The Story of Doctor Dolittle
“I smell bad men,” he growled—“the worst men I ever smelt. I smell
trouble. I smell a fight—six bad scoundrels fighting against one brave
man. I want to help him. Woof—oo—WOOF!” Then he barked, loud, and woke
himself up with a surprised look on his face.
“See!” cried Dab-Dab. “That boat is nearer now. You can count its three
big sails—all red. Whoever it is, they are coming after us.... I wonder
who they are.”
“They are bad sailors,” said Jip; “and their ship is very swift. They
are surely the pirates of Barbary.”
“Well, we must put up more sails on our boat,” said the Doctor, “so we
can go faster and get away from them. Run downstairs, Jip, and fetch me
all the sails you see.”
The dog hurried downstairs and dragged up every sail he could find.
But even when all these were put up on the masts to catch the wind, the
boat did not go nearly as fast as the pirates’—which kept coming on
behind, closer and closer.
“This is a poor ship the Prince gave us,” said Gub-Gub, the pig—“the
slowest he could find, I should think. Might as well try to win a race
in a soup-tureen as hope to get away from them in this old barge. Look
how near they are now!—You can see the mustaches on the faces of the
men—six of them. What are we going to do?”
Then the Doctor asked Dab-Dab to fly up and tell the swallows that
pirates were coming after them in a swift ship, and what should he do
about it.
When the swallows heard this, they all came down on to the Doctor’s
ship; and they told him to unravel some pieces of long rope and make
them into a lot of thin strings as quickly as he could. Then the
ends of these strings were tied on to the front of the ship; and the
swallows took hold of the strings with their feet and flew off, pulling
the boat along.
And although swallows are not very strong when only one or two are
by themselves, it is different when there are a great lot of them
together. And there, tied to the Doctor’s ship, were a thousand
strings; and two thousand swallows were pulling on each string—all
terribly swift fliers.
And in a moment the Doctor found himself traveling so fast he had to
hold his hat on with both hands; for he felt as though the ship itself
were flying through waves that frothed and boiled with speed.
And all the animals on the ship began to laugh and dance about in the
rushing air, for when they looked back at the pirates’ ship, they could
see that it was growing smaller now, instead of bigger. The red sails
were being left far, far behind.
_THE FOURTEENTH CHAPTER_
THE RATS’ WARNING
DRAGGING a ship through the sea is hard work. And after two or three
hours the swallows began to get tired in the wings and short of breath.
Then they sent a message down to the Doctor to say that they would
have to take a rest soon; and that they would pull the boat over to an
island not far off, and hide it in a deep bay till they had got breath
enough to go on.
And presently the Doctor saw the island they had spoken of. It had a
very beautiful, high, green mountain in the middle of it.
When the ship had sailed safely into the bay where it could not be seen
from the open sea, the Doctor said he would get off on to the island to
look for water—because there was none left to drink on his ship. And
he told all the animals to get out too and romp on the grass to stretch
their legs.
Now as they were getting off, the Doctor noticed that a whole lot of
rats were coming up from downstairs and leaving the ship as well. Jip
started to run after them, because chasing rats had always been his
favorite game. But the Doctor told him to stop.
And one big black rat, who seemed to want to say something to the
Doctor, now crept forward timidly along the rail, watching the dog out
of the corner of his eye. And after he had coughed nervously two or
three times, and cleaned his whiskers and wiped his mouth, he said,
“Ahem—er—you know of course that all ships have rats in them, Doctor,
do you not?”
And the Doctor said, “Yes.”
“And you have heard that rats always leave a sinking ship?”
“Yes,” said the Doctor—“so I’ve been told.”
“People,” said the rat, “always speak of it with a sneer—as though it
were something disgraceful. But you can’t blame us, can you? After
all, who _would_ stay on a sinking ship, if he could get off it?”
“It’s very natural,” said the Doctor—“very natural. I quite
understand.... Was there—Was there anything else you wished to say?”
“Yes,” said the rat. “I’ve come to tell you that we are leaving this
one. But we wanted to warn you before we go. This is a bad ship you
have here. It isn’t safe. The sides aren’t strong enough. Its boards
are rotten. Before to-morrow night it will sink to the bottom of the
sea.”
“But how do you know?” asked the Doctor.
“We always know,” answered the rat. “The tips of our tails get that
tingly feeling—like when your foot’s asleep. This morning, at six
o’clock, while I was getting breakfast, my tail suddenly began to
tingle. At first I thought it was my rheumatism coming back. So I went
and asked my aunt how she felt—you remember her?—the long, piebald
rat, rather skinny, who came to see you in Puddleby last Spring with
jaundice? Well—and she said _her_ tail was tingling like everything!
Then we knew, for sure, that this boat was going to sink in less than
two days; and we all made up our minds to leave it as soon as we got
near enough to any land. It’s a bad ship, Doctor. Don’t sail in it any
more, or you’ll be surely drowned.... Good-by! We are now going to
look for a good place to live on this island.”
“Good-by!” said the Doctor. “And thank you very much for coming to
tell me. Very considerate of you—very! Give my regards to your aunt. I
remember her perfectly.... Leave that rat alone, Jip! Come here! Lie
down!”
So then the Doctor and all his animals went off, carrying pails and
saucepans, to look for water on the island, while the swallows took
their rest.
“I wonder what is the name of this island,” said the Doctor, as he was
climbing up the mountainside. “It seems a pleasant place. What a lot of
birds there are!”
“Why, these are the Canary Islands,” said Dab-Dab. “Don’t you hear the
canaries singing?”
The Doctor stopped and listened.
“Why, to be sure—of course!” he said. “How stupid of me! I wonder if
they can tell us where to find water.”
And presently the canaries, who had heard all about Doctor Dolittle
from birds of passage, came and led him to a beautiful spring of cool,
clear water where the canaries used to take their bath; and they showed
him lovely meadows where the bird-seed grew and all the other sights of
their island.
And the pushmi-pullyu was glad they had come; because he liked the
green grass so much better than the dried apples he had been eating on
the ship. And Gub-Gub squeaked for joy when he found a whole valley
full of wild sugar-cane.
A little later, when they had all had plenty to eat and drink, and
were lying on their backs while the canaries sang for them, two of the
swallows came hurrying up, very flustered and excited.
“Doctor!” they cried, “the pirates have come into the bay; and they’ve
all got on to your ship. They are downstairs looking for things to
steal. They have left their own ship with nobody on it. If you hurry
and come down to the shore, you can get on to their ship—which is very
fast—and escape. But you’ll have to hurry.”
“That’s a good idea,” said the Doctor—“splendid!”
And he called his animals together at once, said Good-by to the
canaries and ran down to the beach.
When they reached the shore they saw the pirate-ship, with the three
red sails, standing in the water; and—just as the swallows had
said—there was nobody on it; all the pirates were downstairs in the
Doctor’s ship, looking for things to steal.
So John Dolittle told his animals to walk very softly and they all
crept on to the pirate-ship.
_THE FIFTEENTH CHAPTER_
THE BARBARY DRAGON
EVERYTHING would have gone all right if the pig had not caught a cold
in his head while eating the damp sugar-cane on the island. This is
what happened:
After they had pulled up the anchor without a sound, and were moving
the ship very, very carefully out of the bay, Gub-Gub suddenly sneezed
so loud that the pirates on the other ship came rushing upstairs to see
what the noise was.
As soon as they saw that the Doctor was escaping, they sailed the other
boat right across the entrance to the bay so that the Doctor could not
get out into the open sea.
Then the leader of these bad men (who called himself “Ben Ali, The
Dragon”) shook his fist at the Doctor and shouted across the water,
“Ha! Ha! You are caught, my fine friend! You were going to run off in
my ship, eh? But you are not a good enough sailor to beat Ben Ali, the
Barbary Dragon. I want that duck you’ve got—and the pig too. We’ll have
pork-chops and roast duck for supper to-night. And before I let you go
home, you must make your friends send me a trunk-full of gold.”
Poor Gub-Gub began to weep; and Dab-Dab made ready to fly to save her
life. But the owl, Too-Too, whispered to the Doctor,
“Keep him talking, Doctor. Be pleasant to him. Our old ship is bound
to sink soon—the rats said it would be at the bottom of the sea before
to-morrow-night—and the rats are never wrong. Be pleasant, till the
ship sinks under him. Keep him talking.”
“What, until to-morrow night!” said the Doctor. “Well, I’ll do my
best.... Let me see—What shall I talk about?”
“Oh, let them come on,” said Jip. “We can fight the dirty rascals.
There are only six of them. Let them come on. I’d love to tell that
collie next door, when we get home, that I had bitten a real pirate.
Let ’em come. We can fight them.”
“But they have pistols and swords,” said the Doctor. “No, that would
never do. I must talk to him.... Look here, Ben Ali—”
But before the Doctor could say any more, the pirates began to sail the
ship nearer, laughing with glee, and saying one to another, “Who shall
be the first to catch the pig?”
Poor Gub-Gub was dreadfully frightened; and the pushmi-pullyu began to
sharpen his horns for a fight by rubbing them on the mast of the ship;
while Jip kept springing into the air and barking and calling Ben Ali
bad names in dog-language.
But presently something seemed to go wrong with the pirates; they
stopped laughing and cracking jokes; they looked puzzled; something was
making them uneasy.
Then Ben Ali, staring down at his feet, suddenly bellowed out,
“Thunder and Lightning!—Men, _the boat’s leaking_!”
And then the other pirates peered over the side and they saw that the
boat was indeed getting lower and lower in the water. And one of them
said to Ben Ali,
“But surely if this old boat were sinking we should see the rats
leaving it.”
And Jip shouted across from the other ship,
“You great duffers, there are no rats there to leave! They left two
hours ago! ‘Ha, ha,’ to you, ‘my fine friends!’”
But of course the men did not understand him.
Soon the front end of the ship began to go down and down, faster and
faster—till the boat looked almost as though it were standing on its
head; and the pirates had to cling to the rails and the masts and
the ropes and anything to keep from sliding off. Then the sea rushed
roaring in through all the windows and the doors. And at last the ship
plunged right down to the bottom of the sea, making a dreadful gurgling
sound; and the six bad men were left bobbing about in the deep water of
the bay.
Some of them started to swim for the shores of the island; while others