Part II Chapter 3 Doctor Dolittle's Post Office by Hugh Lofting
THE BIRDS THAT HELPED COLUMBUS
After the Doctor had written his first letter by Swallow Mail to the Cats'-Meat-Man he began to think of all the other people to whom he had neglected to write for years and years. And very soon every spare moment he had was filled in writing to friends and acquaintances everywhere.
And then, of course, there were the letters he sent to and received from birds and animals all over the world. First he wrote to the various bird leaders who were in charge of the branch offices at Cape Horn, Thibet, Tahiti, Kashmir, Christmas Island, Greenland and Puddleby-on-the-Marsh. To them he gave careful instructions how the branch post offices were to be run—always insisting on strict politeness from the post office clerks; and he answered all the questions that the branch postmasters wrote asking for guidance.
And he sent letters to various fellow naturalists whom he knew in different countries and gave them a whole lot of information about the yearly flights or migration of birds. Because, of course, in the bird mail business he learned a great deal on that subject that had never been known to naturalists before.
Outside the post office he had a notice board set up on which were posted the Outgoing and Incoming Mails. The notices would read something like this:
Next Wednesday, July 18, the Red-Winged Plovers will leave this office for Denmark and points on the Skager Rack. Post your mail early, please. All letters should bear a four-penny stamp. Small packages will also be carried on this flight for Morocco, Portugal and the Channel Islands.
Whenever a new flight of birds were expected at No-Man's-Land the Doctor always had a big supply of food of their particular kind got ready for their arrival before-hand. He had at the big meeting with the leaders put down in his notebook the dates of all the yearly flights of the different kinds of birds, where they started from and where they went to. And this notebook was kept with great care.
One day Speedy was sitting on top of the weighing scales while the Doctor was sorting a large pile of outgoing letters. Suddenly the Skimmer cried out:
"Great heavens, Doctor, I've gained an ounce! I'll never be able to fly in the races again. Look, it says four and a half ounces!"
"No, Speedy," said the Doctor. "See, you have an ounce weight on the pan as well as yourself. That makes you only three and a half ounces."
"Oh," said the Skimmer, "is that the trouble? I was never good at arithmetic. What a relief! Thank goodness, I haven't gained!"
"Listen, Speedy," said the Doctor, "in this batch of mail we have a lot of letters for Panama. What mails have we got going out to-morrow?"
"I'm not sure," said Speedy. "I'll go and look at the notice board. I think it's the Golden Jays.... Yes," he said, coming back in a moment, "that's right, the Golden Jays to-morrow, Tuesday, the 15th, weather permitting."
"Where are they bound for, Speedy?" asked the Doctor. "My notebook's in the safe."
"From Dahomey to Venezuela," said Speedy, raising his right foot to smother a yawn.
"Good," said John Dolittle. "Then they can take these Panama letters for me. It won't be much out of their way. What do Golden Jays eat?"
"They are very fond of acorns," said Speedy.
"All right," said the Doctor. "Please tell Gub-Gub for me to go across to the island and get the wild boars to gather up a couple of sacks of acorns. I want all the birds who work for us to have a good feed before they leave the Main Office for their flights."
The next morning when the Doctor woke up he heard a tremendous chattering all around the post office and he knew that the Golden Jays had arrived overnight. And after he had dressed and come out on to the veranda, there, sure enough, they were—myriads of very handsome gold and black birds, swarming everywhere, gossiping away at a great rate and gobbling up the acorns laid out for them in bushels.
The leader, who already knew the Doctor, of course, came forward to get orders and to see how much mail there was to be carried.
After everything had been arranged and the leader had decided he need expect no tornadoes or bad weather for the next twenty-four hours, he gave a command. Then all the birds rose in the air to fly away—whistling farewell to Postmaster General Dolittle and the Head Office.
"Oh, by the way, Doctor," said the leader, turning back a moment, "did you ever hear of a man called Christopher Columbus?"
"Oh, surely," said the Doctor. "He discovered America in 1492."
"Well, I just wanted to tell you," said the Jay, "that if it hadn't been for an ancestor of mine he wouldn't have discovered it in 1492—later perhaps, but not in 1492."
"Oh, indeed!" said John Dolittle. "Tell me more about it." And he pulled a notebook out of his pocket and started to write.
"Well," said the Jay, "the story was handed down to me by my mother, who heard it from my grandmother, who got it from my great-grandmother, and so on, way back to an ancestor of ours who lived in America in the fifteenth century. Our kind of birds in those days did not come across to this side of the Atlantic, neither summer nor winter. We used to spend from March to September in the Bermudas and the rest of the year in Venezuela. And when we made the autumn journey south we used to stop at the Bahama Islands to rest on the way.
"The fall of the year 1492 was a stormy season. Gales and squalls were blowing up all the time and we did not get started on our trip until the second week in October. My ancestor had been the leader of the flock for a long time. But he had grown sort of old and feeble and a younger bird was elected in his place to lead the Golden Jays to Venezuela that year. The new leader was a conceited youngster, and because he had been chosen he thought he knew everything about navigation and weather and sea crossings.
"Shortly after the birds started they sighted, to their great astonishment, a number of boats sailing on a westward course. This was about half way between the Bermudas and the Bahamas. The ships were much larger than anything they had ever seen before. All they had been accustomed to up to that time were little canoes, with Indians in them.
"The new leader immediately got scared and gave the order for the Jays to swing in further toward the land, so they wouldn't be seen by the men who crowded these large boats. He was a superstitious leader and anything he didn't understand he kept away from. But my ancestor did not go with the flock, but made straight for the ships.
"He was gone about twenty minutes, and presently he flew after the other birds and said to the new leader: 'Over there in those ships a brave man is in great danger. They come from Europe, seeking land. The sailors, not knowing how near they are to sighting it, have mutinied against their admiral. I am an old bird and I know this brave sea-farer. Once when I was making a crossing—the first I ever made—a gale came up and I was separated from my fellows. For three days I had to fly with the battering wind. And finally I was blown eastward near the Old World. Just when I was ready to drop into the sea from exhaustion I spied a ship. I simply had to rest. I was weather-beaten and starving. So I made for the boat and fell half dead upon the deck. The sailors were going to put me in a cage. But the captain of the ship—this same navigator whose life is now threatened by his rebellious crew in those ships over there—fed me crumbs and nursed me back to life. Then he let me go free, to fly to Venezuela when the weather was fair. We are land birds. Let us now save this good man's life by going to his ship and showing ourselves to his sailors. They will then know that land is near and be obedient to their captain."
"Yes, yes," said the Doctor. "Go on. I remember Columbus writing of land birds in his diary. Go on."
"So," said the Jay, "the whole flock turned and made for Columbus's fleet. They were only just in time. For the sailors were ready to kill their admiral, who, they said, had brought them on a fool's errand to find land where there was none. He must turn back and sail for Spain, they said, or be killed.
But when the sailors saw a great flock of land birds passing over the ship going southwest instead of west, they took new heart, for they were sure land must lie not far to the southwestward.
"So we led them on to the Bahamas. And on the seventh day, very early in the morning, the crew, with a cry of 'Land! Land!' fell down upon their knees and gave thanks to heaven. Watling's Island, one of the smaller Bahamas, lay ahead of them, smiling in the sea.
"Then the sailors gathered about the admiral, Christopher Columbus, whom a little before they were going to kill, and cheered and called him the greatest navigator in the world—which, in truth, he was.
"But even Columbus himself never learned to his dying day that it was the weather-beaten bird who had fallen on his friendly deck some years before, who had led him by the shortest cut to the land of the New World.
"So you see, Doctor," the Jay ended, picking up his letters and getting ready to fly, "if it hadn't been for my ancestor Christopher Columbus would have had to turn back to please his sailors, or be killed. If it hadn't been for him America would not have been discovered in 1492—later, perhaps, but not in 1492. Good-bye! I must be going. Thanks for the acorns."