炫影灰
2023-06-03 15:30:14 作者：
"Well,🚚 I was always adventurous by nature. And,🍐 plucking up my courage,💷 I scrambled up the vat,🚵 on to the edge of it. It was awful dark and I could just see the dye,🅰 glimmering murky and dim,🏬 far down inside.
Now,⛅ one day,🍡 very early in the morning,🚑 when the Doctor was lying in bed,👇 wondering what he could do about the Foreign Mail Service,🚢 Dab-Dab and Jip brought him in his breakfast on a tray and told him there was a swallow outside who wanted to give him a message from Speedy-the-Skimmer. John Dolittle had the swallow brought in and the little bird sat on the foot of his bed while he ate his breakfast.
"'Well,🔶 look here,🚶' I said,🌛 'I have an idea. Since your man can't work for himself,🍐 suppose you and I go into the bone-hiring business.'
In a moment he was clattering down the stairs.
"Well,📇 just wait until I have your hands free,🔪" said the white mouse. "Then I'll see what can be done. There! I've bitten through one strand. Now wiggle your hands a bit and you can undo the whole rope."
"The houseboat post office of No-Man's-Land"
"Yes,🌽 that's so,🍜" said John Dolittle.
And she went off to fetch the Skimmer.
"It's a bit dizzy still,👨" said the Doctor,👏 working at the rope about his ankles. "But I'll be all right in a little."
"Is it a good story?" asked Gub-Gub.
They reached Nyam-Nyam's village about six o'clock in the evening and the old chief prepared a supper for his guests. There was very little to eat at it,💼 however. And the Doctor was again reminded how poor these people were.
CHAPTER VIII
"By the way,👻 what really became of her?" asked the Doctor. "The natives believe she was turned into a dragon,📎 you know."
At last they found one very old boatman who loved chatting so much that,🙏 although he got terribly scared when John Dolittle mentioned No-Man's-Land,📇 he finally told the Doctor the reason for all this extraordinary behavior.
"'I am the oldest rat in the town and I know a great deal. But,🚀 tell me,🌻 why do you come here into the dyeing shed?'
Inside the prison the Doctor was swinging his arms to get the stiffness out of them.
And the Doctor wrote back:
CHAPTER I
And when Dab-Dab and Jip came to take away the tray they found the Doctor shaving. He was peering into a looking glass,🚏 holding the end of his nose and muttering to himself:
"Thank you,😣" said the gull. "I am feeling kind of peckish myself. You are very kind. This is the first time I've eaten ship's food inside a ship."
"Holy smoke!" cried the Captain. "We've hit him! Look,🏩 Bones is flying the signal of surrender!"
The Doctor said afterward that he had never seen a bird who reminded him so much of a sailor. He had the rolling,🐙 straddling walk of a seafaring man; he smelt strongly of fish; and whenever he spoke of the weather he had an odd trick of squinting up at the sky with his one eye,👿 the way old sailors often do.
"Well,🅱 Jip,🍩" said he with a sigh,💰 "we now have a real working post office."
About noon the Doctor started out a second time upon his holiday trip and as Gub-Gub,📍 Jip and the white mouse begged to be taken along,🚅 the canoe was well loaded.
"By the way,🐰 what really became of her?" asked the Doctor. "The natives believe she was turned into a dragon,🐜 you know."
So Dab-Dab went off upon her errand. And in the meantime the Doctor talked and chatted with various sea bird leaders who had already made his acquaintance at the Great Conference in the hollow of No-Man's-Land. These kept coming up to him,💒 anxious to show off before their fellows the fact that they knew the great man personally. And once more the Doctor's notebook was kept busy with new discoveries to be jotted down about the carriage of mail by birds that live upon the sea.
NO-MAN'S-LAND
