Part II Chapter 5 Doctor Dolittle's Post Office by Hugh Lofting
GULLS AND SHIPS
The morning sun peeping in at the window of the lighthouse found the Doctor still working over the keeper where he lay at the foot of the tower stairs.
"He's coming to," said Dab-Dab. "See, his eyes are beginning to blink."
"Get me some more clean water from the kitchen," said the Doctor, who was bathing a large lump on the side of the man's head.
Presently the keeper opened his eyes wide and stared up into the Doctor's face.
"Who?——What?"——he murmured stupidly. "The light!—I must attend to the light!—I must attend to the light!" and he struggled weakly to get up.
"It's all right," said the Doctor. "The light has been lit. And it's nearly day now. Here, drink this. Then you'll feel better."
And the Doctor held some medicine to his lips which he had taken from the little black bag.
In a short while the man grew strong enough to stand on his feet. Then, with the Doctor's help, he walked as far as the kitchen, where John Dolittle and Dab-Dab made him comfortable in an armchair, lit the stove and cooked his breakfast for him.
"I'm mighty grateful to you, stranger, whoever you be," said the man. "Usually there's two of us here, me and my partner, Fred. But yesterday morning I let Fred go off with the ketch to get oysters. That's why I'm alone. I was coming down the stairs about noon, from putting new wicks in the lamp, when my foot slipped and I took a tumble to the bottom. My head fetched up against the wall and knocked the senses right out of me. How long I lay there before you found me I don't know."
"Well, all's well that ends well," said the Doctor. "Take this; you must be nearly starved."
And he handed the keeper a large cup of steaming coffee.
About ten o'clock in the morning Fred, the partner, returned in the little sail-boat from his oyster-gathering expedition. He was very much worried when he heard of the accident which had happened while he had been off duty. Fred, like the other keeper, was a Londoner and a seaman. He was a pleasant fellow and both he and his partner (who was now almost entirely recovered from his injury) were very glad of the Doctor's company to break the tiresome dullness of their lonely life.
They took John Dolittle all over the lighthouse to see the workings of it. And outside they showed him with great pride the tiny garden of tomatoes and nasturtiums which they had planted near the foot of the tower.
They only got a holiday once a year, they told John Dolittle, when a government ship stopped near Cape Stephen and took them back to England for six weeks' vacation, leaving two other men in their place to take care of the light while they were gone.
They asked the Doctor if he could give them any news of their beloved London. But he had to admit that he also had been away from that city for a long time. However, while they were talking Cheapside came into the lighthouse kitchen, looking for the Doctor. The city sparrow was delighted to find that the keepers were also Cockneys. And he gave them, through the Doctor, all the latest gossip of Wapping, Limehouse, the East India Docks and the wharves and the shipping of London River.
The two keepers thought that the Doctor was surely crazy when he started a conversation of chirps with Cheapside. But from the answers they got to their questions they could see there was no fake about the news of the city which the sparrow gave.
Cheapside said the faces of those two Cockney seamen were the best scenery he had looked on since he had come to Africa. And after that first visit he was always flying over to the lighthouse in his spare time to see his new friends. Of course, he couldn't talk to them, because neither of them knew sparrow talk—not even Cockney sparrow talk. But Cheapside loved being with them, anyway.
"They're such a nice, wholesome, Christian change," he said, "after these 'ere 'eathen hidolaters. And you should just hear Fred sing 'See That My Grave's Kept Green.'"
The lighthouse keepers were sorry to have the Doctor go and they wouldn't let him leave till he promised to come and take dinner with them next Sunday.
Then, after they had loaded his canoe with a bushel of rosy tomatoes and a bouquet of nasturtiums, the Doctor, with Dab-Dab and Cheapside, paddled away for Fantippo, while the keepers waved to them from the lighthouse door.
The Doctor had not paddled very far on his return journey to the post office when the seagull who had brought the news of the light overtook him.
"Everything all right now, Doctor?" he asked as he swept in graceful circles around the canoe.
"Yes," said John Dolittle, munching a tomato. "The man got an awful crack on the head from that fall. But he will be all over it in a little while. If it hadn't been for the canary, though, who told us where the matches were—and for you, too, holding back the sailors—we would never have saved that ship."
The Doctor threw a tomato skin out of the canoe and the gull caught it neatly in the air before it touched the water.
"Well, I'm glad we were in time," said the bird.
"Tell me," asked the Doctor, watching him thoughtfully as he hovered and swung and curved around the tiny boat, "what made you come and bring me the news about the light? Gulls don't, as a rule, bother much about people or what happens to ships, do they?"
"You're mistaken, Doctor," said the gull, catching another skin with deadly accuracy. "Ships and the men in them are very important to us—not so much down here in the South. But up North, why, if it wasn't for the ships in the winter we gulls would often have a hard time finding enough to eat. You see, after it gets cold fish and sea foods become sort of scarce. Sometimes we make out by going up the rivers to towns and hanging about the artificial lakes in parks where fancy waterfowl are kept. The people come to the parks and throw biscuits into the lakes for the waterfowl. But if we are around the biscuits get caught before they hit the lake—like that," and the gull snatched a third tomato skin on the wing with a lightning lunge.
"But you were speaking of ships," said the Doctor.
"Yes," the gull went on—rather indistinctly, because his mouth was full of tomato skin—"we find ships much better for winter feeding. You see, it isn't really fair of us to go and bag all the food from the fancy waterfowl in parks. So we never do it unless we have to. Usually in winter we stick to the ships. Why, two years ago I and a cousin of mine lived the whole year round following ships for the food scraps the stewards threw out into the sea. The rougher the weather, the more food we get, because then the passengers don't feel like eating and most of the grub gets thrown out. Yes, I and my cousin attached ourselves, as it were, to the Transatlantic Packet Line, which runs ships from Glasgow to Philadelphia, and traveled back and forth with them across the ocean dozens of trips. But later on we changed over to the Binnacle Line—Tilbury to Boston."
"Why?" asked the Doctor.
"We found they ran a better table for their passengers. With the Binnacle, who threw us out morning biscuits, afternoon tea and sandwiches last thing at night—as well as three square meals a day—we lived like fighting cocks. It nearly made sailors of us for good. It's a great life—all you do is eat. I should say gulls are interested in men and ships, Doctor—very much so. Why, I wouldn't have an accident happen to a ship for anything—especially a passenger ship."
"Humph! That's very interesting," murmured the Doctor. "And have you seen many accidents—ships in trouble?"
"Oh, heaps of times," said the gull—"storms, collisions at night, ships going aground in the fog, and the rest. Oh, yes, I've seen lots of boats in trouble at sea."
"Ah!" said the Doctor, looking up from his paddling. "See, we are already back at the post office. And there's the pushmi-pullyu ringing the lunch bell. We're just in time. I smell liver and bacon—these tomatoes will go with it splendidly. Won't you come in and join us?" he asked the gull. "I would like to hear more about your life with ships. You've given me an idea."
"Thank you," said the gull. "I am feeling kind of peckish myself. You are very kind. This is the first time I've eaten ship's food inside a ship."
And when the canoe was tied up they went into the houseboat and sat down to lunch at the kitchen table.
"Well, now," said the Doctor to the gull as soon as they were seated, "you were speaking of fogs. What do you do yourself in that kind of weather—I mean, you can't see any more in the fog than the sailors can, can you?"
"No," said the gull, "we can't see any more, it is true. But, my goodness! If we were as helpless in a fog as the sailors are we'd always be lost. What we do, if we are going anywhere special and we run into a fog, is to fly up above it—way up where the air is clear. Then we can find our way as well as ever."
"I see," said the Doctor. "But the storms, what do you do in them to keep yourselves safe?"
"Well, of course, in storms—bad storms—even seabirds can't always go where they want. We seagulls never try to battle our way against a real gale. The petrels sometimes do, but we don't. It is too tiring, and even when you can come down and rest on the water, swimming, every once in a while, it's a dangerous game. We fly with the storm—just let it carry us where it will. Then when the wind dies down we come back and finish our journey."
"But that takes a long time, doesn't it?" asked the Doctor.
"Oh, yes," said the gull, "it wastes a little time. But, you know, we very seldom let ourselves get caught by a storm."
"How do you mean?" asked John Dolittle.
"We know, before we reach one, where it is. And we go around it. No experienced sea bird ever runs his head into a bad storm."
"But how do you know where the storms are?" asked the Doctor.
"Well," said the gull, "I suppose two great advantages we birds have over the sailors in telling when and where to expect bad weather are our good eyesight and our experience. For one thing, we can always rise high in the air and look over the sea for a distance of fifty or sixty miles. Then if we see gales approaching we can turn and run for it. And we can put on more speed than the fastest gale that ever blew. And then, another thing, our experience is so much better than sailors'. Sailors, poor duffers, think they know the sea—that they spend their life on it. They don't—believe me, they don't. Half the time they spend in the cabin, part of the time they spend on shore and a lot of the time they spend sleeping. And even when they are on deck they're not always looking at the sea. They fiddle around with ropes and paint brushes and mops and buckets. You very seldom see a sailor looking at the sea."
"I suppose they get rather tired of it, poor fellows!" murmured the Doctor.
"Maybe. But, after all, if you want to be a good seaman the sea is the thing that counts, isn't it? That's the thing you've got to look at—to study. Now, we sea birds spend nearly all our lives, night and day, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, looking at the sea. And what is the result?" asked the gull, taking a fresh piece of toast from the rack that Dab-Dab handed him. "The result is this: we know the sea. Why, Doctor, if you were to shut me up in a little box with no windows in it and take me out into the middle of any ocean you liked and then opened the box and let me look at the sea—even if there wasn't a speck of land in sight—I could tell you what ocean it was, and, almost to a mile, what part of it we were in. But, of course, I'd have to know what date it was."
"Marvelous!" cried the Doctor. "How do you do it?"
"From the color of it; from the little particles of things that float in it; from the kind of fishes and sea creatures swimming in it; from the way the little ripples rippled and the big waves waved; from the smell of it; from the taste, the saltness of it and a couple of hundred other things. But, you know, in most cases—not always, but in most cases—I could tell you where we were with my eyes shut, as soon as I got out of the box, just from the wind blowing on my feathers."
"Great heavens!" the Doctor exclaimed. "You don't say!"
"That's the main trouble with sailors, Doctor. They don't know winds the way they ought. They can tell a northeast wind from a west wind. And a strong one from a weak one. And that's about all. But when you've spent most of your life, the way we have, flying among the winds, using them to climb on, to swoop on and to hover on, you get to know that there's a lot more to a wind besides its direction and its strength. How often it puffs upward or downward, how often it grows weak or grows strong, will tell you, if you know the science of winds, a whole lot."