James and the Giant Peach (8 page)

In a flash, everybody was up on top.

‘Oh, isn’t it beautiful!’ they cried.

‘What a marvellous feeling!’

‘Good-bye, sharks!’

‘Oh, boy, this is the way to travel!’

Miss Spider, who was literally squealing with excitement, grabbed the Centipede by the waist and the two of them started dancing round and round the peach stem together. The Earthworm stood up on his tail and did a sort of wriggle of joy all by himself. The Old-Green-Grasshopper kept hopping higher and higher in the air. The Ladybird rushed over and shook James warmly by the hand. The Glow-worm, who at the best of times was a very shy and silent creature, sat glowing with pleasure near the tunnel entrance. Even the Silkworm, looking white and thin and completely exhausted, came creeping out of the tunnel to watch this miraculous ascent.

Up and up they went, and soon they were as high as the top of a church steeple above the ocean.

‘I‘m a bit worried about the peach,’ James said to the others as soon as all the dancing and the shouting had stopped. ‘I wonder how much damage those sharks have done to it underneath. It’s quite impossible to tell from up here.’

‘Why don’t I go over the side and make an inspection?’ Miss Spider said. ‘It’ll be no trouble at
all, I assure you.’ And without waiting for an answer, she quickly produced a length of silk thread and attached the end of it to the peach stem. ‘I’ll be back in a jiffy,’ she said, and then she walked calmly over to the edge of the peach and jumped off, paying out the thread behind her as she fell.

The others crowded anxiously around the place where she had gone over.

‘Wouldn’t it be dreadful if the thread broke,’ the Ladybird said.

There was a rather long silence.

‘Are you all right, Miss Spider?’ shouted the Old-Green-Grasshopper.

‘Yes, thank you!’ her voice answered from below. ‘I‘m coming up now!’ And up she came, climbing foot over foot up the silk thread, and at the same time tucking the thread back cleverly into her body as she climbed past it.

‘Is it
awful
?’ they asked her. ‘Is it all eaten away? Are there great holes in it everywhere?’

Miss Spider clambered back on to the deck with a pleased but also a rather puzzled look on her face. ‘You won’t believe this,’ she said, ‘but actually there’s hardly any damage down there at all! The peach is almost untouched! There are just a few tiny pieces out of it here and there, but nothing more.’

‘You must be mistaken,’ James told her.

‘Of course she’s mistaken!’ the Centipede said.

‘I promise you I‘m not,’ Miss Spider answered.

‘But there were hundreds of sharks around us!’

‘They churned the water into a froth!’

‘We saw their great mouths opening and shutting!’

‘I don’t care what you saw,’ Miss Spider answered. ‘They certainly didn’t do much damage to the peach.’

‘Then why did we start sinking?’ the Centipede asked.

‘Perhaps we
didn
’
t
start sinking,’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper suggested. ‘Perhaps we were all so frightened that we simply imagined it.’

This, in point of fact, was closer to the truth than any of them knew. A shark, you see, has an extremely long sharp nose, and its mouth is set very awkwardly underneath its face and a long way back. This makes it more or less impossible for it to get its teeth into a vast smooth curving surface such as the side of a peach. Even if the creature turns on to its back it still can’t do it, because the nose always gets in the way. If you have ever seen a small dog trying to get its teeth into an enormous ball, then you will be able to imagine roughly how it was with the sharks and the peach.

‘It must have been some kind of magic,’ the Ladybird said. ‘The holes must have healed up by themselves.’

‘Oh, look! There’s a ship below us!’ shouted James.

Everybody rushed to the side and peered over. None of them had ever seen a ship before.

‘It looks like a big one.’

‘It’s got three funnels.’

‘You can even see the people on the decks!’

‘Let’s wave to them. Do you think they can see
us
?’

Neither James nor any of the others knew it, but the ship that was now passing beneath them was actually the
Queen Mary
sailing out of the English Channel on her way to America. And on the bridge of the
Queen Mary
, the astonished Captain was standing with a group of his officers, all of them gaping at the great round ball hovering overhead.

‘I don’t like it,’ the Captain said.

‘Nor do I,’ said the First Officer.

‘Do you think it’s following us?’ said the Second Officer.

‘I tell you I don’t like it,’ muttered the Captain.

‘It could be dangerous,’ the First Officer said.

‘That’s it!’ cried the Captain. ‘It’s a secret weapon! Holy cats! Send a message to the Queen at once! The country must be warned! And give me ray telescope.’

The First Officer handed the telescope to the Captain. The Captain put it to his eye.

‘There’s birds everywhere!’ he cried. ‘The whole sky is teeming with birds! What in the world are
they
doing? And wait! Wait a second! There are
people
on it! I can see them moving! There’s a – a – do I have this darned thing focused right? It looks like a little boy in short trousers! Yes, I can distinctly see a little boy in short trousers standing up there! And there’s a – there’s a – there’s a – a – a – a sort of
giant ladybird
!’

‘Now just a minute, Captain!’ the First Officer said.

‘And a
colossal green grasshopper
!’

‘Captain!’ the First Officer said sharply. ‘Captain, please!’

‘And a
mammoth spider
!’

‘Oh dear, he’s been at the whisky again,’ whispered the Second Officer.

‘And an
enormous – a simply enormous centipede
!’ screamed the Captain.

‘Call the Ship’s Doctor,’ the First Officer said. ‘Our Captain is not well.’

A moment later, the great round ball disappeared into a cloud, and the people on the ship never saw it again.

But up on the peach itself, everyone was still happy and excited.

‘I wonder where we’ll finish up this time,’ the Earthworm said.

‘Who cares?’ they answered. ‘Seagulls always go back to the land sooner or later.’

Up and up they went, high above the highest clouds, the peach swaying gently from side to side as it floated along.

‘Wouldn’t this be a perfect time for a little music?’ the Ladybird asked. ‘How about it, Old Grasshopper?’

‘With pleasure, dear lady,’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper answered, bowing from the waist.

‘Oh, hooray! He’s going to play for us!’ they cried, and immediately the whole company sat themselves down in a circle around the Old Green Musician – and the concert began.

From the moment that the first note was struck, the audience became completely spellbound. And as for James, never had he heard such beautiful music as this! In the garden at home on summer evenings, he had listened many times to the sound of grasshoppers chirping in the grass, and he had always liked the noise that they made. But this was a different kind of noise altogether. This was real music – chords, harmonies, tunes, and all the rest of it.

And what a wonderful instrument the Old-Green-Grasshopper
was playing upon. It was like a violin! It was almost exactly as though he were playing upon a violin!

The bow of the violin, the part that moved, was his back leg. The strings of the violin, the part that made the sound, was the edge of his wing.

He was using only the top of his back leg (the thigh), and he was stroking this up and down against the edge of his wing with incredible skill, sometimes slowly, sometimes fast, but always with the same easy flowing action. It was precisely the way a clever violinist would have used his bow; and the music came pouring out and filled the whole blue sky around them with magic melodies.

When the first part was finished, everyone clapped madly, and Miss Spider stood up and shouted, ‘Bravo! Encore! Give us some more!’

‘Did you like that, James?’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper asked, smiling at the small boy.

‘Oh, I loved it!’ James answered. ‘It was beautiful! It was as though you had a real violin in your hands!’

‘A
real
violin!’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper cried. ‘Good heavens, I like that! My dear boy, I
am
a real violin! It is a part of my own body!’

‘But do
all
grasshoppers play their music on violins, the same way as you do?’ James asked him.

‘No,’ he answered, ‘not all. If you want to know, I happen to be a “short-horned” grasshopper. I have two short feelers coming out of my head. Can you see them? There they are. They are quite short, aren’t they? That’s why they call me a
“short-horn”. And we “short-horns” are the only ones who play our music in the violin style, using a bow. My “long-horned” relatives, the ones who have long curvy feelers coming out of their heads, make their music simply by rubbing the edges of their two top wings together. They are not violinists, they are wing-rubbers. And a rather inferior noise these wing-rubbers produce, too, if I may say so. It sounds more like a banjo than a fiddle.’

‘How fascinating this all is!’ cried James. ‘And to think that up until now I had never even
wondered
how a grasshopper made his sounds.’

‘My dear young fellow,’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper said gently, ‘there are a whole lot of things in this world of ours that you haven’t started wondering about yet. Where, for example, do you think that I keep my ears?’

‘Your ears? Why, in your head, of course.’

Everyone burst out laughing.

‘You mean you don’t even know
that
?’ cried the Centipede.

‘Try again,’ said the Old-Green-Grasshopper, smiling at James.

‘You can’t possibly keep them anywhere else?’

‘Oh, can’t I?’

‘Well – I give up. Where
do
you keep them?’

‘Right here,’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper said. ‘One on each side of my tummy.’

‘It’s not true!’

‘Of course it’s true. What’s so peculiar about that? You ought to see where my cousins the crickets and the katydids keep theirs.’

‘Where do they keep them?’

‘In their legs. One in each front leg, just below the knee.’

‘You mean you didn’t know that either?’ the Centipede said scornfully.

‘You’re joking,’ James said. ‘Nobody could possibly have his ears in his legs.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because… because it’s ridiculous, that’s why.’

‘You know what I think is ridiculous?’ the Centipede said, grinning away as usual. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but
I
think it is ridiculous to have ears on the sides of one’s head. It certainly
looks
ridiculous. You ought to take a peek in the mirror some day and see for yourself.’

‘Pest!’ cried the Earthworm. ‘Why must you always be so rude and rambunctious to everyone? You ought to apologize to James at once.’

James didn’t want the Earthworm and the Centipede to get into another argument, so he said quickly to the Earthworm, ‘Tell me, do
you
play any kind of music?’

‘No, but I do
other
things, some of which are really quite
extraordinary
’ the Earthworm said, brightening.

‘Such as what?’ asked James.

‘Well,’ the Earthworm said. ‘Next time you stand in a field or in a garden and look around you, then just remember this: that every grain of soil upon the surface of the land, every tiny little bit of soil that you can see has actually passed through the body of an Earthworm during the last few years! Isn’t that wonderful?’

‘It’s not possible!’ said James.

‘My dear boy, it’s a fact.’

‘You mean you actually
swallow
soil?’

‘Like mad,’ the Earthworm said proudly. ‘
In
one end and
out
the other.’

‘But what’s the point?’

‘What do you mean, what’s the point?’

‘Why do you do it?’

‘We do it for the farmers. It makes the soil nice and light and crumbly so that things will grow well in it. If you really want to know, the farmers couldn’t do without us. We are essential. We are vital. So it is only natural that the farmer should love us. He loves us even more, I believe, than he loves the Ladybird.’

‘The Ladybird!’ said James, turning to look at her. ‘Do they love you, too?’

‘I am told that they do,’ the Ladybird answered modestly, blushing all over. ‘In fact, I understand that in some places the farmers love us so much that they go out and buy live Ladybirds by the sackful and take them home and set them free in their fields. They are very pleased when they have lots of Ladybirds in their fields.’

‘But why?’ James asked.

‘Because we gobble up all the nasty little insects that are gobbling up all the farmer’s crops. It helps enormously, and we ourselves don’t charge a penny for our services.’

‘I think you’re wonderful,’ James told her. ‘Can I ask you one special question?’

‘Please do.’

‘Well, is it really true that I can tell how old a Ladybird is by counting her spots?’

‘Oh no, that’s just a children’s story,’ the Ladybird said. ‘We never change our spots. Some of us, of course, are born with more spots than others, but we never change them. The number of spots that a Ladybird has is simply a way of showing which branch of the family she belongs to. I, for example, as you can see for yourself, am a Nine-Spotted Ladybird. I am very lucky. It is a fine thing to be.’

‘It is, indeed,’ said James, gazing at the beautiful scarlet shell with the nine black spots on it.

‘On the other hand,’ the Ladybird went on, ’some of my less fortunate relatives have no more than two spots altogether on their shells! Can you imagine that? They are called Two-Spotted Ladybirds, and very common and ill-mannered they are, I regret to say. And then, of course, you have the Five-Spotted Ladybirds as well. They are much nicer than the Two-Spotted ones, although I myself find them a trifle too saucy for my taste.’

‘But they are all of them loved?’ said James.

‘Yes,’ the Ladybird answered quietly. ‘They are all of them loved.’

‘It seems that almost
everyone
around here is loved!’ said James. ‘How nice this is!’

‘Not me!’ cried the Centipede happily. ‘I am a pest and I‘m proud of it! Oh, I am such a shocking dreadful pest!’

‘Hear, hear,’ the Earthworm said.

‘But what about you, Miss Spider?’ asked James. ‘Aren’t you also much loved in the world?’

‘Alas, no,’ Miss Spider answered, sighing long and loud. ‘I am not loved at all. And yet I do nothing but good. All day long I catch flies and mosquitoes in my webs. I am a decent person.’

‘I know you are,’ said James.

‘It is very unfair the way we Spiders are treated,’ Miss Spider went on. ‘Why, only last week your own horrible Aunt Sponge flushed my poor dear father down the plug-hole in the bathtub.’

‘Oh, how awful!’ cried James.

‘I watched the whole thing from a corner up in the ceiling,’ Miss Spider murmured. ‘It was ghastly.
We never saw him again.’ A large tear rolled down her cheek and fell with a splash on the floor.

‘But is it not very unlucky to kill a spider?’ James inquired, looking around at the others.

‘Of course it’s unlucky to kill a spider!’ shouted the Centipede. ‘It’s about the unluckiest thing anyone can do. Look what happened to Aunt Sponge after she’d done that!
Bump!
We all felt it, didn’t we, as the peach went over her? Oh, what a lovely bump that must have been for you, Miss Spider!’

‘It was very satisfactory,’ Miss Spider answered. Will you sing us a song about it, please?’

So the Centipede did.

‘Aunt Sponge was terrifically fat
,

And tremendously flabby at that
.

Her tummy and waist

Were as soggy as paste –

It was worse on the place where she sat!

So she said, “I must make myself flat
.

I must make myself sleek as a cat
.

I shall do without dinner

To make myself thinner.”

But along came the peach!

Oh, the beautiful peach!

And made her far thinner than that!’

‘That was very nice,’ Miss Spider said. ‘Now sing one about Aunt Spiker.’

‘With pleasure,’ the Centipede answered, grinning:

‘Aunt Spiker was thin as a wire
,

And dry as a bone, only drier
.

She was so long and thin

If you carried her in

You could use her for poking the fire!

‘ “I must do something quickly,” she frowned
.

‘I want
FAT.
I want pound upon pound!

I must eat lots and lots

Of marshmallows and chocs

Till I start bulging out all around.”

‘ “Ah, yes,” she announced, “I have sworn

That I’ll alter my figure by dawn!”

Cried the peach with a snigger
,

“I’LL
alter your figure –”

And ironed her out on the lawn!’

Everybody clapped and called out for more songs from the Centipede, who at once launched into his favourite song of all:

‘Once upon a time

When pigs were swine

And monkeys chewed tobacco

And hens took snuff

To make themselves tough

And the ducks said quack -quack -quacko
,

And porcupines

Drank fiery wines

And goats ate tapioca

And Old Mother Hubbard

Got stuck in the c –’

‘Look out, Centipede!’ cried James. ‘Look out!’