Chapter 4
Under the kind treatment and observation of John Dolittle all the sick monkeys were saved from the jaws of death. They were thankful to the doctor. John dolittle requested the monkeys to go back to their home.
By the edge of the river they stopped and said farewell.
This took a long time, because all those thousands of monkeys wanted to shake John Dolittle by the hand.
Afterwards, when the Doctor and his pets were going on alone, Polynesia said,
“We must tread softly and talk low as we go through the land of the Jolliginki. If the King should hear us, he will send his soldiers to catch us again; for I am sure he is still very angry over the trick I played on him.”
“What I am wondering,” said the Doctor, “is where we are going to get another boat to go home in…. Oh well, perhaps we’ll find one lying about on the beach that nobody is using. ‘Never lift your foot till you come to the stile.’”
One day, while they were passing through a very thick part of the forest, Chee-Chee went ahead of them to look for cocoanuts. And while he was away, the Doctor and the rest of the animals, who did not know the jungle-paths so well, got lost in the deep woods. They wandered around and around but could not find their way down to the seashore.
Chee-Chee, when he could not see them anywhere, was terribly upset. He climbed high trees and looked out from the top branches to try and see the Doctor’s high hat; he waved and shouted; he called to all the animals by name. But it was no use. They seemed to have disappeared altogether.
Indeed they had lost their way very badly. They had strayed a long way off the path, and the jungle was so thick with bushes and creepers and vines that sometimes they could hardly move at all, and the Doctor had to take out his pocket-knife and cut his way along. They stumbled into wet, boggy places; they got all tangled up in thick convolvulus-runners; they scratched themselves on thorns, and twice they nearly lost the medicine-bag in the under-brush. There seemed no end to their troubles; and nowhere could they come upon a path.
At last, after blundering about like this for many days, getting their clothes torn and their faces covered with mud, they walked right into the King’s back-garden by mistake. The King’s men came running up at once and caught them.
But Polynesia flew into a tree in the garden, without anybody seeing her, and hid herself. The Doctor and the rest were taken before the King.
“Ha, ha!” cried the King. “So you are caught again! This time you shall not escape. Take them all back to prison and put double locks on the door. This White Man shall scrub my kitchen-floor for the rest of his life!”
So the Doctor and his pets were led back to prison and locked up. And the Doctor was told that in the morning he must begin scrubbing the kitchen-floor.
They were all very unhappy.
“This is a great nuisance,” said the Doctor. “I really must get back to Puddleby. That poor sailor will think I’ve stolen his ship if I don’t get home soon…. I wonder if those hinges are loose.”
But the door was very strong and firmly locked. There seemed no chance of getting out. Then Gub-Gub began to cry again.
All this time Polynesia was still sitting in the tree in the palace-garden. She was saying nothing and blinking her eyes. This was always a very bad sign with Polynesia. Whenever she said nothing and blinked her eyes, it meant that somebody had been making trouble, and she was thinking out some way to put things right. People who made trouble for Polynesia or her friends were nearly always sorry for it afterwards.
Presently she spied Chee-Chee swinging through the trees still looking for the Doctor. When Chee-Chee saw her, he came into her tree and asked her what had become of him.
“The Doctor and all the animals have been caught by the King’s men and locked up again,” whispered Polynesia. “We lost our way in the jungle and blundered into the palace-garden by mistake.”
“But couldn’t you guide them?” asked Chee-Chee; and he began to scold the parrot for letting them get lost while he was away looking for the cocoanuts.
“It was all that stupid pig’s fault,” said Polynesia. “He would keep running off the path hunting for ginger-roots. And I was kept so busy catching him and bringing him back, that I turned to the left, instead of the right, when we reached the swamp.—Sh!—Look! There’s Prince Bumpo coming into the garden! He must not see us.—Don’t move, whatever you do!”
And there, sure enough, was Prince Bumpo, the King’s son, opening the garden-gate. He carried a book of fairy-tales under his arm. He came strolling down the gravel-walk, humming a sad song, till he reached a stone seat right under the tree where the parrot and the monkey were hiding. Then he lay down on the seat and began reading the fairy-stories to himself.
Chee-Chee and Polynesia watched him, keeping very quiet and still.
After a while the King’s son laid the book down and sighed a weary sigh.
“If I were only a white prince!” said he, with a dreamy, far-away look in his eyes.
Then the parrot, talking in a small, high voice like a little girl, said aloud,
“Bumpo, some one might turn thee into a white prince perchance.”
The King’s son started up off the seat and looked all around.
“What is this I hear?” he cried. “Methought the sweet music of a fairy’s silver voice rang from yonder bower! Strange!”
“Worthy Prince,” said Polynesia, keeping very still so Bumpo couldn’t see her, “thou sayest winged words of truth. For ’tis I, Tripsitinka, the Queen of the Fairies, that speak to thee. I am hiding in a rose-bud.”
“Oh tell me, Fairy-Queen,” cried Bumpo, clasping his hands in joy, “who is it can turn me white?”
“In thy father’s prison,” said the parrot, “there lies a famous wizard, John Dolittle by name. Many things he knows of medicine and magic, and mighty deeds has he performed. Yet thy kingly father leaves him languishing long and lingering hours. Go to him, brave Bumpo, secretly, when the sun has set; and behold, thou shalt be made the whitest prince that ever won fair lady! I have said enough. I must now go back to Fairyland. Farewell!”
“Farewell!” cried the Prince. “A thousand thanks, good Tripsitinka!”
And he sat down on the seat again with a smile upon his face, waiting for the sun to set.
Very, very quietly, making sure that no one should see her, Polynesia then slipped out at the back of the tree and flew across to the prison.
She found Gub-Gub poking his nose through the bars of the window, trying to sniff the cooking-smells that came from the palace-kitchen. She told the pig to bring the Doctor to the window because she wanted to speak to him. So Gub-Gub went and woke the Doctor who was taking a nap.
“Listen,” whispered the parrot, when John Dolittle’s face appeared: “Prince Bumpo is coming here to-night to see you. And you’ve got to find some way to turn him white. But be sure to make him promise you first that he will open the prison-door and find a ship for you to cross the sea in.”
“This is all very well,” said the Doctor. “But it isn’t so easy to turn a black man white. You speak as though he were a dress to be re-dyed. It’s not so simple. ‘Shall the leopard change his spots, or the Ethiopian his skin,’ you know?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” said Polynesia impatiently. “But you must turn this man white. Think of a way—think hard. You’ve got plenty of medicines left in the bag. He’ll do anything for you if you change his color. It is your only chance to get out of prison.”
“Well, I suppose it might be possible,” said the Doctor. “Let me see—,” and he went over to his medicine-bag, murmuring something about “liberated chlorine on animal-pigment—perhaps zinc-ointment, as a temporary measure, spread thick—”
Well, that night Prince Bumpo came secretly to the Doctor in prison and said to him,
“White Man, I am an unhappy prince. Years ago I went in search of The Sleeping Beauty, whom I had read of in a book. And having traveled through the world many days, I at last found her and kissed the lady very gently to awaken her—as the book said I should. ’Tis true indeed that she awoke. But when she saw my face she cried out, ‘Oh, he’s black!’ And she ran away and wouldn’t marry me—but went to sleep again somewhere else. So I came back, full of sadness, to my father’s kingdom. Now I hear that you are a wonderful magician and have many powerful potions. So I come to you for help. If you will turn me white, so that I may go back to The Sleeping Beauty, I will give you half my kingdom and anything besides you ask.”
“Prince Bumpo,” said the Doctor, looking thoughtfully at the bottles in his medicine-bag, “supposing I made your hair a nice blonde colour—would not that do instead to make you happy?”
“No,” said Bumpo. “Nothing else will satisfy me. I must be a white prince.”
“You know it is very hard to change the color of a prince,” said the Doctor—”one of the hardest things a magician can do. You only want your face white, do you not?”
“Yes, that is all,” said Bumpo. “Because I shall wear shining armor and gauntlets of steel, like the other white princes, and ride on a horse.”
“Must your face be white all over?” asked the Doctor.
“Yes, all over,” said Bumpo—”and I would like my eyes blue too, but I suppose that would be very hard to do.”
“Yes, it would,” said the Doctor quickly. “Well, I will do what I can for you. You will have to be very patient though—you know with some medicines you can never be very sure. I might have to try two or three times. You have a strong skin—yes? Well that’s all right. Now come over here by the light—Oh, but before I do anything, you must first go down to the beach and get a ship ready, with food in it, to take me across the sea. Do not speak a word of this to any one. And when I have done as you ask, you must let me and all my animals out of prison. Promise—by the crown of Jolliginki!”
So the Prince promised and went away to get a ship ready at the seashore.
When he came back and said that it was done, the Doctor asked Dab-Dab to bring a basin. Then he mixed a lot of medicines in the basin and told Bumpo to dip his face in it.
The Prince leaned down and put his face in—right up to the ears.
He held it there a long time—so long that the Doctor seemed to get dreadfully anxious and fidgety, standing first on one leg and then on the other, looking at all the bottles he had used for the mixture, and reading the labels on them again and again. A strong smell filled the prison, like the smell of brown paper burning.
At last the Prince lifted his face up out of the basin, breathing very hard. And all the animals cried out in surprise.
For the Prince’s face had turned as white as snow, and his eyes, which had been mud-colored, were a manly gray!
When John Dolittle lent him a little looking-glass to see himself in, he sang for joy and began dancing around the prison. But the Doctor asked him not to make so much noise about it; and when he had closed his medicine-bag in a hurry he told him to open the prison-door.
Bumpo begged that he might keep the looking-glass, as it was the only one in the Kingdom of Jolliginki, and he wanted to look at himself all day long. But the Doctor said he needed it to shave with.
Then the Prince, taking a bunch of copper keys from his pocket, undid the great double locks. And the Doctor with all his animals ran as fast as they could down to the seashore; while Bumpo leaned against the wall of the empty dungeon, smiling after them happily, his big face shining like polished ivory in the light of the moon.
When they came to the beach they saw Polynesia and Chee-Chee waiting for them on the rocks near the ship.
“I feel sorry about Bumpo,” said the Doctor.
“I am afraid that medicine I used will never last. Most likely he will be as black as ever when he wakes up in the morning—that’s one reason why I didn’t like to leave the mirror with him. But then again, he might stay white—I had never used that mixture before. To tell the truth, I was surprised, myself, that it worked so well. But I had to do something, didn’t I?—I couldn’t possibly scrub the King’s kitchen for the rest of my life. It was such a dirty kitchen!—I could see it from the prison-window.—Well, well!—Poor Bumpo!”
“Oh, of course he will know we were just joking with him,” said the parrot.
“They had no business to lock us up,” said Dab-Dab, waggling her tail angrily. “We never did them any harm. Serve him right, if he does turn black again! I hope it’s a dark black.”
“But he didn’t have anything to do with it,” said the Doctor. “It was the King, his father, who had us locked up—it wasn’t Bumpo’s fault…. I wonder if I ought to go back and apologize—Oh, well—I’ll send him some candy when I get to Puddleby. And who knows?—he may stay white after all.”
“The Sleeping Beauty would never have him, even if he did,” said Dab-Dab. “He looked better the way he was, I thought. But he’d never be anything but ugly, no matter what color he was made.”
“Still, he had a good heart,” said the Doctor—”romantic, of course—but a good heart. After all, ‘handsome is as handsome does.’”
“I don’t believe the poor booby found The Sleeping Beauty at all,” said Jip, the dog. “Most likely he kissed some farmer’s fat wife who was taking a snooze under an apple-tree. Can’t blame her for getting scared! I wonder who he’ll go and kiss this time. Silly business!”
Then the pushmi-pullyu, the white mouse, Gub-Gub, Dab-Dab, Jip and the owl, Too-Too, went on to the ship with the Doctor. But Chee-Chee, Polynesia and the crocodile stayed behind, because Africa was their proper home, the land where they were born.
And when the Doctor stood upon the boat, he looked over the side across the water. And then he remembered that they had no one with them to guide them back to Puddleby.
The wide, wide sea looked terribly big and lonesome in the moonlight; and he began to wonder if they would lose their way when they passed out of sight of land.
But even while he was wondering, they heard a strange whispering noise, high in the air, coming through the night. And the animals all stopped saying Good-by and listened.
The noise grew louder and bigger. It seemed to be coming nearer to them—a sound like the Autumn wind blowing through the leaves of a poplar-tree, or a great, great rain beating down upon a roof.
And Jip, with his nose pointing and his tail quite straight, said,
“Birds!—millions of them—flying fast—that’s it!”
And then they all looked up. And there, streaming across the face of the moon, like a huge swarm of tiny ants, they could see thousands and thousands of little birds. Soon the whole sky seemed full of them, and still more kept coming—more and more. There were so many that for a little they covered the whole moon so it could not shine, and the sea grew dark and black—like when a storm-cloud passes over the sun.
And presently all these birds came down close, skimming over the water and the land; and the night-sky was left clear above, and the moon shone as before. Still never a call nor a cry nor a song they made—no sound but this great rustling of feathers which grew greater now than ever. When they began to settle on the sands, along the ropes of the ship—anywhere and everywhere except the trees—the Doctor could see that they had blue wings and white breasts and very short, feathered legs. As soon as they had all found a place to sit, suddenly, there was no noise left anywhere—all was quiet; all was still.
And in the silent moonlight John Dolittle spoke:
“I had no idea that we had been in Africa so long. It will be nearly Summer when we get home. For these are the swallows going back. Swallows, I thank you for waiting for us. It is very thoughtful of you. Now we need not be afraid that we will lose our way upon the sea…. Pull up the anchor and set the sail!”
When the ship moved out upon the water, those who stayed behind, Chee-Chee, Polynesia and the crocodile, grew terribly sad. For never in their lives had they known any one they liked so well as Doctor John Dolittle of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh.
And after they had called Good-by to him again and again and again, they still stood there upon the rocks, crying bitterly and waving till the ship was out of sight.
