“Here—­stop this foolishness!” Jim roared, angrily; but after being pricked once or twice he got upon his four legs and kept out of the way of the thorns.

The Mangaboos surrounded them in solid ranks, but left an opening to the doorway of the hall; so the animals slowly retreated until they were driven from the room and out upon the street.  Here were more of the vegetable people with thorns, and silently they urged the now frightened creatures down the street.  Jim had to be careful not to step upon the tiny piglets, who scampered under his feet grunting and squealing, while Eureka, snarling and biting at the thorns pushed toward her, also tried to protect the pretty little things from injury.  Slowly but steadily the heartless Mangaboos drove them on, until they had passed through the city and the gardens and come to the broad plains leading to the mountain.

“What does all this mean, anyhow?” asked the horse, jumping to escape a thorn.

“Why, they are driving us toward the Black Pit, into which they threatened to cast us,” replied the kitten.  “If I were as big as you are, Jim, I’d fight these miserable turnip-roots!”

“What would you do?” enquired Jim.

“I’d kick out with those long legs and iron-shod hoofs.”

“All right,” said the horse; “I’ll do it.”

An instant later he suddenly backed toward the crowd of Mangaboos and kicked out his hind legs as hard as he could.  A dozen of them smashed together and tumbled to the ground, and seeing his success Jim kicked again and again, charging into the vegetable crowd, knocking them in all directions and sending the others scattering to escape his iron heels.  Eureka helped him by flying into the faces of the enemy and scratching and biting furiously, and the kitten ruined so many vegetable complexions that the Mangaboos feared her as much as they did the horse.

But the foes were too many to be repulsed for long.  They tired Jim and Eureka out, and although the field of battle was thickly covered with mashed and disabled Mangaboos, our animal friends had to give up at last and allow themselves to be driven to the mountain.

7.  Into the Black Pit and Out Again

When they came to the mountain it proved to be a rugged, towering chunk of deep green glass, and looked dismal and forbidding in the extreme.  Half way up the steep was a yawning cave, black as night beyond the point where the rainbow rays of the colored suns reached into it.

The Mangaboos drove the horse and the kitten and the piglets into this dark hole and then, having pushed the buggy in after them—­for it seemed some of them had dragged it all the way from the domed hall—­they began to pile big glass rocks within the entrance, so that the prisoners could not get out again.

“This is dreadful!” groaned Jim.  “It will be about the end of our adventures, I guess.”

“If the Wizard was here,” said one of the piglets, sobbing bitterly, “he would not see us suffer so.”