The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle

At this a cry of horror burst from the people. They had been used to seeing matadors escaping from one bull at a time. But five!—That must mean certain death.

Pepito sprang forward and called to Don Enrique not to allow it, saying it was against all the rules of bullfighting. (“Ha!” Polynesia chuckled into my ear. “It’s like the Doctor’s navigation: he breaks all the rules; but he gets there. If they’ll only let him, he’ll give them the best show for their money they ever saw.”) A great argument began. Half the people seemed to be on Pepito’s side and half on the Doctor’s side. At last the Doctor turned to Pepito and made another very grand bow which burst the last button off his waistcoat.

“Well, of course if the caballero is afraid—” he began with a bland smile.

“Afraid!” screamed Pepito. “I am afraid of nothing on earth. I am the greatest matador in Spain. With this right hand I have killed nine hundred and fifty-seven bulls.”

“All right then,” said the Doctor, “let us see if you can kill five more. Let the bulls in!” he shouted. “Pepito de Malaga is not afraid.”

A dreadful silence hung over the great theatre as the heavy door into the bull pen was rolled back. Then with a roar the five big bulls bounded into the ring.

“Look fierce,” I heard the Doctor call to them in cattle language. “Don’t scatter. Keep close. Get ready for a rush. Take Pepito, the one in purple, first. But for Heaven’s sake don’t kill him. Just chase him out of the ring—Now then, all together, go for him!”

The bulls put down their heads and all in line, like a squadron of cavalry, charged across the ring straight for poor Pepito.

For one moment the Spaniard tried his hardest to look brave. But the sight of the five pairs of horns coming at him at full gallop was too much. He turned white to the lips, ran for the fence, vaulted it and disappeared.

“Now the other one,” the Doctor hissed. And in two seconds the gallant assistant was nowhere to be seen. Juan Hagapoco, the fat matador, was left alone in the ring with five rampaging bulls.

The rest of the show was really well worth seeing. First, all five bulls went raging round the ring, butting at the fence with their horns, pawing up the sand, hunting for something to kill. Then each one in turn would pretend to catch sight of the Doctor for the first time and giving a bellow of rage, would lower his wicked looking horns and shoot like an arrow across the ring as though he meant to toss him to the sky.

It was really frightfully exciting. And even I, who knew it was all arranged beforehand, held my breath in terror for the Doctor’s life when I saw how near they came to sticking him. But just at the last moment, when the horns’ points were two inches from the sky-blue waistcoat, the Doctor would spring nimbly to one side and the great brutes would go thundering harmlessly by, missing him by no more than a hair.

Then all five of them went for him together, completely surrounding him, slashing at him with their horns and bellowing with fury. How he escaped alive I don’t know. For several minutes his round figure could hardly be seen at all in that scrimmage of tossing heads, stamping hoofs and waving tails.—It was, as Polynesia had prophesied, the greatest bullfight ever seen.

One woman in the crowd got quite hysterical and screamed up to Don Enrique,

“Stop the fight! Stop the fight! He is too brave a man to be killed. This is the most wonderful matador in the world. Let him live! Stop the fight!”

But presently the Doctor was seen to break loose from the mob of animals that surrounded him. Then catching each of them by the horns, one after another, he would give their heads a sudden twist and throw them down flat on the sand. The great fellows acted their parts extremely well. I have never seen trained animals in a circus do better. They lay there panting on the ground where the Doctor threw them as if they were exhausted and completely beaten.

Then with a final bow to the ladies John Dolittle took a cigar from his pocket, lit it and strolled out of the ring.

THE NINTH CHAPTER

WE DEPART IN A HURRY

AS soon as the door closed behind the Doctor the most tremendous noise I have ever heard broke loose. Some of the men appeared to be angry (friends of Pepito’s, I suppose); but the ladies called and called to have the Doctor come back into the ring.

When at length he did so, the women seemed to go entirely mad over him. They blew kisses to him. They called him a darling. Then they started taking off their flowers, their rings, their necklaces, and their brooches and threw them down at his feet. You never saw anything like it—a perfect shower of jewelry and roses.

But the Doctor just smiled up at them, bowed once more and backed out.

“Now, Bumpo,” said Polynesia, “this is where you go down and gather up all those trinkets and we’ll sell ’em. That’s what the big matadors do: leave the jewelry on the ground and their assistants collect it for them. We might as well lay in a good supply of money while we’ve got the chance—you never know when you may need it when you’re traveling with the Doctor. Never mind the roses—you can leave them—but don’t leave any rings. And when you’ve finished go and get your three-thousand pesetas out of Don Ricky-ticky. Tommy and I will meet you outside and we’ll pawn the gew-gaws at that Jew’s shop opposite the bed-maker’s. Run along—and not a word to the Doctor, remember.”

Outside the bull-ring we found the crowd still in a great state of excitement. Violent arguments were going on everywhere. Bumpo joined us with his pockets bulging in all directions; and we made our way slowly through the dense crowd to that side of the building where the matadors’ dressing-room was. The Doctor was waiting at the door for us.

“Good work, Doctor!” said Polynesia, flying on to his shoulder—“Great work!—But listen: I smell danger. I think you had better get back to the ship now as quick and as quietly as you can. Put your overcoat on over that giddy suit. I don’t like the looks of this crowd. More than half of them are furious because you’ve won. Don Ricky-ticky must now stop the bullfighting—and you know how they love it. What I’m afraid of is that some of these matadors who are just mad with jealousy may start some dirty work. I think this would be a good time for us to get away.”

“I dare say you’re right, Polynesia,” said the Doctor—“You usually are. The crowd does seem to be a bit restless. I’ll slip down to the ship alone—so I shan’t be so noticeable; and I’ll wait for you there. You come by some different way. But don’t be long about it. Hurry!”

As soon as the Doctor had departed Bumpo sought out Don Enrique and said,

“Honorable Sir, you owe me three-thousand pesetas.”

Without a word, but looking cross-eyed with annoyance, Don Enrique paid his bet.

We next set out to buy the provisions; and on the way we hired a cab and took it along with us.

Not very far away we found a big grocer’s shop which seemed to sell everything to eat. We went in and bought up the finest lot of food you ever saw in your life.

As a matter of fact, Polynesia had been right about the danger we were in. The news of our victory must have spread like lightning through the whole town. For as we came out of the shop and loaded the cab up with our stores, we saw various little knots of angry men hunting round the streets, waving sticks and shouting,

“The Englishmen! Where are those accursed Englishmen who stopped the bullfighting?—Hang them to a lamp-post!—Throw them in the sea! The Englishmen!—We want the Englishmen!”

After that we didn’t waste any time, you may be sure. Bumpo grabbed the Spanish cab-driver and explained to him in signs that if he didn’t drive down to the harbor as fast as he knew how and keep his mouth shut the whole way, he would choke the life out of him. Then we jumped into the cab on top of the food, slammed the door, pulled down the blinds and away we went.

“We won’t get a chance to pawn the jewelry now,” said Polynesia, as we bumped over the cobbly streets. “But never mind—it may come in handy later on. And anyway we’ve got two-thousand five-hundred pesetas left out of the bet. Don’t give the cabby more than two pesetas fifty, Bumpo. That’s the right fare, I know.”

Well, we reached the harbor all right and we were mighty glad to find that the Doctor had sent Chee-Chee back with the row-boat to wait for us at the landing-wall.

Unfortunately while we were in the middle of loading the supplies from the cab into the boat, the angry mob arrived upon the wharf and made a rush for us. Bumpo snatched up a big beam of wood that lay near and swung it round and round his head, letting out dreadful African battle-yells the while. This kept the crowd off while Chee-Chee and I hustled the last of the stores into the boat and clambered in ourselves. Bumpo threw his beam of wood into the thick of the Spaniards and leapt in after us. Then we pushed off and rowed like mad for the Curlew.

The mob upon the wall howled with rage, shook their fists and hurled stones and all manner of things after us. Poor old Bumpo got hit on the head with a bottle. But as he had a very strong head it only raised a small bump while the bottle smashed into a thousand pieces.

When we reached the ship’s side the Doctor had the anchor drawn up and the sails set and everything in readiness to get away. Looking back we saw boats coming out from the harbor-wall after us, filled with angry, shouting men. So we didn’t bother to unload our rowboat but just tied it on to the ship’s stern with a rope and jumped aboard.

It only took a moment more to swing the Curlew round into the wind; and soon we were speeding out of the harbor on our way to Brazil.

“Ha!” sighed Polynesia, as we all flopped down on the deck to take a rest and get our breath. “That wasn’t a bad adventure—quite reminds me of my old seafaring days when I sailed with the smugglers—Golly, that was the life!—Never mind your head, Bumpo. It will be all right when the Doctor puts a little arnica on it. Think what we got out of the scrap: a boat-load of ship’s stores, pockets full of jewelry and thousands of pesetas. Not bad, you know—not bad.”

PART FOUR

THE FIRST CHAPTER

SHELLFISH LANGUAGES AGAIN

MIRANDA, the Purple Bird-of-Paradise had prophesied rightly when she had foretold a good spell of weather. For three weeks the good ship Curlew plowed her way through smiling seas before a steady powerful wind.

I suppose most real sailors would have found this part of the voyage dull. But not I. As we got further South and further West the face of the sea seemed different every day. And all the little things of a voyage which an old hand would have hardly bothered to notice were matters of great interest for my eager eyes.

We did not pass many ships. When we did see one, the Doctor would get out his telescope and we would all take a look at it. Sometimes he would signal to it, asking for news, by hauling up little colored flags upon the mast; and the ship would signal back to us in the same way. The meaning of all the signals was printed in a book which the Doctor kept in the cabin. He told me it was the language of the sea and that all ships could understand it whether they be English, Dutch, or French.

Our greatest happening during those first weeks was passing an iceberg. When the sun shone on it it burst into a hundred colors, sparkling like a jeweled palace in a fairy-story. Through the telescope we saw a mother polar bear with a cub sitting on it, watching us. The Doctor recognized her as one of the bears who had spoken to him when he was discovering the North Pole. So he sailed the ship up close and offered to take her and her baby on to the Curlew if she wished it. But she only shook her head, thanking him; she said it would be far too hot for the cub on the deck of our ship, with no ice to keep his feet cool. It had been indeed a very hot day; but the nearness of that great mountain of ice made us all turn up our coat-collars and shiver with the cold.

During those quiet peaceful days I improved my reading and writing a great deal with the Doctor’s help. I got on so well that he let me keep the ship’s log. This is a big book kept on every ship, a kind of diary, in which the number of miles run, the direction of your course and everything else that happens is written down.

The Doctor too, in what spare time he had, was nearly always writing—in his note-books. I used to peep into these sometimes, now that I could read, but I found it hard work to make out the Doctor’s handwriting. Many of these note-books seemed to be about sea things. There were six thick ones filled full with notes and sketches of different seaweeds; and there were others on sea birds; others on sea worms; others on seashells. They were all some day to be re-written, printed and bound like regular books.

One afternoon we saw, floating around us, great quantities of stuff that looked like dead grass. The Doctor told me this was gulf-weed. A little further on it became so thick that it covered all the water as far as the eye could reach; it made the Curlew look as though she were moving across a meadow instead of sailing the Atlantic.

Crawling about upon this weed, many crabs were to be seen. And the sight of them reminded the Doctor of his dream of learning the language of the shellfish. He fished several of these crabs up with a net and put them in his listening-tank to see if he could understand them. Among the crabs he also caught a strange-looking, chubby, little fish which he told me was called a Silver Fidgit.

After he had listened to the crabs for a while with no success, he put the fidgit into the tank and began to listen to that. I had to leave him at this moment to go and attend to some duties on the deck. But presently I heard him below shouting for me to come down again.

“Stubbins,” he cried as soon as he saw me—“a most extraordinary thing—Quite unbelievable—I’m not sure whether I’m dreaming—Can’t believe my own senses. I—I—I—”

“Why, Doctor,” I said, “what is it?—What’s the matter?”

“The fidgit,” he whispered, pointing with a trembling finger to the listening-tank in which the little round fish was still swimming quietly, “he talks English! And—and—and he whistles tunes—English tunes!”

“Talks English!” I cried—“Whistles!—Why, it’s impossible.”

“It’s a fact,” said the Doctor, white in the face with excitement. “It’s only a few words, scattered, with no particular sense to them—all mixed up with his own language which I can’t make out yet. But they’re English words, unless there’s something very wrong with my hearing—And the tune he whistles, it’s as plain as anything—always the same tune. Now you listen and tell me what you make of it. Tell me everything you hear. Don’t miss a word.”

I went to the glass tank upon the table while the Doctor grabbed a note-book and a pencil. Undoing my collar I stood upon the empty packing-case he had been using for a stand and put my right ear down under the water.

For some moments I detected nothing at all—except, with my dry ear, the heavy breathing of the Doctor as he waited, all stiff and anxious, for me to say something. At last from within the water, sounding like a child singing miles and miles away, I heard an unbelievably thin, small voice.

“Ah!” I said.

“What is it?” asked the Doctor in a hoarse, trembly whisper. “What does he say?”

“I can’t quite make it out,” I said. “It’s mostly in some strange fish language—Oh, but wait a minute!—Yes, now I get it—‘No smoking’.... ‘My, here’s a queer one!’ ‘Popcorn and picture postcards here’.... ‘This way out’.... ‘Don’t spit’—What funny things to say, Doctor!—Oh, but wait!—Now he’s whistling the tune.”

“What tune is it?” gasped the Doctor.

“John Peel.”

“Ah hah,” cried the Doctor, “that’s what I made it out to be.” And he wrote furiously in his note-book.

I went on listening.

“This is most extraordinary,” the Doctor kept muttering to himself as his pencil went wiggling over the page—“Most extraordinary—but frightfully thrilling. I wonder where he—”

“Here’s some more,” I cried—“some more English.... ‘The big tank needs cleaning’.... That’s all. Now he’s talking fish-talk again.”

“The big tank!” the Doctor murmured frowning in a puzzled kind of way. “I wonder where on earth he learned—”

Then he bounded up out of his chair.

“I have it,” he yelled, “this fish has escaped from an aquarium. Why, of course! Look at the kind of things he has learned: ‘Picture postcards’—they always sell them in aquariums; ‘Don’t spit’; ‘No smoking’; ‘This way out’—the things the attendants say. And then, ‘My, here’s a queer one!’ That’s the kind of thing that people exclaim when they look into the tanks. It all fits. There’s no doubt about it, Stubbins: we have here a fish who has escaped from captivity. And it’s quite possible—not certain, by any means, but quite possible—that I may now, through him, be able to establish communication with the shellfish. This is a great piece of luck.”

THE SECOND CHAPTER

THE FIDGIT’S STORY

WELL, now that he was started once more upon his old hobby of the shellfish languages, there was no stopping the Doctor. He worked right through the night.

A little after midnight I fell asleep in a chair; about two in the morning Bumpo fell asleep at the wheel; and for five hours the Curlew was allowed to drift where she liked. But still John Dolittle worked on, trying his hardest to understand the fidgit’s language, struggling to make the fidgit understand him.

When I woke up it was broad daylight again. The Doctor was still standing at the listening-tank, looking as tired as an owl and dreadfully wet. But on his face there was a proud and happy smile.

“Stubbins,” he said as soon as he saw me stir, “I’ve done it. I’ve got the key to the fidgit’s language. It’s a frightfully difficult language—quite different from anything I ever heard. The only thing it reminds me of—slightly—is ancient Hebrew. It isn’t shellfish; but it’s a big step towards it. Now, the next thing, I want you to take a pencil and a fresh notebook and write down everything I say. The fidgit has promised to tell me the story of his life. I will translate it into English and you put it down in the book. Are you ready?”

Once more the Doctor lowered his ear beneath the level of the water; and as he began to speak, I started to write. And this is the story that the fidgit told us.

THIRTEEN MONTHS IN AN AQUARIUM

“I was born in the Pacific Ocean, close to the coast of Chile. I was one of a family of two-thousand five-hundred and ten. Soon after our mother and father left us, we youngsters got scattered. The family was broken up—by a herd of whales who chased us. I and my sister, Clippa (she was my favorite sister) had a very narrow escape for our lives. As a rule, whales are not very hard to get away from if you are good at dodging—if you’ve only got a quick swerve. But this one that came after Clippa and myself was a very mean whale. Every time he lost us under a stone or something he’d come back and hunt and hunt till he routed us out into the open again. I never saw such a nasty, persevering brute.

“Well, we shook him at last—though not before he had worried us for hundreds of miles northward, up the west coast of South America. But luck was against us that day. While we were resting and trying to get our breath, another family of fidgits came rushing by, shouting, ‘Come on! Swim for your lives! The dog-fish are coming!’

“Now dog-fish are particularly fond of fidgits. We are, you might say, their favorite food—and for that reason we always keep away from deep, muddy waters. What’s more, dog-fish are not easy to escape from; they are terribly fast and clever hunters. So up we had to jump and on again.

“After we had gone a few more hundred miles we looked back and saw that the dog-fish were gaining on us. So we turned into a harbor. It happened to be one on the west coast of the United States. Here we guessed, and hoped, the dog-fish would not be likely to follow us. As it happened, they didn’t even see us turn in, but dashed on northward and we never saw them again. I hope they froze to death in the Arctic Seas.

“But, as I said, luck was against us that day. While I and my sister were cruising gently round the ships anchored in the harbor looking for orange-peels, a great delicacy with us—Swoop! Bang!—we were caught in a net.

“We struggled for all we were worth; but it was no use. The net was small-meshed and strongly made. Kicking and flipping we were hauled up the side of the ship and dumped down on the deck, high and dry in a blazing noon-day sun.

“Here a couple of old men in whiskers and spectacles leant over us, making strange sounds. Some codling had got caught in the net the same time as we were. These the old men threw back into the sea; but us they seemed to think very precious. They put us carefully into a large jar and after they had taken us on shore they went to a big house and changed us from the jar into glass boxes full of water. This house was on the edge of the harbor; and a small stream of sea-water was made to flow through the glass tank so we could breathe properly. Of course we had never lived inside glass walls before; and at first we kept on trying to swim through them and got our noses awfully sore bumping the glass at full speed.

“Then followed weeks and weeks of weary idleness. They treated us well, so far as they knew how. The old fellows in spectacles came and looked at us proudly twice a day and saw that we had the proper food to eat, the right amount of light and that the water was not too hot or too cold. But oh, the dullness of that life! It seemed we were a kind of a show. At a certain hour every morning the big doors of the house were thrown open and everybody in the city who had nothing special to do came in and looked at us. There were other tanks filled with different kinds of fishes all round the walls of the big room. And the crowds would go from tank to tank, looking in at us through the glass—with their mouths open, like half-witted flounders. We got so sick of it that we used to open our mouths back at them; and this they seemed to think highly comical.

“One day my sister said to me, ‘Think you, Brother, that these strange creatures who have captured us can talk?’

“‘Surely,’ said I, ‘have you not noticed that some talk with the lips only, some with the whole face, and yet others discourse with the hands? When they come quite close to the glass you can hear them. Listen!’

“At that moment a female, larger than the rest, pressed her nose up against the glass, pointed at me and said to her young behind her, ‘Oh, look, here’s a queer one!’

“And then we noticed that they nearly always said this when they looked in. And for a long time we thought that such was the whole extent of the language, this being a people of but few ideas. To help pass away the weary hours we learned it by heart, ‘Oh, look, here’s a queer one!’ But we never got to know what it meant. Other phrases, however, we did get the meaning of; and we even learned to read a little in man-talk. Many big signs there were, set up upon the walls; and when we saw that the keepers stopped the people from spitting and smoking, pointed to these signs angrily and read them out loud, we knew then that these writings signified, No Smoking and Don’t Spit.

“Then in the evenings, after the crowd had gone, the same aged male with one leg of wood, swept up the peanut-shells with a broom every night. And while he was so doing he always whistled the same tune to himself. This melody we rather liked; and we learned that too by heart—thinking it was part of the language.

“Thus a whole year went by in this dismal place. Some days new fishes were brought in to the other tanks; and other days old fishes were taken out. At first we had hoped we would only be kept here for a while, and that after we had been looked at sufficiently we would be returned to freedom and the sea. But as month after month went by, and we were left undisturbed, our hearts grew heavy within our prison-walls of glass and we spoke to one another less and less.

“One day, when the crowd was thickest in the big room, a woman with a red face fainted from the heat. I watched through the glass and saw that the rest of the people got highly excited—though to me it did not seem to be a matter of very great importance. They threw cold water on her and carried her out into the open air.