wade Campbell Deland, Rafael Sabatini, Archibald Henderson, Albert Payson Terhune, George Wharton James, Padraic Colum, James MacCaffrey, John Albert Macy, Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller, Walter Pater, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Baron de Jean-Baptiste-Antoine-Marcelin Marbot, Aristotle, Gustave Flaubert, 12th cent. de Troyes Chrétien, Valentine Williams, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Alexandre Dumas fils, John Gay, Andrew Lang, Hester Lynch Piozzi, Jeffery Farnol, Alexander Pope, George Henry Borrow, Mark Twain, Francis Bacon, Margaret Pollock Sherwood, Henry Walter Bates, Thornton W. Burgess, Edmund G. Ross, William Alexander Linn, Voltaire, Giles Lytton Strachey, Henry Ossian Flipper, Émile Gaboriau, Arthur B. Reeve, Hugh Latimer, Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton, Benito Pérez Galdós, Robert Smythe Hichens, Niccolò Machiavelli, Prosper Mérimée, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Anatole Cerfberr, Jules François Christophe, Victor Cherbuliez, Edgar B. P. Darlington

ISBN 978-3-7429-2381-3

Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Es ist ohne vorherige schriftliche Erlaubnis nicht gestattet, dieses Werk im Ganzen oder in Teilen zu vervielfältigen oder zu veröffentlichen.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I THE LURE OF THE CIRCUS

II PHIL HEARS HIS DISMISSAL

III MAKING HIS START IN THE WORLD

IV THE CIRCUS COMES TO TOWN

V WHEN THE BANDS PLAYED

VI PROVING HIS METTLE

VII MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE ELEPHANTS

VIII IN THE SAWDUST ARENA

IX GETTING HIS FIRST CALL

X PHIL GETS A SURPRISE

XI THE FIRST NIGHT WITH THE SHOW

XII A THRILLING RESCUE

XIII THE DAWNING OF A NEW DAY

XIV AN UNEXPECTED HIT

XV A STROKE OF GOOD FORTUNE

XVI HIS FIRST SETBACK

XVII LEFT BEHIND

XVIII A STARTLING DISCOVERY

XIX TEDDY DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF

XX THE RETURN TO THE SAWDUST LIFE

XXI AN ELEPHANT IN JAIL

XXII EMPEROR ANSWERS THE SIGNAL

XXIII THE MYSTERY SOLVED

XXIV CONCLUSION

The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings

CHAPTER I

THE LURE OF THE CIRCUS

"I say, Phil, I can do that."

"Do what, Teddy?"

"A cartwheel in the air like that fellow is doing in the picture on the billboard there."

"Oh, pshaw! You only think you can. Besides, that's not a cartwheel; that's a double somersault. It's a real stunt, let me tell you. Why, I can do a cartwheel myself. But up in the air like that--well, I don't know. I guess not. I'd be willing to try it, though, if I had something below to catch me," added the lad, critically surveying the figures on the poster before them.

"How'd you like to be a circus man, Phil?"

Phil's dark eyes glowed with a new light, his slender figure straightening until the lad appeared fully half a head taller.

"More than anything else in the world," he breathed. "Would you?"

"Going to be," nodded Teddy decisively, as if the matter were already settled.

"Oh, you are, eh?"

"Uh-huh!"

"When?"

"I don't know. Someday--someday when I get old enough, maybe."

Phil Forrest surveyed his companion with a half critical smile on his face.

"What are you going to do--be a trapeze performer or what?"

"Well," reflected the lad wisely, "maybe I shall be an 'Or What.' I'm not sure. Sometimes I think I should like to be the fellow who cracks the whip with the long lash and makes the clowns hop around on one foot--"

"You mean the ringmaster?"

"I guess that's the fellow. He makes 'em all get around lively. Then, sometimes, I think I would rather be a clown. I can skin a cat on the flying rings to beat the band, now. What would you rather be, Phil?"

"Me? Oh, something up in the air--high up near the peak of the tent--something thrilling that would make the people sit up on the board seats and gasp, when, all dressed in pink and spangles, I'd go flying through the air--"

"Just like a bird?" questioned Teddy, with a rising inflection in his voice.

"Yes. That's what I'd like most to do, Teddy," concluded the lad, his face flushed with the thought of the triumphs that might be his.

Teddy Tucker uttered a soft, long-drawn whistle.

"My, you've got it bad, haven't you? Never thought you were that set on the circus. Wouldn't it be fine, now, if we both could get with a show?"

"Great!" agreed Phil, with an emphatic nod. "Sometimes I think my uncle would be glad to have me go away--that he wouldn't care whether I joined a circus, or what became of me."

"Ain't had much fun since your ma died, have you, Phil?" questioned Teddy sympathetically.

"Not much," answered the lad, a thin, gray mist clouding his eyes. "No, not much. But, then, I'm not complaining."

"Your uncle's a mean old--"

"There, there, Teddy, please don't say it. He may be all you think he is, but for all the mean things he's said and done to me, I've never given him an impudent word, Teddy. Can you guess why?"

"Cause he's your uncle, maybe," grumbled Teddy.

"No, 'cause he's my mother's brother--that's why."

"I don't know. Maybe I'd feel that way if I'd had a mother."

"But you did."

"Nobody ever introduced us, if I did. Guess she didn't know me. But if your uncle was my uncle do you know what I'd do with him, Phil Forrest?"

"Don't let's talk about him. Let's talk about the circus. It's more fun," interrupted Phil, turning to the billboard again and gazing at it with great interest.