The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (26 page)

Officially Bumpo was Minister of the Interior; while I was First Lord of
the Treasury. Long Arrow also had quarters there; but at present he was
absent, traveling abroad.

One night after supper when the Doctor was away in the town somewhere
visiting a new-born baby, we were all sitting round the big table in
Bumpo's reception-room. This we did every evening, to talk over the
plans for the following day and various affairs of state. It was a kind
of Cabinet Meeting.

To-night however we were talking about England—and also about things
to eat. We had got a little tired of Indian food. You see, none of the
natives knew how to cook; and we had the most discouraging time training
a chef for the Royal Kitchen. Most of them were champions at spoiling
good food. Often we got so hungry that the Doctor would sneak downstairs
with us into the palace basement, after all the cooks were safe in bed,
and fry pancakes secretly over the dying embers of the fire. The Doctor
himself was the finest cook that ever lived. But he used to make a
terrible mess of the kitchen; and of course we had to be awfully careful
that we didn't get caught.

Well, as I was saying, to-night food was the subject of discussion at
the Cabinet Meeting; and I had just been reminding Bumpo of the nice
dishes we had had at the bed-maker's house in Monteverde.

"I tell you what I would like now," said Bumpo: "a large cup of cocoa
with whipped cream on the top of it. In Oxford we used to be able to
get the most wonderful cocoa. It is really too bad they haven't any
cocoa-trees in this island, or cows to give cream."

"When do you suppose," asked Jip, "the Doctor intends to move on from
here?"

"I was talking to him about that only yesterday," said Polynesia. "But I
couldn't get any satisfactory answer out of him. He didn't seem to want
to speak about it."

There was a pause in the conversation.

"Do you know what I believe?" she added presently. "I believe the Doctor
has given up even thinking of going home."

"Good Lord!" cried Bumpo. "You don't say!"

"Sh!" said Polynesia. "What's that noise?"

We listened; and away off in the distant corridors of the palace we
heard the sentries crying,

"The King!—Make way!—The King!"

"It's he—at last," whispered Polynesia—"late, as usual. Poor man, how
he does work!—Chee-Chee, get the pipe and tobacco out of the cupboard
and lay the dressing-gown ready on his chair."

When the Doctor came into the room he looked serious and thoughtful.
Wearily he took off his crown and hung it on a peg behind the door. Then
he exchanged the royal cloak for the dressing-gown, dropped into his
chair at the head of the table with a deep sigh and started to fill his
pipe.

"Well," asked Polynesia quietly, "how did you find the baby?"

"The baby?" he murmured—his thoughts still seemed to be very far
away—"Ah yes. The baby was much better, thank you—It has cut its
second tooth."

Then he was silent again, staring dreamily at the ceiling through a
cloud of tobacco-smoke; while we all sat round quite still, waiting.

"We were wondering, Doctor," said I at last,—"just before you came
in—when you would be starting home again. We will have been on this
island seven months to-morrow."

The Doctor sat forward in his chair looking rather uncomfortable.

"Well, as a matter of fact," said he after a moment, "I meant to speak
to you myself this evening on that very subject. But it's—er—a little
hard to make any one exactly understand the situation. I am afraid that
it would be impossible for me to leave the work I am now engaged on....
You remember, when they first insisted on making me king, I told you it
was not easy to shake off responsibilities, once you had taken them up.
These people have come to rely on me for a great number of things. We
found them ignorant of much that white people enjoy. And we have, one
might say, changed the current of their lives considerably. Now it is a
very ticklish business, to change the lives of other people. And whether
the changes we have made will be, in the end, for good or for bad, is
our lookout."

He thought a moment—then went on in a quieter, sadder voice:

"I would like to continue my voyages and my natural history work; and I
would like to go back to Puddleby—as much as any of you. This is March,
and the crocuses will be showing in the lawn... . But that which I
feared has come true: I cannot close my eyes to what might happen if I
should leave these people and run away. They would probably go back to
their old habits and customs: wars, superstitions, devil-worship and
what not; and many of the new things we have taught them might be put to
improper use and make their condition, then, worse by far than that in
which we found them.... They like me; they trust me; they have come to
look to me for help in all their problems and troubles. And no man wants
to do unfair things to them who trust him.... And then again, I like
THEM. They are, as it were, my children—I never had any children of my
own—and I am terribly interested in how they will grow up. Don't you
see what I mean?—How can I possibly run away and leave them in the
lurch?... No. I have thought it over a good deal and tried to decide
what was best. And I am afraid that the work I took up when I assumed
the crown I must stick to. I'm afraid—I've got to stay."

"For good—for your whole life?" asked Bumpo in a low voice.

For some moments the Doctor, frowning, made no answer.

"I don't know," he said at last—"Anyhow for the present there is
certainly no hope of my leaving. It wouldn't be right."

The sad silence that followed was broken finally by a knock upon the
door.

With a patient sigh the Doctor got up and put on his crown and cloak
again.

"Come in," he called, sitting down in his chair once more.

The door opened and a footman—one of the hundred and forty-three who
were always on night duty—stood bowing in the entrance.

"Oh, Kindly One," said he, "there is a traveler at the palace-gate who
would have speech with Your Majesty."

"Another baby's been born, I'll bet a shilling," muttered Polynesia.

"Did you ask the traveler's name?" enquired the Doctor.

"Yes, Your Majesty," said the footman. "It is Long Arrow, the son of
Golden Arrow."

"LONG ARROW!" cried the Doctor. "How splendid! Show him in—show him in
at once."

"I'm so glad," he continued, turning to us as soon as the footman had
gone. "I've missed Long Arrow terribly. He's an awfully good man to have
around—even if he doesn't talk much. Let me see: it's five months now
since he went off to Brazil. I'm so glad he's back safe. He does take
such tremendous chances with that canoe of his—clever as he is. It's
no joke, crossing a hundred miles of open sea in a twelve-foot canoe. I
wouldn't care to try it."

Another knock; and when the door swung open in answer to the Doctor's
call, there stood our big friend on the threshold, a smile upon his
strong, bronzed face. Behind him appeared two porters carrying loads
done up in Indian palm-matting. These, when the first salutations were
over, Long Arrow ordered to lay their burdens down.

"Behold, oh Kindly One," said he, "I bring you, as I promised, my
collection of plants which I had hidden in a cave in the Andes. These
treasures represent the labors of my life."

The packages were opened; and inside were many smaller packages and
bundles. Carefully they were laid out in rows upon the table.

It appeared at first a large but disappointing display. There were
plants, flowers, fruits, leaves, roots, nuts, beans, honeys, gums, bark,
seeds, bees and a few kinds of insects.

The study of plants—or botany, as it is called—was a kind of natural
history which had never interested me very much. I had considered it,
compared with the study of animals, a dull science. But as Long Arrow
began taking up the various things in his collection and explaining
their qualities to us, I became more and more fascinated. And before
he had done I was completely absorbed by the wonders of the Vegetable
Kingdom which he had brought so far.

"These," said he, taking up a little packet of big seeds, "are what I
have called 'laughing-beans.'"

"What are they for?" asked Bumpo.

"To cause mirth," said the Indian.

Bumpo, while Long Arrow's back was turned, took three of the beans and
swallowed them.

"Alas!" said the Indian when he discovered what Bumpo had done. "If he
wished to try the powers of these seeds he should have eaten no more
than a quarter of a one. Let us hope that he does not die of laughter."

The beans' effect upon Bumpo was most extraordinary. First he broke
into a broad smile; then he began to giggle; finally he burst into such
prolonged roars of hearty laughter that we had to carry him into
the next room and put him to bed. The Doctor said afterwards that
he probably would have died laughing if he had not had such a strong
constitution. All through the night he gurgled happily in his sleep.
And even when we woke him up the next morning he rolled out of bed still
chuckling.

Returning to the Reception Room, we were shown some red roots which Long
Arrow told us had the property, when made into a soup with sugar and
salt, of causing people to dance with extraordinary speed and endurance.
He asked us to try them; but we refused, thanking him. After Bumpo's
exhibition we were a little afraid of any more experiments for the
present.

There was no end to the curious and useful things that Long Arrow had
collected: an oil from a vine which would make hair grow in one
night; an orange as big as a pumpkin which he had raised in his own
mountain-garden in Peru; a black honey (he had brought the bees that
made it too and the seeds of the flowers they fed on) which would put
you to sleep, just with a teaspoonful, and make you wake up fresh in the
morning; a nut that made the voice beautiful for singing; a water-weed
that stopped cuts from bleeding; a moss that cured snake-bite; a lichen
that prevented sea-sickness.

The Doctor of course was tremendously interested. Well into the early
hours of the morning he was busy going over the articles on the table
one by one, listing their names and writing their properties and
descriptions into a note-book as Long Arrow dictated.

"There are things here, Stubbins," he said as he ended, "which in the
hands of skilled druggists will make a vast difference to the medicine
and chemistry of the world. I suspect that this sleeping-honey by itself
will take the place of half the bad drugs we have had to use so far.
Long Arrow has discovered a pharmacopaeia of his own. Miranda was
right: he is a great naturalist. His name deserves to be placed beside
Linnaeus. Some day I must get all these things to England—But when," he
added sadly—"Yes, that's the problem: when?"

FOR a long time after that Cabinet Meeting of which I have just told
you we did not ask the Doctor anything further about going home. Life
in Spidermonkey Island went forward, month in month out, busily and
pleasantly. The Winter, with Christmas celebrations, came and went, and
Summer was with us once again before we knew it.

As time passed the Doctor became more and more taken up with the care
of his big family; and the hours he could spare for his natural history
work grew fewer and fewer. I knew that he often still thought of his
house and garden in Puddleby and of his old plans and ambitions; because
once in a while we would notice his face grow thoughtful and a little
sad, when something reminded him of England or his old life. But he
never spoke of these things. And I truly believe he would have spent the
remainder of his days on Spidermonkey Island if it hadn't been for an
accident—and for Polynesia.

The old parrot had grown very tired of the Indians and she made no
secret of it.

"The very idea," she said to me one day as we were walking on the
seashore—"the idea of the famous John Dolittle spending his valuable
life waiting on these greasy natives!—Why, it's preposterous!"

All that morning we had been watching the Doctor superintend the
building of the new theatre in Popsipetel—there was already an
opera-house and a concert-hall; and finally she had got so grouchy and
annoyed at the sight that I had suggested her taking a walk with me.

"Do you really think," I asked as we sat down on the sands, "that he
will never go back to Puddleby again?"

"I don't know," said she. "At one time I felt sure that the thought of
the pets he had left behind at the house would take him home soon. But
since Miranda brought him word last August that everything was all right
there, that hope's gone. For months and months I've been racking my
brains to think up a plan. If we could only hit upon something that
would turn his thoughts back to natural history again—I mean something
big enough to get him really excited—we might manage it. But how?"—she
shrugged her shoulders in disgust—"How?—when all he thinks of now is
paving streets and teaching papooses that twice one are two!"

It was a perfect Popsipetel day, bright and hot, blue and yellow.
Drowsily I looked out to sea thinking of my mother and father. I
wondered if they were getting anxious over my long absence. Beside me
old Polynesia went on grumbling away in low steady tones; and her words
began to mingle and mix with the gentle lapping of the waves upon the
shore. It may have been the even murmur of her voice, helped by the soft
and balmy air, that lulled me to sleep. I don't know. Anyhow I presently
dreamed that the island had moved again—not floatingly as before, but
suddenly, jerkily, as though something enormously powerful had heaved it
up from its bed just once and let it down.

How long I slept after that I have no idea. I was awakened by a gentle
pecking on the nose.