The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (19 page)

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.

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.

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 skillfully 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!"