James and the Giant Peach

33

Far below them, in the City of New York, something like pandemonium was breaking out. A great round ball as big as a house had been sighted hovering high up in the sky over the very center of Manhattan, and the cry had gone up that it was an enormous bomb sent over by another country to blow the whole city to smithereens. Air-raid sirens began wailing in every section. All radio and television programs were interrupted with announcements that the population must go down into their cellars immediately. One million people walking in the streets on their way to work looked up into the sky and saw the monster hovering above them, and started running for the nearest subway entrance to take cover. Generals grabbed hold of telephones and shouted orders to everyone they could think of. The Mayor of New York called up the President of the United States down in Washington, D.C. to ask him for help, and the President, who at that moment was having breakfast in his pajamas, quickly pushed away his half-finished plate of Sugar Crisps and started pressing buttons right and left to summon his Admirals and his Generals. And all the way across the vast stretch of America, in all the fifty States from Alaska to Florida, from Pennsylvania to Hawaii, the alarm was sounded and the word went out that the biggest bomb in the history of the world was hovering over New York City, and that at any moment it might go off.

34

'Come on, Centipede, bite through the first string,' James ordered.

The Centipede took one of the silk strings between his teeth and bit through it. And once again (but not with an angry Cloud-Man dangling from the end of the string this time) a single seagull came away from the rest of the flock and went flying off on its own.

'Bite another,' James ordered. The Centipede bit through another string.

'Why aren't we sinking?'

'We are sinking!'

'No, we're not!'

'Don't forget the peach is a lot lighter now than when we started out,' James told them. 'It lost an awful lot of juice when all those hailstones hit it in the night. Cut away two more seagulls, Centipede!'

'Ah, that's better!'

'Here we go!'

'Now we really are sinking!'

'Yes, this is perfect! Don't bite any more, Centipede, or we'll sink too fast! Gently does it!'

Slowly the great peach began losing height, and the buildings and streets down below began coming closer and closer.

'Do you think we'll all get our pictures in the papers when we get down?' the Ladybug asked.

'My goodness, I've forgotten to polish my boots!' the Centipede said. 'Everyone must help me to polish my boots before we arrive.'

'Oh, for heaven's sake!' said the Earthworm. 'Can't you ever stop thinking about -'

But he never finished his sentence. For suddenly WHOOOSH!… and they looked up and saw a huge four-engined plane come shooting out of a nearby cloud and go whizzing past them not more than twenty feet over their heads. This was actually the regular early morning passenger plane coming in to New York from Chicago, and as it went by, it sliced right through every single one of the silken strings, and immediately the seagulls broke away, and the enormous peach, having nothing to hold it up in the air any longer, went tumbling down toward the earth like a lump of lead.

'Help!' cried the Centipede.

'Save us!' cried Miss Spider.

'We are lost!' cried the Ladybug.

'This is the end!' cried the Old-Green-Grasshopper.

'James!' cried the Earthworm. 'Do something, James! Quickly, do something!'

'I can't!' cried James. 'I'm sorry! Good-by! Shut your eyes everybody! It won't be long now!'

35

Round and round and upside down went the peach as it plummeted toward the earth, and they were all clinging desperately to the stem to save themselves from being flung into space.

Faster and faster it fell. Down and down and down, racing closer and closer to the houses and streets below, where it would surely smash into a million pieces when it hit. And all the way along Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, and along all the other streets in the City, people who had not yet reached the underground shelters looked up and saw it coming, and they stopped running and stood there staring in a sort of stupor at what they thought was the biggest bomb in all the world falling out of the sky onto their heads. A few women screamed. Others knelt down on the sidewalks and began praying aloud. Strong men turned to one another and said things like, 'I guess this is it, Joe,' and 'Good-by, everybody, good-by.' And for the next thirty seconds the whole City held its breath, waiting for the end to come.

36

'Good-by, Ladybug!' gasped James, clinging to the stem of the falling peach. 'Good-by, Centipede. Good-by, everybody!' There were only a few seconds to go now and it looked as though they were going to fall right in among all the tallest buildings. James could see the skyscrapers rushing up to meet them at the most awful speed, and most of them had square flat tops, but the very tallest of them all had a top that tapered off into a long sharp point-like an enormous silver needle sticking up into the sky.

And it was precisely onto the top of this needle that the peach fell!

There was a squelch. The needle went in deep. And suddenly - there was the giant peach, caught and spiked upon the very pinnacle of the Empire State Building.

37

It was really an amazing sight, and in two or three minutes, as soon as the people below realized that this now couldn't possibly be a bomb, they came pouring out of the shelters and the subways to gape at the marvel. The streets for half a mile around the building were jammed with men and women, and when the word spread that there were actually living things moving about on the top of the great round ball, then everyone went wild with excitement.

'It's a flying saucer!' they shouted.

'They are from Outer Space!'

'They are men from Mars!'

'Or maybe they came from the Moon!'

And a man who had a pair of binoculars to his eyes said, 'They look pritt- ty