The Story of Doctor Dolittle
answered. “This is Dab-Dab, one of my pets.”
“I didn’t even know that ducks had a language,” said the boy. “Are all
these other animals your pets, too? What is that strange-looking thing
with two heads?”
“Sh!” the Doctor whispered. “That is the pushmi-pullyu. Don’t let him
see we’re talking about him—he gets so dreadfully embarrassed.... Tell
me, how did you come to be locked up in that little room?”
“The pirates shut me in there when they were going off to steal things
from another ship. When I heard some one chopping on the door, I
didn’t know who it could be. I was very glad to find it was you. Do you
think you will be able to find my uncle for me?”
“Well, we are going to try very hard,” said the Doctor. “Now what was
your uncle like to look at?”
“He had red hair,” the boy answered—“very red hair, and the picture of
an anchor tattooed on his arm. He was a strong man, a kind uncle and
the best sailor in the South Atlantic. His fishing-boat was called _The
Saucy Sally_—a cutter-rigged sloop.”
“What’s ‘cutterigsloop’?” whispered Gub-Gub, turning to Jip.
“Sh!—That’s the kind of a ship the man had,” said Jip. “Keep still,
can’t you?”
“Oh,” said the pig, “is that all? I thought it was something to drink.”
So the Doctor left the boy to play with the animals in the dining-room,
and went upstairs to look for passing porpoises.
And soon a whole school came dancing and jumping through the water, on
their way to Brazil.
When they saw the Doctor leaning on the rail of his ship, they came
over to see how he was getting on.
And the Doctor asked them if they had seen anything of a man with red
hair and an anchor tattooed on his arm.
“Do you mean the master of _The Saucy Sally_?” asked the porpoises.
“Yes,” said the Doctor. “That’s the man. Has he been drowned?”
“His fishing-sloop was sunk,” said the porpoises—“for we saw it lying
on the bottom of the sea. But there was nobody inside it, because we
went and looked.”
“His little nephew is on the ship with me here,” said the Doctor. “And
he is terribly afraid that the pirates threw his uncle into the sea.
Would you be so good as to find out for me, for sure, whether he has
been drowned or not?”
“Oh, he isn’t drowned,” said the porpoises. “If he were, we would be
sure to have heard of it from the deep-sea Decapods. We hear all the
salt-water news. The shell-fish call us ‘The Ocean Gossips.’ No—tell
the little boy we are sorry we do not know where his uncle is; but we
are quite certain he hasn’t been drowned in the sea.”
So the Doctor ran downstairs with the news and told the nephew, who
clapped his hands with happiness. And the pushmi-pullyu took the little
boy on his back and gave him a ride round the dining-room table; while
all the other animals followed behind, beating the dish-covers with
spoons, pretending it was a parade.
_THE EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER_
SMELLS
“YOUR uncle must now be _found_,” said the Doctor—“that is the next
thing—now that we know he wasn’t thrown into the sea.”
Then Dab-Dab came up to him again and whispered,
“Ask the eagles to look for the man. No living creature can see better
than an eagle. When they are miles high in the air they can count the
ants crawling on the ground. Ask the eagles.”
So the Doctor sent one of the swallows off to get some eagles.
And in about an hour the little bird came back with six different kinds
of eagles: a Black Eagle, a Bald Eagle, a Fish Eagle, a Golden Eagle,
an Eagle-Vulture, and a White-tailed Sea Eagle. Twice as high as the
boy they were, each one of them. And they stood on the rail of the
ship, like round-shouldered soldiers all in a row, stern and still and
stiff; while their great, gleaming, black eyes shot darting glances
here and there and everywhere.
Gub-Gub was scared of them and got behind a barrel. He said he felt as
though those terrible eyes were looking right inside of him to see what
he had stolen for lunch.
And the Doctor said to the eagles,
“A man has been lost—a fisherman with red hair and an anchor marked on
his arm. Would you be so kind as to see if you can find him for us?
This boy is the man’s nephew.”
Eagles do not talk very much. And all they answered in their husky
voices was,
“You may be sure that we will do our best—for John Dolittle.”
Then they flew off—and Gub-Gub came out from behind his barrel to see
them go. Up and up and up they went—higher and higher and higher still.
Then, when the Doctor could only just see them, they parted company
and started going off all different ways—North, East, South and West,
looking like tiny grains of black sand creeping across the wide, blue
sky.
“My gracious!” said Gub-Gub in a hushed voice. “What a height! I wonder
they don’t scorch their feathers—so near the sun!”
They were gone a long time. And when they came back it was almost night.
And the eagles said to the Doctor,
“We have searched all the seas and all the countries and all the
islands and all the cities and all the villages in this half of the
world. But we have failed. In the main street of Gibraltar we saw
three red hairs lying on a wheelbarrow before a baker’s door. But they
were not the hairs of a man—they were the hairs out of a fur-coat.
Nowhere, on land or water, could we see any sign of this boy’s uncle.
And if _we_ could not see him, then he is not to be seen.... For John
Dolittle—we have done our best.”
Then the six great birds flapped their big wings and flew back to their
homes in the mountains and the rocks.
“Well,” said Dab-Dab, after they had gone, “what are we going to do
now? The boy’s uncle _must_ be found—there’s no two ways about that.
The lad isn’t old enough to be knocking around the world by himself.
Boys aren’t like ducklings—they have to be taken care of till they’re
quite old.... I wish Chee-Chee were here. He would soon find the man.
Good old Chee-Chee! I wonder how he’s getting on!”
“If we only had Polynesia with us,” said the white mouse. “_She_ would
soon think of some way. Do you remember how she got us all out of
prison—the second time? My, but she was a clever one!”
“I don’t think so much of those eagle-fellows,” said Jip. “They’re just
conceited. They may have very good eyesight and all that; but when you
ask them to find a man for you, they can’t do it—and they have the
cheek to come back and say that nobody else could do it. They’re just
conceited—like that collie in Puddleby. And I don’t think a whole lot
of those gossipy old porpoises either. All they could tell us was that
the man isn’t in the sea. We don’t want to know where he _isn’t_—we
want to know where he _is_.”
“Oh, don’t talk so much,” said Gub-Gub. “It’s easy to talk; but it
isn’t so easy to find a man when you have got the whole world to hunt
him in. Maybe the fisherman’s hair has turned white, worrying about
the boy; and that was why the eagles didn’t find him. You don’t know
everything. You’re just talking. You are not doing anything to help.
You couldn’t find the boy’s uncle any more than the eagles could—you
couldn’t do as well.”
“Couldn’t I?” said the dog. “That’s all you know, you stupid piece of
warm bacon! I haven’t begun to try yet, have I? You wait and see!”
Then Jip went to the Doctor and said,
“Ask the boy if he has anything in his pockets that belonged to his
uncle, will you, please?”
So the Doctor asked him. And the boy showed them a gold ring which he
wore on a piece of string around his neck because it was too big for
his finger. He said his uncle gave it to him when they saw the pirates
coming.
Jip smelt the ring and said,
“That’s no good. Ask him if he has anything else that belonged to his
uncle.”
Then the boy took from his pocket a great, big red handkerchief and
said, “This was my uncle’s too.”
As soon as the boy pulled it out, Jip shouted,
“_Snuff_, by Jingo!—Black Rappee snuff. Don’t you smell it? His uncle
took snuff—Ask him, Doctor.”
The Doctor questioned the boy again; and he said, “Yes. My uncle took a
lot of snuff.”
“Fine!” said Jip. “The man’s as good as found. ’Twill be as easy as
stealing milk from a kitten. Tell the boy I’ll find his uncle for him
in less than a week. Let us go upstairs and see which way the wind is
blowing.”
“But it is dark now,” said the Doctor. “You can’t find him in the dark!”
“I don’t need any light to look for a man who smells of Black Rappee
snuff,” said Jip as he climbed the stairs. “If the man had a hard
smell, like string, now—or hot water, it would be different. But
_snuff_!—Tut, tut!”
“Does hot water have a smell?” asked the Doctor.
“Certainly it has,” said Jip. “Hot water smells quite different from
cold water. It is warm water—or ice—that has the really difficult
smell. Why, I once followed a man for ten miles on a dark night by the
smell of the hot water he had used to shave with—for the poor fellow
had no soap.... Now then, let us see which way the wind is blowing.
Wind is very important in long-distant smelling. It mustn’t be too
fierce a wind—and of course it must blow the right way. A nice, steady,
damp breeze is the best of all.... Ha!—This wind is from the North.”
Then Jip went up to the front of the ship and smelt the wind; and he
started muttering to himself,
“Tar; Spanish onions; kerosene oil; wet raincoats; crushed
laurel-leaves; rubber burning; lace-curtains being washed—No, my
mistake, lace-curtains hanging out to dry; and foxes—hundreds of
’em—cubs; and—”
“Can you really smell all those different things in this one wind?”
asked the Doctor.
“Why, of course!” said Jip. “And those are only a few of the easy
smells—the strong ones. Any mongrel could smell those with a cold in
the head. Wait now, and I’ll tell you some of the harder scents that
are coming on this wind—a few of the dainty ones.”
Then the dog shut his eyes tight, poked his nose straight up in the air
and sniffed hard with his mouth half-open.
For a long time he said nothing. He kept as still as a stone. He hardly
seemed to be breathing at all. When at last he began to speak, it
sounded almost as though he were singing, sadly, in a dream.
“Bricks,” he whispered, very low—“old yellow bricks, crumbling with
age in a garden-wall; the sweet breath of young cows standing in a
mountain-stream; the lead roof of a dove-cote—or perhaps a granary—with
the mid-day sun on it; black kid gloves lying in a bureau-drawer of
walnut-wood; a dusty road with a horses’ drinking-trough beneath the
sycamores; little mushrooms bursting through the rotting leaves;
and—and—and—”
“Any parsnips?” asked Gub-Gub.
“No,” said Jip. “You always think of things to eat. No parsnips
whatever. And no snuff—plenty of pipes and cigarettes, and a few
cigars. But no snuff. We must wait till the wind changes to the South.”
“Yes, it’s a poor wind, that,” said Gub-Gub. “I think you’re a fake,
Jip. Who ever heard of finding a man in the middle of the ocean just by
smell! I told you you couldn’t do it.”
“Look here,” said Jip, getting really angry. “You’re going to get a
bite on the nose in a minute! You needn’t think that just because
the Doctor won’t let us give you what you deserve, that you can be as
cheeky as you like!”
“Stop quarreling!” said the Doctor—“Stop it! Life’s too short. Tell me,
Jip, where do you think those smells are coming from?”
“From Devon and Wales—most of them,” said Jip—“The wind is coming that
way.”
“Well, well!” said the Doctor. “You know that’s really quite
remarkable—quite. I must make a note of that for my new book. I wonder
if you could train me to smell as well as that.... But no—perhaps I’m
better off the way I am. ‘Enough is as good as a feast,’ they say.
Let’s go down to supper. I’m quite hungry.”
“So am I,” said Gub-Gub.