فصل 34

Thirty-four

‘Come on, Centipede, bite through the first string,’ James ordered.

The Centipede took one of the silk strings between his teeth and bit through it. And once again (but not with an angry Cloud-Man dangling from the end of the string this time) a single seagull came away from the rest of the flock and went flying off on its own.

‘Bite another,’ James ordered.

The Centipede bit through another string.

‘Why aren’t we sinking?’

‘We are sinking!’

‘No, we’re not!’

‘Don’t forget the peach is a lot lighter now than when we started out,’ James told them. ‘It lost an awful lot of juice when all those hailstones hit it in the night. Cut away two more seagulls, Centipede!’ ‘Ah, that’s better!’

‘Here we go!’

‘Now we really are sinking!’

‘Yes, this is perfect! Don’t bite any more, Centipede, or we’ll sink too fast! Gently does it!’ Slowly the great peach began losing height, and the buildings and streets down below began coming closer and closer.

‘Do you think we’ll all get our pictures in the papers when we get down?’ the Ladybird asked.

‘My goodness, I‘ve forgotten to polish my boots!’ the Centipede said. ‘Everyone must help me to polish my boots before we arrive.’ ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ said the Earthworm. ‘Can’t you ever stop thinking about –’ But he never finished his sentence. For suddenly… WHOOOSH!… and they looked up and saw a huge four-engined plane come shooting out of a near-by cloud and go whizzing past them not more than twenty feet over their heads. This was actually the regular early morning passenger plane coming in to New York from Chicago, and as it went by, it sliced right through every single one of the silken strings, and immediately the seagulls broke away, and the enormous peach, having nothing to hold it up in the air any longer, went tumbling down towards the earth like a lump of lead.

‘Help!’ cried the Centipede.

‘Save us!’ cried Miss Spider.

‘We are lost!’ cried the Ladybird.

‘This is the end!’ cried the Old-Green-Grasshopper.

‘James!’ cried the Earthworm. ‘Do something, James! Quickly, do something!’

‘I can‘t!’ cried James. ‘I‘m sorry! Good-bye! Shut your eyes everybody! It won’t be long now!’