The cross-eyed Wilkins was still seated at the table,火炬😋 as Dab-Dab had described,火炬🍟 counting pearls. Two other men were asleep in bunks around the room. The Doctor swung open the door and jumped in. Instantly Wilkins sprang up from the table,之光🐎 snatched a pistol from his belt and leveled it at the Doctor's head.
"'Well,之光🏀 look here,火炬🎀' I said,火炬🚅 'I have an idea. Since your man can't work for himself,之光💣 suppose you and I go into the bone-hiring business.'
"Who's turn is it to give us a story now?" asked the Doctor,之光👸 when the supper things were cleared away the following evening.
"A never-ending stream of big birds"Once more,之光📞 with the guide in front,火炬🐎 but this time at a much better pace,火炬🐱 the party set off.
"Now,火炬😒 when we children grew up big enough to go off for ourselves our parents gave us all sorts of careful instructions about escaping cats and ferrets and weasels and dogs. But over poor me they shook their heads. They really felt that there was not much hope of my leading a peaceful life with white fur that could be seen a mile off.
Presently when he had undone the cord that tied his feet,火炬📜 John Dolittle stood up and gazed over the ocean. And there,火炬🈹 on the sky line,之光☁ he could just see the sails of Wilkins' schooner disappearing eastward.
"His spaniel,之光🐅 Spot,火炬💺 came up to him. And George,之光🦆 leaving his painting for a moment,火炬🐵 placed the spaniel beside the watering trough and flattened him out and told him to keep still. I could see that George's idea was to have him look as though he were asleep in the sun. George simply loved to paint animals asleep in the sun."I'll show you very shortly,火炬🚨" said John Dolittle. And he called Cheapside to him.
"'Where have you been?'"
"A rare Fantippo stamp"
"Oh,火炬🚑 dear!" sighed the duck. "Did anyone ever see a man who could find so many objections to getting rich? Who do they belong to,火炬🍄 then?"
"Well,之光📲 after you had set off in the canoe,火炬🔭" said the Skimmer,火炬🚐 "I and the thrush stopped on our way back here at the tree where he had lost the package. It was too dark then to hunt for it,火炬🌑 so we roosted in the tree all night,之光📆 intending to look in the morning. Just as dawn was breaking we saw this wretched squirrel here flirting about in the branches with an enormous pink pearl in his mouth. I at once pounced on him and held him down,火炬🌆 while the thrush took the pearl away from him. Then we made him tell us where he had hidden the other two. And after we had got all three of them we put the squirrel under arrest and brought him here."
One day when he was pulling out a loose tooth for a baby hippopotamus with his watch-chain,火炬🦉 Speedy-the-Skimmer turned up,火炬🔒 looking rather annoyed.
It was the sound of a seabird,火炬🚥 calling away out at sea. Now,之光💋 seabirds don't,火炬🐔 as a rule,火炬📓 call very much unless they are in great numbers. This call sounded like a single bird. The Doctor put his head through the window and looked out.
"Doctor,火炬🔮" panted the gull,火炬📟 "the Cape Stephen Light is out. I don't know what's the matter. It has never gone out before. We use it as a land-mark,火炬🎢 you know,之光😛 when we are flying after dark. The night's as black as ink. I'm afraid some ship will surely run into the cape. I thought I'd come and tell you."
"I suppose they get rather tired of it,之光🙀 poor fellows!" murmured the Doctor.
"Never have I been so furious with anyone in my life as I was with that old rat.
CHAPTER VI"Good,之光🐨" said the King. "My Majesty is listening. Proceed. Let me offer you a lollipop."
Now the cormorants did not know that war had broken out,之光🎨 nor anything about the Doctor's misfortune. And when the Emir's men came and took the pearl oysters they had fished up the birds supposed they were Nyam-Nyam's men and let them have them. However,火炬🉐 it happened,火炬🚑 luckily,火炬🙌 that this first load of oysters had only very small and almost worthless pearls in them.
"'Awful little,之光🚞' said the beggar. 'I've taken only twopence the whole day. I suppose the truth is I don't draw good enough.'
"Oh,之光🐘 bother your feet!" cried Dab-Dab. "Let the Doctor get on with his story."
The turtle drank it down. And in a minute or two he said he felt much better and could now move his legs freely without pain.