Part IV Chapter 1 Doctor Dolittle's Post Office by Hugh Lofting
PARCEL POST
One day Gub-Gub came to the Doctor and said:
"Doctor, why don't you start a parcel post?"
"Great heavens, Gub-Gub!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Don't you think I'm busy enough already? What do you want a parcel post for?"
"I'll bet it's something to do with food," said Too-Too, who was sitting on the stool next to the Doctor's, adding up figures.
"Well," said Gub-Gub, "I was thinking of sending to England for some fresh vegetables."
"There you are!" said Too-Too. "He has a vegetable mind."
"But parcels would be too heavy for the birds to carry, Gub-Gub," said the Doctor—"except perhaps the small parcels by the bigger birds."
"Yes, I know. I had thought of that," said the pig. "But this month the Brussels sprouts will be coming into season in England. They're my favorite vegetable, you know—after parsnips. And I hear that a special kind of thrushes will be leaving England next week to come to Africa. It wouldn't be too much to ask them to bring a single Brussels sprout apiece, would it? There will be hundreds of birds in the flight and if they each brought a sprout we'd have enough to last us for months. I haven't tasted any fresh English vegetables since last Autumn, Doctor. And I'm so sick of these yams and okras and African rubbish."
"All right, Gub-Gub," said the Doctor, "I'll see what I can do. We will send a letter to England by the next mail going out and ask the thrushes to bring you your Brussels sprouts."
Well, that was how still another department, the Parcel Post, was added to the Foreign Mails Office of Fantippo. Gub-Gub's sprouts arrived (tons of them, because this was a very big flight of birds), and after that many kinds of animals came to the Doctor and asked him to send for foreign foods for them when their own ran short. In this way, too, bringing seeds and plants from other lands by birds, the Doctor tried quite a number of experiments in planting, and what is called acclimatizing, fruits and vegetables and even flowers.
And very soon he had an old-fashioned window-box garden on the houseboat post office blooming with geraniums and marigolds and zinnias raised from the seeds and cuttings his birds brought him from England. And that is why many of the same vegetables that grow in England can still be found in a wild state in Africa. They came there through Gub-Gub's passion for the foods he had been brought up on.
A little while after that, by using the larger birds to carry packages, a regular parcel post every two months was put at the service of the Fantippans; and alarm clocks and all sorts of things from England were sent for.
King Koko even sent for a new bicycle. It was brought over in pieces, two storks carrying a wheel each, an eagle the frame and crows the smaller parts, like the pedals, the spanners and the oil can.
When they started to put it together again in the post office a part—one of the nuts—was found to be missing. But that was not the fault of the Parcel Post. It had been left out by the makers, who shipped it from Birmingham. But the Doctor wrote a letter of complaint by the next mail and a new nut was sent right away. Then the King rode triumphantly through the streets of Fantippo on his new bicycle and a public holiday was held in honor of the occasion. And he gave his old bicycle to his brother, Prince Wolla-Bolla. And the Parcel Post, which had really been started by Gub-Gub, was declared a great success.
Some weeks later the Doctor received this letter from a farmer in Lincolnshire:
"Dear Sir: Thank you for your excellent weather reports. By their help I managed to raise the finest crop of Brussels sprouts this year ever seen in Lincolnshire. But the night before I was going to pick them for market they disappeared from my fields—every blessed one of them. How, I don't know. Maybe you could give me some advice about this.
"Your obedient servant,
"Nicholas Scroggins."
"Great heavens!" said the Doctor: "I wonder what happened to them."
"Gub-Gub ate them," said Too-Too. "Those are the sprouts, no doubt, that the thrushes brought here."
"Dear me!" said the Doctor. "That's too bad. Well, I dare say I'll find some way to pay the farmer back."
For a long time Dab-Dab, the motherly housekeeper, had been trying to get the Doctor to take a holiday from his post office business.
"You know, Doctor," said she, "you're going to get sick—that's what's going to happen to you, as sure as you're alive. No man can work the way you've been doing for the last few months and not pay for it. Now you've got the post office going properly, why don't you hand it over to the King's postmen to run and give yourself a rest? And, anyway, aren't you ever going back to Puddleby?"
"Oh, yes," said John Dolittle. "All in good time, Dab-Dab."
"But you must take a holiday," the duck insisted. "Get away from the post office for a while. Go up the coast in a canoe for a change of air—if you won't go home."
Well, the Doctor kept saying that he would go. But he never did—until something happened in the natural history line of great enough importance to take him from his post office work. This is how it came about:
One day the Doctor was opening the mail addressed to him, when he came upon a package about the size and shape of a large egg. He undid the outer wrapper, which was made of seaweed. Inside he found a letter and a pair of oyster shells tied together like a box.
Somewhat puzzled, the Doctor first read the letter, while Dab-Dab, who was still badgering him about taking a holiday, looked over his shoulder. The letter said:
"Dear Doctor: I am sending you, inclosed, some pretty pebbles which I found the other day while cracking open oysters. I never saw pebbles of this color before, though I live by the seashore and have been opening shellfish all my life. My husband says they're oyster's eggs. But I don't believe it. Would you please tell me what they are? And be careful to send them back, because my children use them as playthings and I have promised them they shall have them to keep."
Then the Doctor put down the letter and, taking his penknife, he cut the seaweed strings that neatly held the oyster shells together. And when he opened the shells he gave a gasp of astonishment.
"Oh, Dab-Dab," he cried, "how beautiful! Look, look!"
"Pearls!" whispered Dab-Dab in an awed voice, gazing down into the Doctor's palm. "Pink pearls!"
"My! Aren't they handsome?" murmured the Doctor. "And did you ever see such large ones? Each one of those pearls, Dab-Dab, is worth a fortune. Who the dickens is this that sent them to me, anyhow?"
And he turned to the letter again.
"It's from a spoonbill," said Dab-Dab. "I know their writing. They are a sort of a cross between a curlew and a snipe. They like messing around lonely seacoast places, hunting for shellfish and sea worms and stuff like that."
"Well, where is it written from?" asked the Doctor. "What do you make that address out to be—at the top of the page there?"
Dab-Dab screwed up her eyes and peered at it closely.
"It looks to me," she said, "like the Harmattan Rocks."
"Where is that?" asked the Doctor.
"I have no idea," said Dab-Dab. "But Speedy will know."
And she went off to fetch the Skimmer.
Speedy said, yes, he knew—the Harmattan Rocks were a group of small islands off the coast of West Africa, about sixty miles further to the northward.
"That's curious," said the Doctor. "I wouldn't have been so surprised if they had come from the South Sea Islands. But it is rather unusual to find pearls of any size or beauty in these waters. Well, these must be sent back to the spoonbill's children—by registered parcel post, of course. Though, to tell you the truth, I hate to part with them—they are so lovely. They can't go before to-morrow, anyway. I wonder where I can keep them in the meantime. One has to be frightfully careful with gems as valuable as these. You had better not tell anyone about them, Dab-Dab—except Jip the watchman and the pushmi-pullyu. They must take it in turns to mount guard at the door all night. Men will do all sorts of things for pearls. We'll keep it a secret and send them right back first thing to-morrow morning."
Even while the Doctor was speaking he noticed a shadow fall across the desk at which he was standing. He looked up. And there at the information window was the ugliest man's face he had ever seen, staring in at the beautiful pearls that still lay on the palm of his hand.
The Doctor, annoyed and embarrassed, forgot for the first time in his post office career to be polite.
"What do you want?" he asked, thrusting the pearls into his pocket.
"I want a postal order for ten shillings," said the man. "I am going to send some money to my sick wife."
The Doctor made out the postal order and took the money, which the man handed through the window.
"Here you are," he said.
Then the man left the post office and the Doctor watched him go.
"That was a queer-looking customer, wasn't he?" he said to Dab-Dab.
"He was, indeed," said the duck. "I'm not surprised his wife is sick, if she has a husband with a face like that."
"I wonder who he is," said John Dolittle. "It isn't often we have white men coming in here. I don't much like the looks of him."
The following day the pearls were wrapped up again the way they had arrived, and after a letter had been written by the Doctor explaining to the spoonbill what the "pebbles" really were, they were sent off by registered parcel post to the Harmattan Rocks.
The bird chosen to take the package happened to be one of the thrushes that had brought the Brussels sprouts from England. These birds were still staying in the neighborhood. And though a thrush was a somewhat small bird to carry parcel post, the package was a very little one and the Doctor had nobody else to send. So after explaining to the thrush that registered mail should be guarded very carefully by postmen, the Doctor sent the pearls off.
Then he went to call on the King, 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.
After he had listened to the description of the man's cross-eyed, ugly face, the King said, yes, he knew him very well. He was a pearl fisherman, who spent most of his time in the Pacific Ocean, where fishing for pearls was more common. But, the King said, he often came hanging around these parts, where he was known to be a great villain who would do anything to get pearls or money. Jack Wilkins was his name.
The Doctor, on hearing this, felt glad that he had already got the pink pearls safely off to their owner by registered mail. Then he told the King that he hoped shortly to take a holiday because he was overworked and needed a rest. The King asked where he was going, and the Doctor said he thought of taking a week's canoe trip up the coast toward the Harmattan Rocks.
"Well," said His Majesty, "if you are going in that direction you might call on an old friend of mine, Chief Nyam-Nyam. He owns the country in those parts and the Harmattan Rocks themselves. He and his people are frightfully poor, though. But he is honest—and I think you will like him."
"All right," said the Doctor, "I'll call on him with your compliments."
The next day, leaving Speedy, Cheapside and Jip in charge of the post office, the Doctor got into his canoe with Dab-Dab and paddled off to take his holiday. On the way out he noticed a schooner, the ship of Jack Wilkins, the pearl fisherman, at anchor near the entrance to Fantippo Harbor.
Toward evening the Doctor arrived at a small settlement of straw huts, the village of Chief Nyam-Nyam. Calling on the Chief with an introduction from King Koko, the Doctor was well received. He found, however, that the country over which this chief ruled was indeed in a very poor state. For years powerful neighbors on either side had made war on the old Chief and robbed him of his best farming lands, till now his people were crowded onto a narrow strip of rocky shore where very little food could be grown. The Doctor was particularly distressed by the thinness of the few chickens pecking about in the streets. They reminded him of old broken-down cab-horses, he said.
While he was talking to the Chief (who seemed to be a kindly old man) Speedy swept into the Chief's hut in a great state of excitement.
"Doctor," he cried, "the mail has been robbed! The thrush has come back to the post office and says his package was taken from him on the way. The pearls are gone!"