Tired of reading? Add this page to your Bookmarks or Favorites and finish it later.
|
|
"And don't let the Doctor know what you're about," said Polynesia
as they started to move off. "He might balk if he thought we had
any hand in it. Get the snail to offer on his own account to take
us. See?"
John Dolittle, unaware of anything save the work he was engaged
on, was standing knee-deep in the shallow water, helping the
snail try out his mended tail to see if it were well enough to
travel on. Bumpo and Long Arrow, with Chee-Chee and Jip, were
lolling at the foot of a palm a little way up the beach.
Polynesia and I now went and joined them. Half an hour passed.
What success the porpoises had met with, we did not know, till
suddenly the Doctor left the snail's side and came splashing out
to us. quite breathless.
"What do you think?" he cried, "while I was talking to the snail
just now he offered, of his own accord, to take us all back to
England inside his shell. He says he has got to go on a voyage of
discovery anyway, to hunt up a new home, now that the Deep Hole
is closed. Said it wouldn't be much out of his way to drop us at
Puddleby River, if we cared to come along--Goodness, what a
chance! I'd love to go. To examine the floor of the ocean all
the way from Brazil to Europe! No man ever did it before. What
a glorious trip!-- Oh that I had never allowed myself to be made
king! Now I must see the chance of a lifetime slip by."
|