Part II Chapter 1 Doctor Dolittle's Return by Hugh Lofting
WHY JOHN DOLITTLE STAYED SO LONG ON THE MOON
"Well," the Doctor began, "before you came in I was telling Stubbins here that I had quite a difficult time getting away from Otho Bludge, the Moon Man. But since you all want to listen to the story I had better begin at the beginning—that is, from where Stubbins was carried off by the moth and taken away. You know of course why that was. The Moon Man, who had bird spies in every corner of that world up there, heard that I was uneasy about Stubbins—or rather about his mother and father. The young rascal hadn't even told his parents he was going—just stowed away aboard the moth without even my knowing it. Of course I feared his parents would be terribly worried, when he no longer came to visit them.
"These bird spies overheard us talking about this one night in our camp and they told Otho Bludge. Now I had been treating him for rheumatism, and he didn't want to lose me, it seemed. He thought if he got Stubbins back to the earth I would no longer worry about him and would be willing to stay. So he kidnapped the boy and shipped him off before I had a chance to say a word about it one way or the other.
"At first it was a great load off my mind. I knew the trip could be made in safety—although, to be sure, it was a hard and trying one. When the moth got back and reported that he had landed Stubbins on the earth I was very happy. I admit I was terribly sorry to lose him. And, no doubt, I would have felt awfully lonely up there if I had not been so busy.
"I have never known any one single year in my whole life when so many interesting things for study were presented to me at once. The days never seemed long enough. There were great portions of the moon which Stubbins and I had not yet even explored. I found new lakes with all sorts of strange life in the waters. High in the mountains, among the old craters of dead volcanoes, I found fossil remains of different animals which had thrived on the moon long, long ago and since died out—become extinct, as we call it. Then there were the rocks at lower levels. Comparing these with what I knew of our own rocks down here, I was able to calculate the exact age of the moon—that is, I could tell within a few thousand years, just when it was that the great explosion occurred—the explosion which shot the moon off from the earth and made it into a separate little world, revolving around us in the heavens."
The Doctor paused a moment and turned to Chee-Chee.
"By the way, Chee-Chee," said he, "now that we're back, don't forget to remind me to alter that chapter in my book on Monkey History."
"You mean the part about the story my grandmother told when I was little?" asked the monkey.
"Oh, I remember that," cried the white mouse. "It was called The Days Before There Was a Moon."
"That's right," said the Doctor. "The legend of how a man, a prehistoric artist, was shot away from the earth the day before the moon appeared in the sky for the first time. I put it into my book, even if it was only a story. But it now appears that it was all practically true—the Legend of Pippiteepa, the beautiful girl with whom poor Otho Bludge was in love. And by examining the rocks up there we now know that the monkey race is much older than most naturalists had thought."
"How sad," said the white mouse thoughtfully, "that they should have been separated, one left on the earth and one stuck up in the moon. A very sad romance."
"Yes, but just the same," said the Doctor, "don't forget that if Otho Bludge had not been shot away by the great explosion, life on the moon to-day could never have been what it is. It was he who saved the animal world up there from dying out. He told me it took him a long time to see what was going to happen. Some of the larger creatures—great prehistoric beasts that went off so suddenly with him—some in egg-form like dinosaurs and such—began eating up the plant life so fast that the entire vegetable kingdom could hardly keep up against the destruction. Of course all this, you understand, took thousands and thousands of years. But at last, when Otho had had enough time to get himself used to his new surroundings, he began to ponder over what should be done about it. He had then grown immensely big. And though he wasn't much good at arithmetic and astronomy he saw the planets, the sun and the earth revolving around him in the heavens and he finally realized that he had already lived a terribly long while."
"About how long?" asked Gub-Gub.
"It's hard to say exactly," said the Doctor. "But certainly dozens of times longer than he knew man usually lived on the earth. It must have been something in the vegetable diet, and of course the climate, lighter gravity and other things peculiar to that new world. It looked to him, he told me, as if life could go on up there pretty nearly for ever provided it was properly taken care of."
I whispered a word of explanation in Matthew's ear at this point. He nodded and winked back at me understandingly.
"And so," the Doctor went on, "Otho Bludge made up his mind that he would see to it that life was properly taken care of—life of both kinds, animal and plant. First he went round the whole of the moon, exploring it many times, so that there was hardly a square yard of it that he hadn't examined. In a crude rough way he made a list of all the different forms of animals, insects, trees, shrubs and plants that he found. Knowing how long he had lived and how long he was likely still to live, he felt there was no need for hurry and he made a very complete job of it."
"Humph! Must 'ave been quite a naturalist 'imself," Cheapside put in.
"Yes, he most certainly was," said the Doctor. "A very great naturalist, rather the way that Long Arrow was, the man that we found in Spidermonkey Island. He didn't use science such as we use. But he gathered a tremendous lot of information and showed a remarkable common sense in what he did with it. Well, having listed all his animals and plants—or, I should say, all that were still living at the time—he began upon the work. He next found out just what each of them lived on and about how much food each required."
"He told you all this himself, Doctor?" Too-Too asked.
"Yes," said the Doctor, "but you must remember that conversation between him and myself was not exactly the same thing as Matthew and I talking in English together. No, no. Not nearly so—er—exact. Whatever language Otho Bludge had used in talking with his fellow men on the earth of prehistoric days, he had, when I met him, almost entirely forgotten. After all, how could he have remembered it—not having another human to speak with for thousands of years?"
"Well, how did you manage to talk with him at all?" asked Jip.
"In animal languages, mostly," said the Doctor. "For, you see, in his years and years of observing, counting, watching and examining the other forms of life up there, the Moon Man saw that the animals could communicate with one another. And presently he began, little by little, to catch on to the different ways in which they spoke—signs, noises, movements, and so forth. How long this took him, I couldn't find out. That was one of the great difficulties I always had in questioning him—he was so vague, hazy, about lengths of time, quantities, numbers—in fact anything that had to do with figures. It was curious, because the cleverness of the man was in all other matters most astonishing."
"Well, but, Doctor," said Too-Too, "wouldn't that be because he had lived so long?"
"Exactly," said John Dolittle. "He had lived, many hundreds of our lifetimes. So, in some ways, his mind, his experience, was—well, he was like hundreds of men rolled into one, if you know what I mean. Then again, he had kept his attention on just a few subjects. Life in the moon is a very simple matter—as it would be anywhere else where there were no human beings to make it complicated—er—you know, fussy, hard and mixed up."
"Were the animals' languages on the moon anything like the animal languages down here?" asked Gub-Gub.
"They were and they weren't," said the Doctor. "Of course they had all sprung from the languages of the earth creatures. But after so long up there, the birds and the rest of them spoke quite differently. Of course my own knowledge of animal languages helped me greatly in talking with them. But I found it dreadfully difficult at first. The words and phrases had nearly all changed. Only the manner, the way, of speaking remained.
"But this will show you how hard Otho Bludge himself must have worked: he discovered, without any education in natural history at all, the great part which the insects, like bees, play in the life of the plants. He knew all about it. I found that his knowledge of insect languages, even down to the water-beetles, was tremendous—far and away better than my own. And from that he went on to learn the languages of the vegetable world."
"The language of vegetables!" cried Gub-Gub.
"Well," said the Doctor, "not exactly the languages of potatoes and carrots. We hadn't any up there. The expression 'vegetable world' takes in anything that grows in the ground—trees, flowers, vines. Otho Bludge was the first naturalist to make any discoveries in this field of study. I had often wondered, years ago, if our plants down here had any way of talking to one another. I am still wondering.
"But up there, with a very much smaller animal kingdom, and entirely different conditions, certain kinds of trees and plants had worked out and developed languages of their own. You see, in this world, we are always mixing up breeds—crossing different sorts of dahlias to make new kinds, grafting fruit-trees, and even sticking rosebuds on to raspberry canes to make roses grow on a raspberry root. That's called a hybrid. How could we expect such a mixture to know what language to talk. Poor thing doesn't even know whether he's a raspberry or a rose!"
"Yes, most confusin', I should say," Cheapside put in.
"But in the moon," said the Doctor, "left to themselves for thousands of years, with no human hands to get them mixed up, the plants were much freer to work out things for themselves. Well, Otho Bludge thought out his plan and started off to try it. He did not want to interfere in the freedom of anything, but only to stop them all from interfering with the freedom of one another—to keep them from fighting and getting killed off. And that, when I got there, he had very thoroughly succeeded in doing. It must have been a terrifically hard thing—but then we must remember that he was not interfered with by any of his own kind either. I doubt very much if it could ever have happened in our world. But, remember again, his was a far smaller world—easier to manage. At the beginning when he explained his plan to the animals, the insects and the plants, he found that not all of them were pleased with the idea."
"Why, did they go on fighting and eating one another up?" asked Gub-Gub.
"Yes," said the Doctor. "But all parts of a world, no matter what its size or kind, have to work together. And those that would not help the safety of others very soon found themselves in a bad way—crowded out or starved out. Later Bludge told them he wanted to form what he called the Council. It was like a parliament or congress. Members of both the animal and the vegetable kingdoms came to it. They arranged everything that affected life on the moon. Anybody could get up and say his say in this council or give his advice or make his complaint. Otho Bludge, the Moon Man, was president. And after a while they practically all saw that Bludge was right. It was clear to them that he had brains, and they accepted him as the leader, as the guide, in forming a new and properly balanced world where everything could live happily—more happily—without fighting."