“Are you awake?” said a high silvery voice at my elbow.
I sprang up as though some one had stuck a pin in me. And there,perched at the very end of my raft, her beautiful golden tail glowingdimly in the starlight, sat Miranda, the Purple Bird-of-Paradise!
Never have I been so glad to see any one in my life. I almost fell intothe water as I leapt to hug her.
“I didn’t want to wake you,” said she. “I guessed you must be tiredafter all you’ve been through—Don’t squash the life out of me, boy: I’mnot a stuffed duck, you know.”
“Oh, Miranda, you dear old thing,” said I, “I’m so glad to see you.Tell me, where is the Doctor? Is he alive?”
“Of course he’s alive—and it’s my firm belief he always will be. He’sover there, about forty miles to the westward.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“He’s sitting on the other half of the _Curlew_ shaving himself—or hewas, when I left him.”
“Well, thank Heaven he’s alive!” said I—“And Bumpo—and the animals, arethey all right?”
“Yes, they’re with him. Your ship broke in half in the storm. TheDoctor had tied you down when he found you stunned. And the part youwere on got separated and floated away. Golly, it _was_ a storm! Onehas to be a gull or an albatross to stand that sort of weather. I hadbeen watching for the Doctor for three weeks, from a cliff-top; butlast night I had to take refuge in a cave to keep my tail-feathers fromblowing out. As soon as I found the Doctor, he sent me off with someporpoises to help us in our search. There had been quite a gatheringof sea-birds waiting to greet the Doctor; but the rough weather sort ofbroke up the arrangements that had been made to welcome him properly.It was the petrel that first gave us the tip where you were.”
“Well, but how can I get to the Doctor, Miranda?—I haven’t any oars.”
“Get to him!—Why, you’re going to him now. Look behind you.”
I turned around. The moon was just rising on the sea’s edge. And I nowsaw that my raft was moving through the water, but so gently that I hadnot noticed it before.
“What’s moving us?” I asked.
“The porpoises,” said Miranda.
I went to the back of the raft and looked down into the water. And justbelow the surface I could see the dim forms of four big porpoises,their sleek skins glinting in the moonlight, pushing at the raft withtheir noses.
“They’re old friends of the Doctor’s,” said Miranda. “They’d doanything for John Dolittle. We should see his party soon now. We’repretty near the place I left them—Yes, there they are! See that darkshape?—No, more to the right of where you’re looking. Can’t youmake out the figure of the black man standing against the sky?—NowChee-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 fromsomewhere in the murky dusk I heard Bumpo singing his African comicsongs with the full force of his enormous voice. And in a little, bypeering and peering in the direction of the sound, I at last made out adim 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 afew minutes later the two halves of our brave little ruined ship bumpedgently 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 topmunching ship’s biscuit.
But close down to the edge of the water, using the sea’s calm surfacefor a mirror and a piece of broken bottle for a razor, John Dolittlewas 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 theship on to theirs. Bumpo brought me a wonderful drink of fresh waterwhich he drew from a barrel; and Chee-Chee and Polynesia stood aroundme feeding me ship’s biscuit.
But it was the sight of the Doctor’s smiling face—just knowing that Iwas with him once again—that cheered me more than anything else. As Iwatched him carefully wipe his glass razor and put it away for futureuse, I could not help comparing him in my mind with the Stormy Petrel.Indeed the vast strange knowledge which he had gained from his speechand friendship with animals had brought him the power to do thingswhich no other human being would dare to try. Like the petrel, he couldapparently play with the sea in all her moods. It was no wonder thatmany of the ignorant savage peoples among whom he passed in his voyagesmade statues of him showing him as half a fish, half a bird, and halfa man. And ridiculous though it was, I could quite understand whatMiranda meant when she said she firmly believed that he could neverdie. Just to be with him gave you a wonderful feeling of comfort andsafety.
Except for his appearance (his clothes were crumpled and damp and hisbattered high hat was stained with salt water) that storm which hadso terrified me had disturbed him no more than getting stuck on themud-bank in Puddleby River.
Politely thanking Miranda for getting me so quickly, he asked herif she would now go ahead of us and show us the way to SpidermonkeyIsland. Next, he gave orders to the porpoises to leave my old piece ofthe ship and push the bigger half wherever the Bird-of-Paradise shouldlead us.
How much he had lost in the wreck besides his razor I did notknow—everything, most likely, together with all the money he had savedup to buy the ship with. And still he was smiling as though he wantedfor nothing in the world. The only things he had saved, as far asI could see—beyond the barrel of water and bag of biscuit—were hisprecious note-books. These, I saw when he stood up, he had strappedaround his waist with yards and yards of twine. He was, as old MatthewMugg used to say, a great man. He was unbelievable.
And now for three days we continued our journey slowly butsteadily—southward.
The only inconvenience we suffered from was the cold. This seemedto increase as we went forward. The Doctor said that the island,disturbed from its usual paths by the great gale, had evidently driftedfurther South than it had ever been before.
On the third night poor Miranda came back to us nearly frozen. She toldthe Doctor that in the morning we would find the island quite close tous, though we couldn’t see it now as it was a misty dark night. Shesaid that she must hurry back at once to a warmer climate; and that shewould visit the Doctor in Puddleby next August as usual.
“Don’t forget, Miranda,” said John Dolittle, “if you should hearanything of what happened to Long Arrow, to get word to me.”
The Bird-of-Paradise assured him she would. And after the Doctor hadthanked her again and again for all that she had done for us, shewished 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 itwas old Polynesia who first shouted that she could see palm-trees andmountain tops.
With the growing light it became plain to all of us: a long island withhigh rocky mountains in the middle—and so near to us that you couldalmost throw your hat upon the shore.
The porpoises gave us one last push and our strange-looking craftbumped gently on a low beach. Then, thanking our lucky stars fora chance to stretch our cramped legs, we all bundled off on to theland—the first land, even though it was floating land, that we hadtrodden for six weeks. What a thrill I felt as I realized thatSpidermonkey Island, the little spot in the atlas which my pencil hadtouched, lay at last beneath my feet!
When the light increased still further we noticed that the palms andgrasses of the island seemed withered and almost dead. The Doctorsaid that it must be on account of the cold that the island was nowsuffering 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 saidthat he didn’t think so, not for the present—nor the raft either, headded; for it was already beginning to fall to pieces and could notfloat much longer.
As we were preparing to go inland and explore the island, we suddenlynoticed a whole band of Red Indians watching us with great curiosityfrom among the trees. The Doctor went forward to talk to them. Buthe could not make them understand. He tried by signs to show themthat he had come on a friendly visit. The Indians didn’t seem to likeus however. They had bows and arrows and long hunting spears, withstone points, in their hands; and they made signs back to the Doctorto 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 veryuncomfortable situation.
At last the Doctor made them understand that he only wanted to see theisland all over and that then he would go away—though how he meant todo it, with no boat to sail in, was more than I could imagine.
While they were talking among themselves another Indianarrived—apparently with a message that they were wanted in someother part of the island. Because presently, shaking their spearsthreateningly at us, they went off with the newcomer.
“What discourteous pagans!” said Bumpo. “Did you ever see suchinhospitability?—Never even asked us if we’d had breakfast, thebenighted bounders!”
“Sh! They’re going off to their village,” said Polynesia. “I’ll betthere’s a village on the other side of those mountains. If you take myadvice, Doctor, you’ll get away from this beach while their backs areturned. Let us go up into the higher land for the present—some placewhere they won’t know where we are. They may grow friendlier whenthey see we mean no harm. They have honest, open faces and look likea decent crowd to me. They’re just ignorant—probably never saw whitefolks before.”
So, feeling a little bit discouraged by our first reception, we movedoff 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 andsomewhat hard to get through. On Polynesia’s advice, we kept away fromall paths and trails, feeling it best to avoid meeting any Indians forthe present.
But she and Chee-Chee were good guides and splendid jungle-hunters; andthe two of them set to work at once looking for food for us. In a veryshort space of time they had found quite a number of different fruitsand nuts which made excellent eating, though none of us knew the namesof any of them. We discovered a nice clean stream of good water whichcame down from the mountains; so we were supplied with something todrink as well.
We followed the stream up towards the heights. And presently we came toparts where the woods were thinner and the ground rocky and steep. Herewe could get glimpses of wonderful views all over the island, with theblue sea beyond.
While we were admiring one of these the Doctor suddenly said, “Sh!—AJabizri!—Don’t you hear it?”
We listened and heard, somewhere in the air about us, anextraordinarily musical hum—like a bee, but not just one note. This humrose and fell, up and down—almost like some one singing.
“No other insect but the Jabizri beetle hums like that,” said theDoctor. “I wonder where he is—quite near, by the sound—flying among thetrees probably. Oh, if I only had my butterfly-net! Why didn’t I thinkto strap that around my waist too. Confound the storm: I may miss thechance of a lifetime now of getting the rarest beetle in the world—Ohlook! There he goes!”
A huge beetle, easily three inches long I should say, suddenly flew byour noses. The Doctor got frightfully excited. He took off his hat touse as a net, swooped at the beetle and caught it. He nearly fell downa precipice on to the rocks below in his wild hurry, but that didn’tbother him in the least. He knelt down, chortling, upon the groundwith the Jabizri safe under his hat. From his pocket he brought out aglass-topped box, and into this he very skilfully made the beetle walkfrom under the rim of the hat. Then he rose up, happy as a child, toexamine 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 giveall he has to be in my shoes to-day,” said the Doctor—“Hulloa! ThisJabizri’s got something on his leg—Doesn’t look like mud. I wonder whatit is.”
He took the beetle carefully out of the box and held it by its backin his fingers, where it waved its six legs slowly in the air. We allcrowded about him peering at it. Rolled around the middle section ofits right foreleg was something that looked like a thin dried leaf. Itwas bound on very neatly with strong spider-web.
It was marvelous to see how John Dolittle with his fat heavy fingersundid that cobweb cord and unrolled the leaf, whole, without tearing itor 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 leafwas covered with signs and pictures, drawn so tiny that you almostneeded a magnifying-glass to tell what they were. Some of the signs wecouldn’t make out at all; but nearly all of the pictures were quiteplain, figures of men and mountains mostly. The whole was done in acurious sort of brown ink.
For several moments there was a dead silence while we all stared atthe leaf, fascinated and mystified.
“I think this is written in blood,” said the Doctor at last. “Itturns that color when it’s dry. Somebody pricked his finger to makethese pictures. It’s an old dodge when you’re short of ink—but highlyunsanitary—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 gotit from.”
“But what is it?” I asked—“Rows of little pictures and signs. What doyou make of it, Doctor?”
“It’s a letter,” he said—“a picture letter. All these little things puttogether mean a message—But why give a message to a beetle to carry—andto a Jabizri, the rarest beetle in the world?—What an extraordinarything!”
Then he fell to muttering over the pictures.
“I wonder what it means: men walking up a mountain; men walking intoa hole in a mountain; a mountain falling down—it’s a good drawing,that; men pointing to their open mouths; bars—prison-bars, perhaps; menpraying; men lying down—they look as though they might be sick; andlast of all, just a mountain—a peculiar-shaped mountain.”
All of a sudden the Doctor looked up sharply at me, a wonderful smileof 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 hisletter 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!—Apicture-letter from Long Arrow. For pictures are the only writing thathe knows.”
“Yes, but who is the letter to?” I asked.
“It’s to me very likely. Miranda had told him, I know, years ago, thatsome day I meant to come here. But if not for me, then it’s for any onewho 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 goodto you now you’ve got it.”
“Yes, it is,” he said, “because, look, I can read it now. Firstpicture: 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 formedicine-plants or mosses; a mountain falling down—some hanging rocksmust have slipped and trapped them, imprisoned them in the cave. Andthis was the only living creature that could carry a message for themto the outside world—a beetle, who could _burrow_ his way into the openair. Of course it was only a slim chance that the beetle would be evercaught and the letter read. But it _was_ a chance; and when men are ingreat danger they grab at any straw of hope.... All right. Now look atthe next picture: men pointing to their open mouth
s—they are hungry;men praying—begging any one who finds this letter to come to theirassistance; 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 putthe letter between the leaves. His hands were trembling with haste andagitation.
“Come on!” he cried—“up the mountain—all of you. There’s not a momentto lose. Bumpo, bring the water and nuts with you. Heaven only knowshow long they’ve been pining underground. Let’s hope and pray we’re nottoo late!”
“But where are you going to look?” I asked. “Miranda said the islandwas a hundred miles long and the mountains seem to run all the way downthe centre of it.”
“Didn’t you see the last picture?” he said, grabbing up his hat fromthe ground and cramming it on his head. “It was an oddly shapedmountain—looked like a hawk’s head. Well, there’s where he is—if he’sstill alive. First thing for us to do, is to get up on a high peak andlook around the island for a mountain shaped like a hawks’ head—Justto think of it! There’s a chance of my meeting Long Arrow, the son ofGolden Arrow, after all!—Come on! Hurry! To delay may mean death to thegreatest naturalist ever born!”
_THE SEVENTH CHAPTER_
HAWK’S-HEAD MOUNTAIN
WE all agreed afterwards that none of us had ever worked so hard in ourlives before as we did that day. For my part, I know I was often on thepoint of dropping exhausted with fatigue; but I just kept on going—likea machine—determined that, whatever happened, _I_ would not be thefirst to give up.