The Story of Doctor Dolittle: Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts Never Before Printed (11 page)

At last the passage came to an end; and the
Doctor found himself in a kind of tiny room
with walls of rock.

And there, in the middle of the room, his
head resting on his arms, lay a man with very
red hair—fast asleep!

Jip went up and sniffed at something lying
on the ground beside him. The Doctor stooped
and picked it up. It was an enormous snuff-
box. And it was full of Black Rappee!

GENTLY then—very gently, the Doctor woke the man up.

But just at that moment the match went out again.
And the man thought it was Ben Ali coming back,
and he began to punch the Doctor in the dark.

But when John Dolittle told him who it was,
and that he had his little nephew safe on his
ship, the man was tremendously glad, and said
he was sorry he had fought the Doctor. He
had not hurt him much though—because it was
too dark to punch properly. Then he gave the
Doctor a pinch of snuff.

And the man told how the Barbary Dragon
had put him on to this rock and left him there,
when he wouldn't promise to become a pirate;
and how he used to sleep down in this hole
because there was no house on the rock to keep
him warm.

And then he said,

"For four days I have had nothing to eat or
drink. I have lived on snuff."

"There you are!" said Jip. "What did I tell you?"

So they struck some more matches and made
their way out through the passage into the daylight;
and the Doctor hurried the man down to
the boat to get some soup.

When the animals and the little boy saw the
Doctor and Jip coming back to the ship with
a red-headed man, they began to cheer and yell
and dance about the boat. And the swallows
up above started whistling at the top of their
voices—thousands and millions of them—to
show that they too were glad that the boy's brave
uncle had been found. The noise they made
was so great that sailors far out at sea thought
that a terrible storm was coming. "Hark to
that gale howling in the East!" they said.

And Jip was awfully proud of himself—
though he tried hard not to look conceited.
When Dab-Dab came to him and said, "Jip, I
had no idea you were so clever!" he just tossed
his head and answered,

"Oh, that's nothing special. But it takes a
dog to find a man, you know. Birds are no good
for a game like that."

Then the Doctor asked the red-haired fisherman
where his home was. And when he had
told him, the Doctor asked the swallows to guide
the ship there first.

And when they had come to the land which
the man had spoken of, they saw a little fishing-
town at the foot of a rocky mountain; and the
man pointed out the house where he lived.

And while they were letting down the anchor,
the little boy's mother (who was also the man's
sister) came running down to the shore to meet
them, laughing and crying at the same time.
She had been sitting on a hill for twenty days,
watching the sea and waiting for them to
return.

And she kissed the Doctor many times, so that
he giggled and blushed like a school-girl. And
she tried to kiss Jip too; but he ran away and
hid inside the ship.

"It's a silly business, this kissing," he said.
"I don't hold by it. Let her go and kiss Gub-
Gub—if she MUST kiss something."

The fisherman and his sister didn't want the
Doctor to go away again in a hurry. They
begged him to spend a few days with them. So
John Dolittle and his animals had to stay at
their house a whole Saturday and Sunday and
half of Monday.

And all the little boys of the fishing-village
went down to the beach and pointed at the great
ship anchored there, and said to one another in
whispers,

"Look! That was a pirate-ship—Ben Ali's
—the most terrible pirate that ever sailed the
Seven Seas! That old gentleman with the high
hat, who's staying up at Mrs. Trevelyan's, HE
took the ship away from The Barbary Dragon
—and made him into a farmer. Who'd have
thought it of him—him so gentle—like and all!
... Look at the great red sails! Ain't she the
wicked-looking ship—and fast?—My!"

All those two days and a half that the Doctor
stayed at the little fishing-town the people kept
asking him out to teas and luncheons and dinners
and parties; all the ladies sent him boxes
of flowers and candies; and the village-band
played tunes under his window every night.

At last the Doctor said,

"Good people, I must go home now. You
have really been most kind. I shall always
remember it. But I must go home—for I have
things to do."

Then, just as the Doctor was about to leave,
the Mayor of the town came down the street
and a lot of other people in grand clothes with
him. And the Mayor stopped before the house
where the Doctor was living; and everybody in
the village gathered round to see what was going
to happen.

After six page-boys had blown on shining
trumpets to make the people stop talking, the
Doctor came out on to the steps and the Mayor
spoke.

"Doctor John Dolittle," said he: "It is a
great pleasure for me to present to the man who
rid the seas of the Dragon of Barbary this little
token from the grateful people of our worthy
Town."

And the Mayor took from his pocket a little
tissue-paper packet, and opening it, he handed
to the Doctor a perfectly beautiful watch with
real diamonds in the back.

Then the Mayor pulled out of his pocket a
still larger parcel and said,

"Where is the dog?"

Then everybody started to hunt for Jip. And
at last Dab-Dab found him on the other side
of the village in a stable-yard, where all the
dogs of the country-side were standing round
him speechless with admiration and respect.

When Jip was brought to the Doctor's side,
the Mayor opened the larger parcel; and inside
was a dog-collar made of solid gold! And a
great murmur of wonder went up from the village-
folk as the Mayor bent down and fastened
it round the dog's neck with his own hands.

For written on the collar in big letters were
these words: "JIP-THE CLEVEREST DOG IN THE WORLD."

Then the whole crowd moved down to the
beach to see them off. And after the red-haired
fisherman and his sister and the little boy had
thanked the Doctor and his dog over and over
and over again, the great, swift ship with the
red sails was turned once more towards Puddleby
and they sailed out to sea, while the village-
band played music on the shore.

MARCH winds had come and gone; April's showers were
over; May's buds had opened into flower; and the June sun
was shining on the pleasant fields, when John Dolittle at
last got back to his own country.

But he did not yet go home to Puddleby.
First he went traveling through the land with
the pushmi-pullyu in a gipsy-wagon, stopping at
all the country-fairs. And there, with the acrobats
on one side of them and the Punch-and-
Judy show on the other, they would hang out
a big sign which read, "COME AND SEE THE
MARVELOUS TWO-HEADED ANIMAL FROM THE
JUNGLES OF AFRICA. Admission SIXPENCE."

And the pushmi-pullyu would stay inside the
wagon, while the other animals would lie about
underneath. The Doctor sat in a chair in front
taking the sixpences and smiling on the people
as they went in; and Dab-Dab was kept busy
all the time scolding him because he would
let the children in for nothing when she wasn't
looking.

And menagerie-keepers and circus-men came
and asked the Doctor to sell them the strange
creature, saying they would pay a tremendous
lot of money for him. But the Doctor always
shook his head and said.

"No. The pushmi-pullyu shall never be shut
up in a cage. He shall be free always to come
and go, like you and me."

Many curious sights and happenings they saw
in this wandering life; but they all seemed quite
ordinary after the great things they had seen
and done in foreign lands. It was very interesting
at first, being sort of part of a circus;
but after a few weeks they all got dreadfully
tired of it and the Doctor and all of them were
longing to go home.

But so many people came flocking to the
little wagon and paid the sixpence to go inside and
see the pushmi-pullyu that very soon the Doctor
was able to give up being a showman.

And one fine day, when the hollyhocks were
in full bloom, he came back to Puddleby a rich
man, to live in the little house with the big
garden.

And the old lame horse in the stable was glad
to see him; and so were the swallows who had
already built their nests under the eaves of his
roof and had young ones. And Dab-Dab was
glad, too, to get back to the house she knew so
well—although there was a terrible lot of dusting
to be done, with cobwebs everywhere.

And after Jip had gone and shown his golden
collar to the conceited collie next-door, he came
back and began running round the garden like
a crazy thing, looking for the bones he had
buried long ago, and chasing the rats out of the
tool-shed; while Gub-Gub dug up the horseradish
which had grown three feet high in the
corner by the garden-wall.

And the Doctor went and saw the sailor who
had lent him the boat, and he bought two new
ships for him and a rubber-doll for his baby;
and he paid the grocer for the food he had lent
him for the journey to Africa. And he bought
another piano and put the white mice back in
it—because they said the bureau-drawer was
drafty.

Even when the Doctor had filled the old
money-box on the dresser-shelf, he still had a
lot of money left; and he had to get three more
money-boxes, just as big, to put the rest in.

"Money," he said, "is a terrible nuisance.
But it's nice not to have to worry."

"Yes," said Dab-Dab, who was toasting
muffins for his tea, "it is indeed!"

And when the Winter came again, and the
snow flew against the kitchen-window, the Doctor
and his animals would sit round the big,
warm fire after supper; and he would read aloud
to them out of his books.

But far away in Africa, where the monkeys
chattered in the palm-trees before they went to
bed under the big yellow moon, they would say
to one another,

"I wonder what The Good Man's doing now
—over there, in the Land of the White Men!
Do you think he ever will come back?"

And Polynesia would squeak out from the vines,

"I think he will—I guess he will—I hope he will!"

And then the crocodile would grunt up at
them from the black mud of the river,

"I'm SURE he will—Go to sleep!"