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Dab-Dab screwed up her eyes and peered at it closely.
"About three weeks would be my guess," whispered Cheapside. "Turtles do everything slow. Something tells me that story is the longest story in the world, Doctor. Let's get a nap and a bite to eat first. We can hear it just as well to-morrow."
"I'll see what I can do for you, Doc," said the Sparrow, "after I've taken a look around this 'eathen town of yours. But first I want a bath. I'm all heat up from flying under a broiling sun. Ain't you got no puddles round here for a bird to take a bath in?"
"It was a river that saved me. The rainy season was on and the streams were in flood. Panting with terror and fatigue, I reached the bank of a swirling torrent. It was fully twenty-five feet wide. The water was simply raging down it. To try and swim it would be madness. Looking backward, I could see and hear my pursuers close upon my heels. Again I had to take desperate measures. Drawing back a little to get space for a run and still clutching that wretched ostrich skin firmly in my mouth, I rushed at the river at full speed and leapedas I have never leaped in my lifeclear across to the further bank. As I came down in a heap I realized I had only just been in time, for my enemies had already come up to the river on the side that I had left. Shaking their fists at me in the moonlight, they were trying to find a way to get across to me. The dogs, eagerest of all, tried, some of them, to swim; but the swift and raging waters swept them down the stream like corks and the hunters were afraid to follow their example.
"Why, certainly," said the big serpent. "I live in the same lake as he does, Lake Junganyika."
"And I have no doubt," the Doctor ended, "that this slaver who took away the woman's husband was no other than Jimmie Bones, the man you are after."
"Now it happened one day, when I was wandering around in the country outside the town, that I met a most conceited spaniel. He passed me with his nose turned up in the air in such a cheeky manner that I said to him, I said: 'What makes you so stuck up?'
"Why do you call it the Secret Lake?" asked the Doctor.
"All right," said Speedy. "Then I'll tell the swallows to get on with the nest building right away. But, of course, we'll go on to England with you when you are ready, to show you the wayand also to teach the young birds how to get there, too. You see, each year's new birds make their first trip back from England to Africa with us grown ones. They have to make the first journey under our guidance."
Here the spoonbill was waiting for him at the water's edge. She apologized for not coming in person to welcome him, but said she was afraid to leave her babies when there were sea eagles around. The little ones were with her, two scrubby, greasy youngsters, who could walk but not fly. The Doctor opened the package and gave them back their precious toys; and with squawks of delight they began playing marbles on the flat rocks with the enormous pink pearls.
Well, this woman in the canoe belonged to a tribe which had been at war with the king of Fantippoan African kingdom situated on the coast near which the swallows had seen the canoe.
The Doctor's pets found it quite thrilling to go through the mail that arrived each day to see if there were any letters for them. At the beginning of course there wasn't much. But one day Quip had returned from Puddleby with an answer to the Doctor's letter to the Cats'-Meat-Man. Mr. Matthew Mugg had written (through his wife) that he had hung the letter for Cheapside on an apple tree in the garden where the sparrow would surely see it when he arrived. The windows of the house were all right, he wrote; but the back door could do with a coat of paint.
"About one more day's journey," said the snake. "A wide belt of these swamps surrounds the Secret Lake of Junganyika on all sides. The going will become freer as we approach the open water of the lake."
"The light's too bad," grumbled the gunners. "Who could hit anything two miles away in this rotten light?"
John Dolittle had no idea of what he meant to do. Nor was the gull himself sure that he would be in time to succeed with the plan he had in mind. But presently, to his delight, the seabird heard his call being answered from the rocky shores shrouded in darkness. And soon he had hundreds of his brother gulls circling round him in the night.
"And where might No-Man's-Land be?" said John Dolittle.
Meanwhile Dab-Dab stayed below at the door, looking out over the sea at the mast light of the shipwhich, after a short delay, was now coming on again toward the rocks. At any minute she expected the great beam of the lighthouse lamp to flare out over the sea, as soon as the Doctor should get it lit, to warn the sailors of their danger. But, instead, she presently heard the Doctor's agonized voice calling from the head of the stairs:
"Now, it happened that I had met this George Morland, who was, and is still, perhaps the most famous painter of farm-life pictures the world has ever known. I am proud to be able to say that I knew him. He was especially good at painting horses in stables, pigs in stys, roosters and dogs hanging around kitchen doors, and things like that.
THE VOYAGE DELAYED
It was a beautiful morning and they enjoyed the paddlethough Gub-Gub came very near to upsetting the canoe more than once, leaning out to grab for passing sea weed, which he had noticed the curlew eating. Finally, for safety's sake, they made him lie down at the bottom of the canoe, where he couldn't see anything.
Then there was much rejoicing and hand-shaking and congratulation on board the warship. And a grand dinner was prepared for the slaves on the main deck. But John Dolittle, Zuzana and her husband were invited to the officers' mess, where their health was drunk in port wine and speeches were made by the Captain and the Doctor.