Part II Chapter 15 Doctor Dolittle's Garden by Hugh Lofting
GUB-GUB HALTS THE GAME
It was quite a picture, that group around the table—and it will never fade from my memory while life lasts. Bumpo was the only one standing. He held the pencil in his enormous right fist. His left hand grasped the atlas, closed, and resting on the back of its binding, ready to let it fall open at whatever page Fate should decide. The rest of us were seated round in a circle tense with excitement, watching him. Four candles burned on the table in brass sticks. For a moment you could have heard a pin drop so perfect was the silence.
"Are you quite ready, Bumpo?" asked the Doctor in a strangely steady voice. "Remember, you close your eyes, let the book fall open and then stab down with the pencil point."
"Yes, Doctor," said Bumpo screwing up his face with a most comical grimace. "I'm quite ready."
"Splendid!" said the Doctor. "Go ahead."
Bumpo let go his left hand. The heavy book fell open with a bang. His right fist, describing circles in the air with the pencil, slowly lowered the point.... Then—Crash!
Gub-Gub in his eagerness to learn where we were to go had rocked the table as he lurched forward, and all four candles toppled over. The room was in darkness.
At once a babel of voices broke out everywhere. Every one shouted advice at once. But the Doctor's was too emphatic to be drowned.
"Hold it, Bumpo!" he cried. "Don't move your pencil. We will have a light here in a moment. Keep your pencil where it is."
Of course, as is always the way, the matches were not handy. Dab-Dab, whacking poor Gub-Gub over the ears with her wing, started out to find them. She was quite a long time about it. But soon we began to see dimly anyhow. For the full moon that flooded the garden outside the windows made it possible to make out the general shape of everything in the room. One of the curtains had not been completely drawn across.
"It's all right, Doctor," said Bumpo. "I'm hanging on to it. Get a match and let's see where we are to go."
The excitement, as you can imagine, was tremendous. The moonlight in the room was enough to see one another by but not enough to read by.
"I'll bet it's Africa," said Polynesia. "Well, I don't know as I shall mind—much. It is a good country. I don't care what anybody says."
"It isn't Africa," said Too-Too. "I know it."
"What is it then?" we all cried, remembering that Too-Too could see in the dark.
"I shan't tell," said Too-Too. "But you can take my word for it, it's a surprise!—Yes, it's certainly a surprise. We shall need all the money we can raise for this voyage."
"Oh, do please hurry up with the matches, Dab-Dab!" cried Gub-Gub. "I shall burst if I don't know soon where we're going. And this moonlight is giving me the jim-jams."
So intent was he on getting a light he left the table and groped his way out of the door to assist the housekeeper in her search. All he succeeded in doing however was to bump into her in the dark as she came in with her wings full of a fresh supply of candles and the much needed matches. Completely bowled over by her collision with the portly Gub-Gub, Dab-Dab dropped the matches, and in the scuffle they were kicked away into some corner where they couldn't be found.
Among us who remained in the kitchen the general excitement was not lessened by the sounds of Gub-Gub getting spanked and pecked by the indignant duck. Squeaking he ran for the scullery, where from further noises that followed, he apparently tripped over a mat and fell into a pail.
At last the Doctor himself went to the rescue. He succeeded in reaching the larder without mishap, where he found another box of matches and came back to us with a light shaded in his hands.
As the first beam fell across the open atlas my heart gave a big thump. Bumpo rolled his eyes towards the ceiling in superstitious horror. Polynesia gave a loud squawk. While Chee-Chee hissed beneath his breath a long low hiss of consternation.
The book had fallen open at the astronomic page. Bumpo's pencil had landed in a smaller illustration down in the left-hand corner. And its point still rested in the centre of the Moon!