Chapter 5
Sailing homeward, the Doctor’s ship had to pass the coast of Barbary. This coast is the seashore of the Great Desert. It is a wild, lonely place—all sand and stones. And it was here that the Barbary pirates lived.
These pirates, a bad lot of men, used to wait for sailors to be shipwrecked on their shores. And often, if they saw a boat passing, they would come out in their fast sailing-ships and chase it. When they caught a boat like this at sea, they would steal everything on it; and after they had taken the people off they would sink the ship and sail back to Barbary singing songs and feeling proud of the mischief they had done. Then they used to make the people they had caught write home to their friends for money. And if the friends sent no money, the pirates often threw the people into the sea.
Now one sunshiny day the Doctor and Dab-Dab were walking up and down on the ship for exercise; a nice fresh wind was blowing the boat along, and everybody was happy. Presently Dab-Dab saw the sail of another ship a long way behind them on the edge of the sea. It was a red sail.
“I don’t like the look of that sail,” said Dab-Dab. “I have a feeling it isn’t a friendly ship. I am afraid there is more trouble coming to us.”
Jip, who was lying near taking a nap in the sun, began to growl and talk in his sleep.
“I smell roast beef cooking,” he mumbled—”underdone roast beef—with brown gravy over it.”
“Good gracious!” cried the Doctor. “What’s the matter with the dog? Is he smelling in his sleep—as well as talking?”
“I suppose he is,” said Dab-Dab. “All dogs can smell in their sleep.”
“But what is he smelling?” asked the Doctor.
“There is no roast beef cooking on our ship.” “No,” said Dab-Dab. “The roast beef must be on that other ship over there.”
“But that’s ten miles away,” said the Doctor. “He couldn’t smell that far surely!”
“Oh, yes, he could,” said Dab-Dab. “You ask him.”
Then Jip, still fast asleep, began to growl again and his lip curled up angrily, showing his clean, white teeth.
“I smell bad men,” he growled—”the worst men I ever smelt. I smell trouble. I smell a fight—six bad scoundrels fighting against one brave man. I want to help him. 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.
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 a sneer—as though it were something disgraceful. But you can’t blame us, can you? After all, who would stay on a sinking ship, if he could get off it?”
“It’s very natural,” said the Doctor—”very natural. I quite understand…. Was there— Was there anything else you wished to say?”
“Yes,” said the rat. “I’ve come to tell you that we are leaving this one. But we wanted to warn you before we go. This is a bad ship you have here. It isn’t safe. The sides aren’t strong enough. Its boards are rotten. Before to-morrow night it will sink to the bottom of the sea.”
“But how do you know?” asked the Doctor.
“We always know,” answered the rat. “The tips of our tails get that tingly feeling—like when your foot’s asleep. This morning, at six o’clock, while I was getting breakfast, my tail suddenly began to tingle. At first I thought it was my rheumatism coming back. So I went and asked my aunt how she felt—you remember her?—the long, piebald rat, rather skinny, who came to see you in Puddleby last Spring with jaundice? Well—and she said her tail was tingling like everything! Then we knew, for sure, that this boat was going to sink in less than two days; and we all made up our minds to leave it as soon as we got near enough to any land. It’s a bad ship, Doctor. Don’t sail in it any more, or you’ll be surely drowned…. Good-by! We are now going to look for a good place to live on this island.”
“Good-by!” said the Doctor. “And thank you very much for coming to tell me. Very considerate of you—very! Give my regards to your aunt. I remember her perfectly…. Leave that rat alone, Jip! Come here! Lie down!”
So then the Doctor and all his animals went off, carrying pails and saucepans, to look for water on the island, while the swallows took their rest.
“I wonder what is the name of this island,” said the Doctor, as he was climbing up the mountainside. “It seems a pleasant place. What a lot of birds there are!”
“Why, these are the Canary Islands,” said Dab-Dab. “Don’t you hear the canaries singing?”
The Doctor stopped and listened.
“Why, to be sure—of course!” he said. “How stupid of me! I wonder if they can tell us where to find water.”
And presently the canaries, who had heard all about Doctor Dolittle from birds of passage, came and led him to a beautiful spring of cool, clear water where the canaries used to take their bath; and they showed him lovely meadows where the bird-seed grew and all the other sights of their island.
And the pushmi-pullyu was glad they had come; because he liked the green grass so much better than the dried apples he had been eating on the ship. And Gub-Gub squeaked for joy when he found a whole valley full of wild sugarcane.
A little later, when they had all had plenty to eat and drink, and were lying on their backs while the canaries sang for them, two of the swallows came hurrying up, very flustered and excited.
“Doctor!” they cried, “the pirates have come into the bay; and they’ve all got on to your ship. They are downstairs looking for things to steal. They have left their own ship with nobody on it. If you hurry and come down to the shore, you can get on to their ship—which is very fast—and escape. But you’ll have to hurry.”
“That’s a good idea,” said the Doctor—”splendid!”
And he called his animals together at once, said Good-by to the canaries and ran down to the beach.
When they reached the shore they saw the pirate-ship, with the three red sails, standing in the water; and—just as the swallows had said—there was nobody on it; all the pirates were downstairs in the Doctor’s ship, looking for things to steal.
So John Dolittle told his animals to walk very softly and they all crept on to the pirate-ship.
