Read Online The Story of Doctor Dolittle: Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts Never Before Printed by Hugh Lofting - Free Book Online

Woof—oo—WOOF!"
Then he barked, loud, and woke himself up with
a surprised look on his face.
    "See!" cried Dab-Dab. "That boat is nearer now.
You can count its three big sails—all red.
Whoever it is, they are coming after us....
I wonder who they are."
    "They are bad sailors," said Jip; "and their
ship is very swift. They are surely the pirates
of Barbary."
    "Well, we must put up more sails on our
boat," said the Doctor, "so we can go faster and
get away from them. Run downstairs, Jip, and
fetch me all the sails you see."
    The dog hurried downstairs and dragged up
every sail he could find.
    But even when all these were put up on the
masts to catch the wind, the boat did not go
nearly as fast as the pirates'—which kept coming
on behind, closer and closer.
    "This is a poor ship the Prince gave us," said
Gub-Gub, the pig—"the slowest he could find,
I should think. Might as well try to win a race
in a soup-tureen as hope to get away from them
in this old barge. Look how near they are now!
—You can see the mustaches on the faces of the
men—six of them. What are we going to do?"
    Then the Doctor asked Dab-Dab to fly up and
tell the swallows that pirates were coming after
them in a swift ship, and what should he do
about it.
    When the swallows heard this, they all came
down on to the Doctor's ship; and they told him
to unravel some pieces of long rope and make
them into a lot of thin strings as quickly as he
could. Then the ends of these strings were tied
on to the front of the ship; and the swallows
took hold of the strings with their feet and flew
off, pulling the boat along.
    And although swallows are not very strong
when only one or two are by themselves, it is
different when there are a great lot of them
together. And there, tied to the Doctor's ship,
were a thousand strings; and two thousand
swallows were pulling on each string—all terribly
swift fliers.
    And in a moment the Doctor found himself
traveling so fast he had to hold his hat on with
both hands; for he felt as though the ship itself
were flying through waves that frothed and
boiled with speed.
    And all the animals on the ship began to
laugh and dance about in the rushing air, for
when they looked back at the pirates' ship, they
could see that it was growing smaller now,
instead of bigger. The red sails were being left
far, far behind.

The Fourteenth Chapter
— The Rats' Warning
*
    DRAGGING a ship through the sea is hard work. And after
two or three hours the swallows began to get tired in the
wings and short of breath. Then they sent a message
down to the Doctor to say that they would have
to take a rest soon; and that they would pull the
boat over to an island not far off, and hide it in
a deep bay till they had got breath enough to go on.
    And presently the Doctor saw the island they
had spoken of. It had a very beautiful, high,
green mountain in the middle of it.
    When the ship had sailed safely into the bay
where it could not be seen from the open sea,
the Doctor said he would get off on to the island
to look for water—because there was none left
to drink on his ship. And he told all the animals
to get out too and romp on the grass to
stretch their legs.
    Now as they were getting off, the Doctor
noticed that a whole lot of rats were coming up
from downstairs and leaving the ship as well.
Jip started to run after them, because chasing
rats had always been his favorite game. But
the Doctor told him to stop.
    And one big black rat, who seemed to want
to say something to the Doctor, now crept forward
timidly along the rail, watching the dog
out of the corner of his eye. And after he had
coughed nervously two or three times, and
cleaned his whiskers and wiped his mouth, he
said,
    "Ahem—er—you know of course that all
ships have rats in them, Doctor, do you not?"
    And the Doctor said, "Yes."
    "And you have heard that rats always leave
a sinking ship?"
    "Yes," said the Doctor—"so I've been told."
    "People," said the rat, "always speak of it
with