فصل 30

Thirty

They all raised their heads, listening.

‘Ssshh! There it is again!’

But the voice was too far away for them to hear what it was saying.

‘It’s a Cloud-Man!’ Miss Spider cried. ‘I just know it’s a Cloud-Man! They’re after us again!’ ‘It came from above!’ the Earthworm said, and automatically everybody looked upward, everybody except the Centipede, who couldn’t move.

‘Ouch!’ they said. ‘Help! Mercy! We’re going to catch it this time!’ For what they now saw, swirling and twisting directly over their heads, was an immense black cloud, a terrible, dangerous, thundery-looking thing that began to rumble and roar even as they were staring at it. And then, from high up on the top of the cloud, the faraway voice came down to them once again, this time very loud and clear.

‘On with the faucets!’ it shouted. ‘On with the faucets! On with the faucets!’

Three seconds later, the whole underneath of the cloud seemed to split and burst open like a paper bag, and then – out came the water! They saw it coming. It was quite easy to see because it wasn’t just raindrops. It wasn’t raindrops at all. It was a great solid mass of water that might have been a lake or a whole ocean dropping out of the sky on top of them, and down it came, down and down and down, crashing first on to the seagulls and then on to the peach itself, while the poor travellers shrieked with fear and groped around frantically for something to catch hold of – the peach stem, the silk strings, anything they could find – and all the time the water came pouring and roaring down upon them, bouncing and smashing and sloshing and slashing and swashing and swirling and surging and whirling and gurgling and gushing and rushing and rushing, and it was like being pinned down underneath the biggest waterfall in the world and not being able to get out. They couldn’t speak. They couldn’t see. They couldn’t breathe. And James Henry Trotter, holding on madly to one of the silk strings above the peach stem, told himself that this must surely be the end of everything at last. But then, just as suddenly as it had started, the deluge stopped. They were out of it and it was all over. The wonderful seagulls had flown right through it and had come out safely on the other side. Once again the giant peach was sailing peacefully through the mysterious moonlit sky.

‘I am drowned!’ gasped the Old-Green-Grasshopper, spitting out water by the pint.

‘It’s gone right through my skin!’ the Earthworm groaned. ‘I always thought my skin was waterproof but it isn’t and now I‘m full of rain!’ ‘Look at me, look at me!’ shouted the Centipede excitedly. ‘It’s washed me clean! The paint’s all gone! I can move again!’

‘That’s the worst news I‘ve had in a long time,’ the Earthworm said.

The Centipede was dancing around the deck and turning somersaults in the air and singing at the top of his voice: ‘Oh, hooray for the storm and the rain!

I can move! I don’t feel any pain!

And now I‘m a pest,

I‘m the biggest and best,

The most marvellous pest once again!’

‘Oh, do shut up,’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper said.

‘Look at me!’ cried the Centipede.

‘Look at ME! I am freed! I am freed!

Not a scratch nor a bruise nor a bleed!

To his grave this fine gent

They all thought they had sent

And I very near went!

Oh, I VERY near went!

But they cent quite the wrong Sentipede!’