Then he went to call on the King,复数🐮 as he did every so often. And in the course of conversation John Dolittle asked His Majesty if he knew who the white stranger might be that had called at the houseboat for a postal order.
"Well,复数😃 it's an animal of some kind,复数😷 isn't it?" said Jip. "But where's its head?" and he gazed down the long sloping back that stretched in a flat curve in front of them for a good thirty yards.
"I too am glad,榴莲🚠 John Dolittle. You are the only one in the world now who understands the speech of animals. And if you had not come my story of the Flood could not have been told. I'm getting very old and do not ever move far away from Junganyika."
But not one hit the slave ship. Splash! Splash! Splash! They fell harmlessly into the water.So the Doctor's boat was now turned into a nesting ship for the swallows. Calmly she stood at anchor in the quiet waters of Fantippo harbor,英语🚊 while thousands and thousands of swallows built their nests in her rigging,复数🌰 in her ventilators,复数🍁 in her portholes and in every crack and corner of her.
"We know,英语🐣 before we reach one,复数🏣 where it is. And we go around it. No experienced sea bird ever runs his head into a bad storm."
And in ten days' time he went to the prison,英语🈚 as he had said,复数💣 to gloat over the terrible fate of the white man. Many of his ministers and generals came with him to help him gloat. But when the prison door was opened,英语💧 instead of seeing the white man's body stretched upon the floor,复数💗 the Emir found the Doctor smiling on the threshold,英语🔬 shaved and hearty and all spruced up. The only difference in his appearance was that with no exercise in prison he had grown slightly stouter and rounder.
"Very well,榴莲🏃" said the Emir,怎么📄 stamping his foot,英语😸 "then let him starve. In ten days more the fool will be dead. Then I will come and laugh over him. So perish all wretches who oppose the wishes of the Emir of Ellebubu!"
"Now,怎么👞 when we children grew up big enough to go off for ourselves our parents gave us all sorts of careful instructions about escaping cats and ferrets and weasels and dogs. But over poor me they shook their heads. They really felt that there was not much hope of my leading a peaceful life with white fur that could be seen a mile off.
Slowly and smoothly the snake slid in over the window sill and down on to the floor of the houseboat. Yards and yards and more yards long he came,复数⬛ coiling himself up neatly at John Dolittle's feet like a mooring rope on a ship's deck.
Now this particular stretch of water they were trying to cross happened to be a bad place for swimming. And after about a quarter of an hour Jip and the Doctor felt themselves being carried out to sea in the grip of a powerful current. They tried their hardest to get to the island. But without any success."John Dolittle saw him snooping around the post office"
CHAPTER X
The educational side of the Doctor's post office was a very important one and it grew all the time. As he had said to the Skimmer at the beginning,榴莲♒ as soon as the birds and animals realized the helpfulness of having a post office of their own they used it more and more.
"The Doctor was washing his face in the lake"
And on the morrow,英语🌾 crossing once again to the island,英语🌷 he went on with the discussion and planning and arrangement. It was agreed that the Swallow Mail Service should have its head office here in No-Man's-Land. And that there should be branch offices at Cape Horn,怎么🌜 Greenland,复数🌖 in Christmas Island,复数🦆 Tahiti,复数💜 Kashmir,复数ℹ Thibet and Puddleby-on-the-Marsh. Most of the mails were arranged so that those birds who migrated or went to other lands in the winter and back again in summer should carry the letters on their regular yearly journeys. And as there are some kinds of birds crossing from one land to another in almost every week of the year,英语🎎 this took care of much of the mails without difficulty.
"I suppose he didn't like to,复数💌" said the swallow. "Thought you'd be offended,复数😑 perhaps."
"In the jungle Obombo made speeches"But not one hit the slave ship. Splash! Splash! Splash! They fell harmlessly into the water.
"The Doctor lit the candle"
"Listen,怎么⏰ Dab-Dab!" said the Doctor,榴莲🚢 shaking her. "Wake up! The Cape Stephen Light's gone out!"
"Villain!" was all he said between his clenched teeth.
THE END
"Why do you call it the Secret Lake?" asked the Doctor.
For a long time Dab-Dab,复数⚠ the motherly housekeeper,英语🚱 had been trying to get the Doctor to take a holiday from his post office business.
With a flap of her wings,英语😋 Dab-Dab flew right through the open window and was gone into the night,榴莲♎ while the Doctor grabbed his little black medicine bag and,英语🚣 calling to the gull to follow him,复数🙌 ran down to the other end of the houseboat,榴莲🚧 untied the canoe and jumped in. Then he pushed off,英语😱 headed around the island of No-Man's-Land and paddled for all he was worth for the seaward end of Cape Stephen.