Then Chee-Chee got up; and all the others whispered, “Sh! Look! Chee-Chee, the great Traveler, is about to speak!”
And Chee-Chee said to the other monkeys,
“My friends, I am afraid it is useless to ask the Doctor to stay. He owes money in Puddleby; and he says he must go back and pay it.”
And the monkeys asked him, “What is money?”
Then Chee-Chee told them that in the Land of the White Men you could get nothing without money; you could do nothing without money—that it was almost impossible to live without money.
And some of them asked, “But can you not even eat and drink without paying?”
But Chee-Chee shook his head. And then he told them that even he, when he was with the organ-grinder, had been made to ask the children for money.
And the Chief Chimpanzee turned to the Oldest Orangutan and said, “Cousin, surely these Men be strange creatures! Who would wish to live in such a land? My gracious, how paltry!”
Then Chee-Chee said,
“When we were coming to you we had no boat to cross the sea in and no money to buy food to eat on our journey. So a man lent us some biscuits; and we said we would pay him when we came back. And we borrowed a boat from a sailor; but it was broken on the rocks when we reached the shores of Africa. Now the Doctor says he must go back and get the sailor another boat—because the man was poor and his ship was all he had.”
And the monkeys were all silent for a while, sitting quite still upon the ground and thinking hard.
At last the Biggest Baboon got up and said,
“I do not think we ought to let this good man leave our land till we have given him a fine present to take with him, so that he may know we are grateful for all that he has done for us.”
And a little, tiny red monkey who was sitting up in a tree shouted down,
“I think that too!”
And then they all cried out, making a great noise, “Yes, yes. Let us give him the finest present a White Man ever had!”
Now they began to wonder and ask one another what would be the best thing to give him. And one said, “Fifty bags of coconuts!” And another—“A hundred bunches of bananas!—At least he shall not have to buy his fruit in the Land Where You Pay to Eat!”
But Chee-Chee told them that all these things would be too heavy to carry so far and would go bad before half was eaten.
“If you want to please him,” he said, “give him an animal. You may be sure he will be kind to it. Give him some rare animal they have not got in the menageries.”
And the monkeys asked him, “What are menageries?”
Then Chee-Chee explained to them that menageries were places in the Land of the White Men, where animals were put in cages for people to come and look at. And the monkeys were very shocked and said to one another,
“These Men are like thoughtless young ones—stupid and easily amused. Sh! It is a prison he means.”
So then they asked Chee-Chee what rare animal it could be that they should give the Doctor—one the White Men had not seen before. And the Major of the Marmosettes asked,
“Have they an iguana over there?”
But Chee-Chee said, “Yes, there is one in the London Zoo.”
And another asked, “Have they an okapi?”
But Chee-Chee said, “Yes. In Belgium, where my organ-grinder took me five years ago, they had an okapi in a big city they call Antwerp.”
And another asked, “Have they a pushmi-pullyu?”
Then Chee-Chee said, “No. No White Man has ever seen a pushmi-pullyu. Let us give him that.”
X
The Rarest Animal of All
Pushmi-pullyus are now extinct. That means, there aren’t any more. But long ago, when Doctor Dolittle was alive, there were some of them still left in the deepest jungles of Africa; and even then they were very, very scarce. They had no tail, but a head at each end, and sharp horns on each head. They were very shy and terribly hard to catch. The black men get most of their animals by sneaking up behind them while they are not looking. But you could not do this with the pushmi-pullyu—because, no matter which way you came towards him, he was always facing you. And besides, only one half of him slept at a time. The other head was always awake—and watching. This was why they were never caught and never seen in Zoos. Though many of the greatest huntsmen and the cleverest menagerie-keepers spent years of their lives searching through the jungles in all weathers for pushmi-pullyus, not a single one had ever been caught. Even then, years ago, he was the only animal in the world with two heads.
Well, the monkeys set out hunting for this animal through the forest. And after they had gone a good many miles, one of them found peculiar footprints near the edge of a river; and they knew that a pushmi-pullyu must be very near that spot.
Then they went along the bank of the river a little way and they saw a place where the grass was high and thick; and they guessed that he was in there.
So they all joined hands and made a great circle round the high grass. The pushmi-pullyu heard them coming; and he tried hard to break through the ring of monkeys. But he couldn’t do it. When he saw that it was no use trying to escape, he sat down and waited to see what they wanted.
They asked him if he would go with Doctor Dolittle and be put on show in the Land of the
