Then the man left the post office and the Doctor watched him go.
At the end of the first day John Dolittle wanted to leave the canoe in a safe place and finish the trip on foot. But the snake said they would need it further on,小游戏✌ where there was more water and many swamps to cross.
TEACHING BY MAIL
"Well,电脑😓 it's an animal of some kind,电脑🌰 isn't it?" said Jip. "But where's its head?" and he gazed down the long sloping back that stretched in a flat curve in front of them for a good thirty yards.
"Well,小游戏🛄" said the Jay,4399✉ "the story was handed down to me by my mother,小游戏♒ who heard it from my grandmother,连连看🐎 who got it from my great-grandmother,小游戏👔 and so on,4399🍒 way back to an ancestor of ours who lived in America in the fifteenth century. Our kind of birds in those days did not come across to this side of the Atlantic,电脑♻ neither summer nor winter. We used to spend from March to September in the Bermudas and the rest of the year in Venezuela. And when we made the autumn journey south we used to stop at the Bahama Islands to rest on the way.
Now,4399📶 one evening not long after the Golden Jays had gone west,小游戏👂 the Doctor was writing letters in the post office by the light of a candle. It was late and all the animals were fast asleep long ago. Presently while he wrote he heard a sound a long way off,电脑🌙 coming through the open window at his elbow. He put down his pen and listened."Well,电脑🍶 wouldn't you like to keep them,连连看💳 then?" asked the spoonbill. "I could get the children something else to play with,小游戏🚲 no doubt."
Now this particular stretch of water they were trying to cross happened to be a bad place for swimming. And after about a quarter of an hour Jip and the Doctor felt themselves being carried out to sea in the grip of a powerful current. They tried their hardest to get to the island. But without any success.
"Let's see what I can do,电脑😶" said Jip. And out of the canoe jumped another pearl fisherman.
Out in the open great banks of gray mist rolled and joined and separated as the wailing wind pushed them fretfully hither and thither over the face of the waters.
So they went down to the water's edge and asked several of the canoesmen to take them over to No-Man's-Land. But every one they asked got dreadfully frightened and refused to talk when the Doctor told them where he wanted to go. They wouldn't even let him borrow their canoes to go there by himself.
"All right,连连看🍵" said the Doctor,宠物😗 "I'll call on him with your compliments."
"All right,连连看👌" said the mouse. And he slipped down the rat hole.
Jip and Dab-Dab were still plotting to find some way to reach the Doctor. But there seemed to be nothing they could think of.
"Lor' bless us,4399⛎ Doctor,4399😚 but you do get yourself into some comical situations! Who would think to see John Dolittle,宠物🌔 M.D.,4399👦 heminent physician of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh,4399◼ bein' pulled through a mud swamp in darkest Africa by a couple of 'undred yards of fat worm! You've no idea how funny you look!""Wilkins levelled a pistol at the Doctor's head"
"I have no idea,电脑💡" said Dab-Dab. "But Speedy will know."
"'Where have you been?'"
"Lor' bless us!" muttered Cheapside. "What a wonderful piano-mover 'e would make to be sure! Great Carter Patterson! Does 'e think the Doctor's goin' to 'ang that on 'is watch-chain?"
As he arrived at the little group of straw houses he saw that there was some kind of a commotion going on. All the villagers were gathered about the Chief's hut; speeches were being made and everyone seemed in a great state of excitement. The old Chief himself was standing at the door,4399🈹 and when he saw his friend,连连看🌔 the Doctor,宠物🌒 approaching on the edge of the crowd,小游戏📮 he signaled him to come into the hut. This the Doctor did. And as soon as he was inside the Chief closed the door and began to tell him what the trouble was.