Читать книгу Doctor Dolittle in the Moon - Hugh Lofting - Страница 6

Table of Contents

When I awoke I felt very much ashamed of myself. What an explorer! The Doctor was moving around already—and, of course, Chee-Chee and Polynesia. John Dolittle came to my side immediately he saw I was awake.

As though he knew the thoughts that were in my mind he at once started to reprimand me for feeling ashamed of my performance. He pointed out that after all Chee-Chee and Polynesia were accustomed to travelling in hot dry climates and that so, for that matter, was he himself.

"Taken all in all, Stubbins," said he, "your own performance has been extremely good. You made the trip, the whole way, and only collapsed when relief was in sight. No one could ask for more than that. I have known many experienced explorers who couldn't have done nearly as well. It was a hard lap—a devilish hard lap. You were magnificent. Sit up and have some breakfast. Thank goodness, we've reached food at last!"

Weak and frowsty, I sat up. Arranged immediately around me was a collection of what I later learned were fruits. The reliable Chee-Chee, scared though he might be of a moving tree or a whispering wind, had served the whole party with that wonderful sense of his for scenting out wild foodstuffs. Not one of the strange courses on the bill of fare had I or the Doctor seen before. But if Chee-Chee said they were safe we knew we need not fear.

Some of the fruits were as big as a large trunk; some as small as a walnut. But, starving as we were, we just dived in and ate and ate and ate. Water there was too, gathered in the shells of enormous nuts and odd vessels made from twisted leaves. Never has a breakfast tasted so marvellous as did that one of fruits which I could not name.

"Some of the fruits were as big as a trunk"

Chee-Chee!—Poor little timid Chee-Chee, who conquered your own fears and volunteered to go ahead of us alone, into the jungle to find food when our strength was giving out. To the world you were just an organ-grinder's monkey. But to us whom you saved from starvation, when terror beset you at every step, you will for ever be ranked high in the list of the great heroes of all time. Thank goodness we had you with us! Our bones might to-day be mouldering in the sands of the Moon if it had not been for your untaught science, your jungle skill—and, above all, your courage that overcame your fear!

Well, to return: as I ate these strange fruits and sipped the water that brought life back I gazed upward and saw before me a sort of ridge. On its level top a vegetation, a kind of tangled forest, flourished; and trailing down from this ridge were little outposts of the Vegetable Kingdom, groups of bushes and single trees, that scattered and dribbled away in several directions from the main mass. Why and how that lone tree survived so far away we could never satisfactorily explain. The nearest John Dolittle could come to it was that some underground spring supplied it with enough water or moisture to carry on. Yet there can be no doubt that to have reached such enormous proportions it must have been there hundreds—perhaps thousands—of years. Anyway, it is a good thing for us it was there. If it had not been, as a pointer towards this habitable quarter of the Moon—it is most likely our whole expedition would have perished.

When the Doctor and I had finished our mysterious breakfast we started to question Chee-Chee about the forest from which he had produced the food we had eaten.

"I don't know how I did it," said Chee-Chee when we asked him. "I just shut my eyes most of the time—terribly afraid. I passed trees, plants, creepers, roots. I smelt—Goodness! I too was hungry, remember. I smelt hard as I could. And soon of course I spotted food, fruits. I climbed a tree—half the time with my eyes shut. Then I see some monster, golly! What a jungle—different from any monkey ever see before—Woolly, woolly!—Ooh, ooh! All the same, nuts smell good. Catch a few. Chase down the tree. Run some more. Smell again. Good!—Up another tree. Different fruit, good just the same. Catch a few. Down again. Run home. On the way smell good root. Same as ginger—only better. Dig a little. Keep eyes shut—don't want to see monster. Catch a piece of root. Run all the way home. Here I am. Finish!"

"'I climbed a tree'"

Well, dear old Chee-Chee's story was descriptive of his own heroic adventures but it did not give us much idea of the moon forest which we were to explore. Nevertheless, rested and fit, we now felt much more inclined to look into things ourselves.

Leaving what luggage we had brought with us from our original landing point, we proceeded towards the line of trees at the summit of the bluff, about four miles ahead of us. We now felt that we could find our way back without much difficulty to the two last camps we had established.

"We approached the bluff on whose brow the vegetation flourished"

The going was about the same, loose sand—only that as we approached the bluff we found the sand firmer to the tread.

On the way up the last lap towards the vegetation line we were out of view of the top itself. Often the going was steep. All the way I had the feeling that we were about to make new and great discoveries—that for the first time we were to learn something important about the true nature of the mysterious Moon.