The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle

“They’re old friends of the Doctor’s,” said Miranda. “They’d do anything for John Dolittle. We should see his party soon now. We’re pretty near the place I left them—Yes, there they are! See that dark shape?—No, more to the right of where you’re looking. Can’t you make out the figure of the black man standing against the sky?—Now Chee-Chee spies us—he’s waving. Don’t you see them?”

I didn’t—for my eyes were not as sharp as Miranda’s. But presently from somewhere in the murky dusk I heard Bumpo singing his African comic songs with the full force of his enormous voice. And in a little, by peering and peering in the direction of the sound, I at last made out a dim mass of tattered, splintered wreckage—all that remained of the poor Curlew—floating low down upon the water.

A hulloa came through the night. And I answered it. We kept it up, calling to one another back and forth across the calm night sea. And a few minutes later the two halves of our brave little ruined ship bumped gently together again.

Now that I was nearer and the moon was higher I could see more plainly. Their half of the ship was much bigger than mine.

It lay partly upon its side; and most of them were perched upon the top munching ship’s biscuit.

But close down to the edge of the water, using the sea’s calm surface for a mirror and a piece of broken bottle for a razor, John Dolittle was shaving his face by the light of the moon.

THE FIFTH CHAPTER

LAND!

THEY all gave me a great greeting as I clambered off my half of the ship on to theirs. Bumpo brought me a wonderful drink of fresh water which he drew from a barrel; and Chee-Chee and Polynesia stood around me feeding me ship’s biscuit.

But it was the sight of the Doctor’s smiling face—just knowing that I was with him once again—that cheered me more than anything else. As I watched him carefully wipe his glass razor and put it away for future use, I could not help comparing him in my mind with the Stormy Petrel. Indeed the vast strange knowledge which he had gained from his speech and friendship with animals had brought him the power to do things which no other human being would dare to try. Like the petrel, he could apparently play with the sea in all her moods. It was no wonder that many of the ignorant savage peoples among whom he passed in his voyages made statues of him showing him as half a fish, half a bird, and half a man. And ridiculous though it was, I could quite understand what Miranda meant when she said she firmly believed that he could never die. Just to be with him gave you a wonderful feeling of comfort and safety.

Except for his appearance (his clothes were crumpled and damp and his battered high hat was stained with salt water) that storm which had so terrified me had disturbed him no more than getting stuck on the mud-bank in Puddleby River.

Politely thanking Miranda for getting me so quickly, he asked her if she would now go ahead of us and show us the way to Spidermonkey Island. Next, he gave orders to the porpoises to leave my old piece of the ship and push the bigger half wherever the Bird-of-Paradise should lead us.

How much he had lost in the wreck besides his razor I did not know—everything, most likely, together with all the money he had saved up to buy the ship with. And still he was smiling as though he wanted for nothing in the world. The only things he had saved, as far as I could see—beyond the barrel of water and bag of biscuit—were his precious note-books. These, I saw when he stood up, he had strapped around his waist with yards and yards of twine. He was, as old Matthew Mugg used to say, a great man. He was unbelievable.

And now for three days we continued our journey slowly but steadily—southward.

The only inconvenience we suffered from was the cold. This seemed to increase as we went forward. The Doctor said that the island, disturbed from its usual paths by the great gale, had evidently drifted further South than it had ever been before.

On the third night poor Miranda came back to us nearly frozen. She told the Doctor that in the morning we would find the island quite close to us, though we couldn’t see it now as it was a misty dark night. She said that she must hurry back at once to a warmer climate; and that she would visit the Doctor in Puddleby next August as usual.

“Don’t forget, Miranda,” said John Dolittle, “if you should hear anything of what happened to Long Arrow, to get word to me.”

The Bird-of-Paradise assured him she would. And after the Doctor had thanked her again and again for all that she had done for us, she wished us good luck and disappeared into the night.

We were all awake early in the morning, long before it was light, waiting for our first glimpse of the country we had come so far to see. And as the rising sun turned the eastern sky to gray, of course it was old Polynesia who first shouted that she could see palm-trees and mountain tops.

With the growing light it became plain to all of us: a long island with high rocky mountains in the middle—and so near to us that you could almost throw your hat upon the shore.

The porpoises gave us one last push and our strange-looking craft bumped gently on a low beach. Then, thanking our lucky stars for a chance to stretch our cramped legs, we all bundled off on to the land—the first land, even though it was floating land, that we had trodden for six weeks. What a thrill I felt as I realized that Spidermonkey Island, the little spot in the atlas which my pencil had touched, lay at last beneath my feet!

When the light increased still further we noticed that the palms and grasses of the island seemed withered and almost dead. The Doctor said that it must be on account of the cold that the island was now suffering from in its new climate. These trees and grasses, he told us, were the kind that belonged to warm, tropical weather.

The porpoises asked if we wanted them any further. And the Doctor said that he didn’t think so, not for the present—nor the raft either, he added; for it was already beginning to fall to pieces and could not float much longer.

As we were preparing to go inland and explore the island, we suddenly noticed a whole band of Red Indians watching us with great curiosity from among the trees. The Doctor went forward to talk to them. But he could not make them understand. He tried by signs to show them that he had come on a friendly visit. The Indians didn’t seem to like us however. They had bows and arrows and long hunting spears, with stone points, in their hands; and they made signs back to the Doctor to tell him that if he came a step nearer they would kill us all. They evidently wanted us to leave the island at once. It was a very uncomfortable situation.

At last the Doctor made them understand that he only wanted to see the island all over and that then he would go away—though how he meant to do it, with no boat to sail in, was more than I could imagine.

While they were talking among themselves another Indian arrived—apparently with a message that they were wanted in some other part of the island. Because presently, shaking their spears threateningly at us, they went off with the newcomer.

“What discourteous pagans!” said Bumpo. “Did you ever see such inhospitability?—Never even asked us if we’d had breakfast, the benighted bounders!”

“Sh! They’re going off to their village,” said Polynesia. “I’ll bet there’s a village on the other side of those mountains. If you take my advice, Doctor, you’ll get away from this beach while their backs are turned. Let us go up into the higher land for the present—some place where they won’t know where we are. They may grow friendlier when they see we mean no harm. They have honest, open faces and look like a decent crowd to me. They’re just ignorant—probably never saw white folks before.”

So, feeling a little bit discouraged by our first reception, we moved off towards the mountains in the centre of the island.

THE SIXTH CHAPTER

THE JABIZRI

WE found the woods at the feet of the hills thick and tangly and somewhat hard to get through. On Polynesia’s advice, we kept away from all paths and trails, feeling it best to avoid meeting any Indians for the present.

But she and Chee-Chee were good guides and splendid jungle-hunters; and the two of them set to work at once looking for food for us. In a very short space of time they had found quite a number of different fruits and nuts which made excellent eating, though none of us knew the names of any of them. We discovered a nice clean stream of good water which came down from the mountains; so we were supplied with something to drink as well.

We followed the stream up towards the heights. And presently we came to parts where the woods were thinner and the ground rocky and steep. Here we could get glimpses of wonderful views all over the island, with the blue sea beyond.

While we were admiring one of these the Doctor suddenly said, “Sh!—A Jabizri!—Don’t you hear it?”

We listened and heard, somewhere in the air about us, an extraordinarily musical hum—like a bee, but not just one note. This hum rose and fell, up and down—almost like some one singing.

“No other insect but the Jabizri beetle hums like that,” said the Doctor. “I wonder where he is—quite near, by the sound—flying among the trees probably. Oh, if I only had my butterfly-net! Why didn’t I think to strap that around my waist too. Confound the storm: I may miss the chance of a lifetime now of getting the rarest beetle in the world—Oh look! There he goes!”

A huge beetle, easily three inches long I should say, suddenly flew by our noses. The Doctor got frightfully excited. He took off his hat to use as a net, swooped at the beetle and caught it. He nearly fell down a precipice on to the rocks below in his wild hurry, but that didn’t bother him in the least. He knelt down, chortling, upon the ground with the Jabizri safe under his hat. From his pocket he brought out a glass-topped box, and into this he very skilfully made the beetle walk from under the rim of the hat. Then he rose up, happy as a child, to examine his new treasure through the glass lid.

It certainly was a most beautiful insect. It was pale blue underneath; but its back was glossy black with huge red spots on it.

“There isn’t an entymologist in the whole world who wouldn’t give all he has to be in my shoes to-day,” said the Doctor—“Hulloa! This Jabizri’s got something on his leg—Doesn’t look like mud. I wonder what it is.”

He took the beetle carefully out of the box and held it by its back in his fingers, where it waved its six legs slowly in the air. We all crowded about him peering at it. Rolled around the middle section of its right foreleg was something that looked like a thin dried leaf. It was bound on very neatly with strong spider-web.

It was marvelous to see how John Dolittle with his fat heavy fingers undid that cobweb cord and unrolled the leaf, whole, without tearing it or hurting the precious beetle. The Jabizri he put back into the box. Then he spread the leaf out flat and examined it.

You can imagine our surprise when we found that the inside of the leaf was covered with signs and pictures, drawn so tiny that you almost needed a magnifying-glass to tell what they were. Some of the signs we couldn’t make out at all; but nearly all of the pictures were quite plain, figures of men and mountains mostly. The whole was done in a curious sort of brown ink.

For several moments there was a dead silence while we all stared at the leaf, fascinated and mystified.

“I think this is written in blood,” said the Doctor at last. “It turns that color when it’s dry. Somebody pricked his finger to make these pictures. It’s an old dodge when you’re short of ink—but highly unsanitary—What an extraordinary thing to find tied to a beetle’s leg! I wish I could talk beetle language, and find out where the Jabizri got it from.”

“But what is it?” I asked—“Rows of little pictures and signs. What do you make of it, Doctor?”

“It’s a letter,” he said—“a picture letter. All these little things put together mean a message—But why give a message to a beetle to carry—and to a Jabizri, the rarest beetle in the world?—What an extraordinary thing!”

Then he fell to muttering over the pictures.

“I wonder what it means: men walking up a mountain; men walking into a hole in a mountain; a mountain falling down—it’s a good drawing, that; men pointing to their open mouths; bars—prison-bars, perhaps; men praying; men lying down—they look as though they might be sick; and last of all, just a mountain—a peculiar-shaped mountain.”

All of a sudden the Doctor looked up sharply at me, a wonderful smile of delighted understanding spreading over his face.

“Long Arrow!” he cried, “don’t you see, Stubbins?—Why, of course! Only a naturalist would think of doing a thing like this: giving his letter to a beetle—not to a common beetle, but to the rarest of all, one that other naturalists would try to catch—Well, well! Long Arrow!—A picture-letter from Long Arrow. For pictures are the only writing that he knows.”

“Yes, but who is the letter to?” I asked.

“It’s to me very likely. Miranda had told him, I know, years ago, that some day I meant to come here. But if not for me, then it’s for any one who caught the beetle and read it. It’s a letter to the world.”

“Well, but what does it say? It doesn’t seem to me that it’s much good to you now you’ve got it.”

“Yes, it is,” he said, “because, look, I can read it now. First picture: men walking up a mountain—that’s Long Arrow and his party; men going into a hole in a mountain—they enter a cave looking for medicine-plants or mosses; a mountain falling down—some hanging rocks must have slipped and trapped them, imprisoned them in the cave. And this was the only living creature that could carry a message for them to the outside world—a beetle, who could burrow his way into the open air. Of course it was only a slim chance that the beetle would be ever caught and the letter read. But it was a chance; and when men are in great danger they grab at any straw of hope.... All right. Now look at the next picture: men pointing to their open mouths—they are hungry; men praying—begging any one who finds this letter to come to their assistance; men lying down—they are sick, or starving. This letter, Stubbins, is their last cry for help.”

He sprang to his feet as he ended, snatched out a note-book and put the letter between the leaves. His hands were trembling with haste and agitation.

“Come on!” he cried—“up the mountain—all of you. There’s not a moment to lose. Bumpo, bring the water and nuts with you. Heaven only knows how long they’ve been pining underground. Let’s hope and pray we’re not too late!”

“But where are you going to look?” I asked. “Miranda said the island was a hundred miles long and the mountains seem to run all the way down the centre of it.”

“Didn’t you see the last picture?” he said, grabbing up his hat from the ground and cramming it on his head. “It was an oddly shaped mountain—looked like a hawk’s head. Well, there’s where he is—if he’s still alive. First thing for us to do, is to get up on a high peak and look around the island for a mountain shaped like a hawks’ head—Just to think of it! There’s a chance of my meeting Long Arrow, the son of Golden Arrow, after all!—Come on! Hurry! To delay may mean death to the greatest naturalist ever born!”

THE SEVENTH CHAPTER

HAWK’S-HEAD MOUNTAIN

WE all agreed afterwards that none of us had ever worked so hard in our lives before as we did that day. For my part, I know I was often on the point of dropping exhausted with fatigue; but I just kept on going—like a machine—determined that, whatever happened, I would not be the first to give up.

When we had scrambled to the top of a high peak, almost instantly we saw the strange mountain pictured in the letter. In shape it was the perfect image of a hawk’s head, and was, as far as we could see, the second highest summit in the island.

Although we were all out of breath from our climb, the Doctor didn’t let us rest a second as soon as he had sighted it. With one look at the sun for direction, down he dashed again, breaking through thickets, splashing over brooks, taking all the short cuts. For a fat man, he was certainly the swiftest cross-country runner I ever saw.

We floundered after him as fast as we could. When I say we, I mean Bumpo and myself; for the animals, Jip, Chee-Chee and Polynesia, were a long way ahead—even beyond the Doctor—enjoying the hunt like a paper-chase.

At length we arrived at the foot of the mountain we were making for; and we found its sides very steep. Said the Doctor,

“Now we will separate and search for caves. This spot where we now are, will be our meeting-place. If anyone finds anything like a cave or a hole where the earth and rocks have fallen in, he must shout and hulloa to the rest of us. If we find nothing we will all gather here in about an hour’s time—Everybody understand?”

Then we all went off our different ways.

Each of us, you may be sure, was anxious to be the one to make a discovery. And never was a mountain searched so thoroughly. But alas! nothing could we find that looked in the least like a fallen-in cave. There were plenty of places where rocks had tumbled down to the foot of the slopes; but none of these appeared as though caves or passages could possibly lie behind them.

One by one, tired and disappointed, we straggled back to the meeting-place. The Doctor seemed gloomy and impatient but by no means inclined to give up.

“Jip,” he said, “couldn’t you smell anything like an Indian anywhere?”

“No,” said Jip. “I sniffed at every crack on the mountainside. But I am afraid my nose will be of no use to you here, Doctor. The trouble is, the whole air is so saturated with the smell of spider-monkeys that it drowns every other scent—And besides, it’s too cold and dry for good smelling.”

“It is certainly that,” said the Doctor—“and getting colder all the time. I’m afraid the island is still drifting to the southward. Let’s hope it stops before long, or we won’t be able to get even nuts and fruit to eat—everything in the island will perish—Chee-Chee, what luck did you have?”

“None, Doctor. I climbed to every peak and pinnacle I could see. I searched every hollow and cleft. But not one place could I find where men might be hidden.”

“And Polynesia,” asked the Doctor, “did you see nothing that might put us on the right track?”

“Not a thing, Doctor—But I have a plan.”

“Oh good!” cried John Dolittle, full of hope renewed. “What is it? Let’s hear it.”

“You still have that beetle with you,” she asked—“the Biz-biz, or whatever it is you call the wretched insect?”

“Yes,” said the Doctor, producing the glass-topped box from his pocket, “here it is.”

“All right. Now listen,” said she. “If what you have supposed is true—that is, that Long Arrow had been trapped inside the mountain by falling rock, he probably found that beetle inside the cave—perhaps many other different beetles too, eh? He wouldn’t have been likely to take the Biz-biz in with him, would he?—He was hunting plants, you say, not beetles. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” said the Doctor, “that’s probably so.”

“Very well. It is fair to suppose then that the beetle’s home, or his hole, is in that place—the part of the mountain where Long Arrow and his party are imprisoned, isn’t it?”

“Quite, quite.”

“All right. Then the thing to do is to let the beetle go—and watch him; and sooner or later he’ll return to his home in Long Arrow’s cave. And there we will follow him—Or at all events,” she added smoothing down her wing-feathers with a very superior air, “we will follow him till the miserable bug starts nosing under the earth. But at least he will show us what part of the mountain Long Arrow is hidden in.”

“But he may fly, if I let him out,” said the Doctor. “Then we shall just lose him and be no better off than we were before.”

“Let him fly,” snorted Polynesia scornfully. “A parrot can wing it as fast as a Biz-biz, I fancy. If he takes to the air, I’ll guarantee not to let the little devil out of my sight. And if he just crawls along the ground you can follow him yourself.”

“Splendid!” cried the Doctor. “Polynesia, you have a great brain. I’ll set him to work at once and see what happens.”

Again we all clustered round the Doctor as he carefully lifted off the glass lid and let the big beetle climb out upon his finger.

“Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home!” crooned Bumpo. “Your house is on fire and your chil—”

“Oh, be quiet!” snapped Polynesia crossly. “Stop insulting him! Don’t you suppose he has wits enough to go home without your telling him?”

“I thought perchance he might be of a philandering disposition,” said Bumpo humbly. “It could be that he is tired of his home and needs to be encouraged. Shall I sing him ‘Home Sweet Home,’ think you?”

“No. Then he’d never go back. Your voice needs a rest. Don’t sing to him: just watch him—Oh, and Doctor, why not tie another message to the creature’s leg, telling Long Arrow that we’re doing our best to reach him and that he mustn’t give up hope?”

“I will,” said the Doctor. And in a minute he had pulled a dry leaf from a bush near by and was covering it with little pictures in pencil.

At last, neatly fixed up with his new mail-bag, Mr. Jabizri crawled off the Doctor’s finger to the ground and looked about him. He stretched his legs, polished his nose with his front feet and then moved off leisurely to the westward.

We had expected him to walk up the mountain; instead, he walked around it. Do you know how long it takes a beetle to walk round a mountain? Well, I assure you it takes an unbelievably long time. As the hours dragged by, we hoped and hoped that he would get up and fly the rest, and let Polynesia carry on the work of following him. But he never opened his wings once. I had not realized before how hard it is for a human being to walk slowly enough to keep up with a beetle. It was the most tedious thing I have ever gone through. And as we dawdled along behind, watching him like hawks lest we lose him under a leaf or something, we all got so cross and ill-tempered we were ready to bite one another’s heads off. And when he stopped to look at the scenery or polish his nose some more, I could hear Polynesia behind me letting out the most dreadful seafaring swear-words you ever heard.

After he had led us the whole way round the mountain he brought us to the exact spot where we started from and there he came to a dead stop.

“Well,” said Bumpo to Polynesia, “what do you think of the beetle’s sense now? You see he doesn’t know enough to go home.”

“Oh, be still, you Hottentot!” snapped Polynesia. “Wouldn’t you want to stretch your legs for exercise if you’d been shut up in a box all day. Probably his home is near here, and that’s why he’s come back.”

“But why,” I asked, “did he go the whole way round the mountain first?”

Then the three of us got into a violent argument. But in the middle of it all the Doctor suddenly called out,

“Look, look!”

We turned and found that he was pointing to the Jabizri, who was now walking up the mountain at a much faster and more business-like gait.

“Well,” said Bumpo sitting down wearily; “if he is going to walk over the mountain and back, for more exercise, I’ll wait for him here. Chee-Chee and Polynesia can follow him.”

Indeed it would have taken a monkey or a bird to climb the place which the beetle was now walking up. It was a smooth, flat part of the mountain’s side, steep as a wall.

But presently, when the Jabizri was no more than ten feet above our heads, we all cried out together. For, even while we watched him, he had disappeared into the face of the rock like a raindrop soaking into sand.

“He’s gone,” cried Polynesia. “There must be a hole up there.” And in a twinkling she had fluttered up the rock and was clinging to the face of it with her claws.

“Yes,” she shouted down, “we’ve run him to earth at last. His hole is right here, behind a patch of lichen—big enough to get two fingers in.”

“Ah,” cried the Doctor, “this great slab of rock then must have slid down from the summit and shut off the mouth of the cave like a door. Poor fellows! What a dreadful time they must have spent in there!—Oh, if we only had some picks and shovels now!”