“Well, but how can I get to the Doctor, Miranda?—I haven’t any oars.”
“Get to him!—Why, you’re going to him now. Look behind you.”
I turned around. The moon was just rising on the sea’s edge. And I now saw that my raft was moving through the water, but so gently that I had not noticed it before.
“What’s moving us?” I asked.
“The porpoises,” said Miranda.
I went to the back of the raft and looked down into the water. And just below the surface I could see the dim forms of four big porpoises, their sleek skins glinting in the moonlight, pushing at the raft with their noses.
“They’re old friends of the Doctor’s,” said Miranda. “They’d do anything for John Dolittle. We should see his party soon now. We’re pretty near the place I left them—Yes, there they are! See that dark shape?—No, more to the right of where you’re looking. Can’t you make out the figure of the black man standing against the sky?—Now Chee-Chee spies us—he’s waving. Don’t you see them?”
I didn’t—for my eyes were not as sharp as Miranda’s. But presently from somewhere in the murky dusk I heard Bumpo singing his African comic songs with the full force of his enormous voice. And in a little, by peering and peering in the direction of the sound, I at last made out a dim mass of tattered, splintered wreckage—all that remained of the poor Curlew—floating low down upon the water.
A hulloa came through the night. And I answered it. We kept it up, calling to one another back and forth across the calm night sea. And a few minutes later the two halves of our brave little ruined ship bumped gently together again.
Now that I was nearer and the moon was higher I could see more plainly. Their half of the ship was much bigger than mine.
It lay partly upon its side; and most of them were perched upon the top munching ship’s biscuit.
But close down to the edge of the water, using the sea’s calm surface for a mirror and a piece of broken bottle for a razor, John Dolittle was shaving his face by the light of the moon.
V
Land!
They all gave me a great greeting as I clambered off my half of the ship on to theirs. Bumpo brought me a wonderful drink of fresh water which he drew from a barrel; and Chee-Chee and Polynesia stood around me feeding me ship’s biscuit.
But it was the sight of the Doctor’s smiling face—just knowing that I was with him once again—that cheered me more than anything else. As I watched him carefully wipe his glass razor and put it away for future use, I could not help comparing him in my mind with the Stormy Petrel. Indeed the vast strange knowledge which he had gained from his speech and friendship with animals had brought him the power to do things which no other human being would dare to try. Like the petrel, he could apparently play with the sea in all her moods. It was no wonder that many of the ignorant savage peoples among whom he passed in his voyages made statues of him showing him as half a fish, half a bird, and half a man. And ridiculous though it was, I could quite understand what Miranda meant when she said she firmly believed that he could never die. Just to be with him gave you a wonderful feeling of comfort and safety.
Except for his appearance (his clothes were crumpled and damp and his battered high hat was stained with salt water) that storm which had so terrified me had disturbed him no more than getting stuck on the mud-bank in Puddleby River.
Politely thanking Miranda for getting me so quickly, he asked her if she would now go ahead of us and show us the way to Spidermonkey Island. Next, he gave orders to the porpoises to leave my old piece of the ship and push the bigger half wherever the Bird-of-Paradise should lead us.
How much he had lost in the wreck besides his razor I did not know—everything, most likely, together with all the money he had saved up to buy the ship with. And still he was smiling as though he wanted for nothing in the world. The only things he had saved, as far as I could see—beyond the barrel of water and bag of biscuit—were his precious notebooks. These, I saw when he stood up, he had strapped around his waist with yards and yards of twine. He was, as old Matthew Mugg used to say, a great man. He was unbelievable.
And now for three days we continued our journey slowly but steadily—southward.
The only inconvenience we suffered from was the cold. This seemed to increase as we went forward. The Doctor said that the island, disturbed from its usual paths by the great gale, had evidently drifted further South than it had ever been before.
On the third night poor Miranda came back to us nearly frozen. She told the Doctor that in the morning we would find the island quite close to us, though we couldn’t see it now as it was a misty dark night. She said that she must hurry back at once to a warmer climate; and that she would visit the Doctor in Puddleby next August as usual.
“Don’t forget, Miranda,” said John Dolittle, “if you should hear anything of what happened to
