The BFG Read online

  'Save our souls!' bellowed the Fleshlumpeater. 'Sound the crumpets! I is bitten by a septicous venomsome vindscreen viper!' He flopped to the ground and sat there howling his head off and clutching his ankle with both hands. His fingers felt the brooch. 'The teeth of the dreadly viper is still sticking into me!' he yelled. 'I is feeling the teeth sticking into my anklet!'

  The BFG saw his second chance. 'We must be getting those viper's teeth out at once!' he cried. 'Otherwise you is deader than duck-soup! I is helping you!'

  The BFG knelt down beside the Fleshlumpeater. 'You must grab your anklet very tight with both hands!' he ordered. 'That will stop the poisnowse juices from the venomsome viper going up your leg and into your heart!'

  The Fleshlumpeater grabbed his ankle with both hands.

  'Now close your eyes and grittle your teeth and look up to heaven and say your prayers while I is taking out the teeth of the venomsome viper,' the BFG said.

  The terrified Fleshlumpeater did exactly as he was told.

  The BFG signalled for some rope. A soldier rushed it over to him. With both the Fleshlumpeater's hands gripping his ankle, it was a simple matter for the BFG to tie the ankles and hands together with a tight knot.

  'I is pulling out the frightsome viper's teeth!' the BFG said as he pulled the knot tight.

  'Do it quickly!' shouted the Fleshlumpeater, 'before I is pizzened to death!'

  'There we is,' said the BFG, standing up. 'You can look now.'

  When the Fleshlumpeater saw that he was trussed up like a turkey, he gave a yell so loud that the heavens trembled. He rolled and he wriggled, he fought and he figgled, he squirmed and he squiggled. But there was not a thing he could do.

  'Well done you!' Sophie cried.

  'Well done you!' said the BFG, smiling down at the little girl. 'You is saving all of our lives!'

  'Will you please get that brooch back for me,' Sophie said. 'It belongs to the Queen.'

  The BFG pulled the beautiful brooch out of the Fleshlumpeater's ankle. The Fleshlumpeater howled. The BFG wiped the pin and handed it back to Sophie.

  Curiously, not one of the other eight snoring giants had woken up during this shimozzle. 'When you is only sleeping one or two hours a day, you is sleeping extra doubly deep,' the BFG explained.

  The Head of the Army and the Air Force drove forward once again in their jeep. 'Her Majesty will be very pleased with me,' the Head of the Army said. 'I shall probably get a medal. What's the next move?'

  'Now you is all driving over to my cave to load up my bottles of dreams,' the BFG said.

  'We can't waste time with that rubbish,' the Army General said.

  'It is the Queen's order,' Sophie said. She was now back on the BFG's hand.

  So the nine jeeps drove across to the BFG's cave and the great dream-loading operation began. There were fifty thousand jars in all to be loaded up, more than five thousand to each jeep, and it took over an hour to finish the job.

  While the soldiers were loading the dreams, the BFG and Sophie disappeared over the mountains on a mysterious errand. When they came back, the BFG had a sack the size of a small house slung over his shoulder.

  'What's that you've got in there?' the Head of the Army demanded to know.

  'Curiosity is killing the rat,' the BFG said, and he turned away from the silly man.

  When he was sure that all his precious dreams had been safely loaded on to the jeeps, the BFG said, 'Now we is driving back to the bellypoppers and picking up the frightsome giants.'

  The jeeps drove back to the helicopters. The fifty thousand dreams were carried carefully, jar by jar, on to the helicopters. The soldiers climbed back on board, but the BFG and Sophie stayed on the ground. Then they all returned to where the nine giants were lying.

  It was a fine sight to see them, these great air machines hovering over the trussed-up giants. It was an even finer sight to see the giants being woken up by the terrific thundering of the engines overhead, and the finest sight of all was to observe those nine hideous brutes squirming and twisting about on the ground like a mass of mighty snakes as they tried to free themselves from their ropes and chains.

  'I is flushbunkled!' roared the Fleshlumpeater.

  'I is splitzwiggled!' yelled the Ghildchewer.

  'I is swogswalloped!' bellowed the Bonecruncher.

  'I is goosegruggled!' howled the Manhugger.

  'I is gunzleswiped!' shouted the Meatdripper.

  'I is fluckgungled!' screamed the Maidmasher.

  'I is slopgroggled!' squawked the Gizzardgulper.

  'I is crodsquinkled!' yowled the Bloodbottler.

  'I is bopmuggered!' screeched the Butcher Boy.

  The nine giant-carrying helicopters each chose a separate giant and hovered directly over him. Very strong steel hawsers with hooks on the ends of them were lowered from the front and rear of each helicopter. The BFG quickly secured the hooks to the giants' chains, one hook near the legs and the other near the arms. Then very slowly, the giants were winched up into the air, parallel with the ground. The giants roared and bellowed, but there was nothing they could do.

  The BFG, with Sophie once more resting comfortably in his ear, set off at a gallop for England. The helicopters all banked around and followed after him.

  It was an amazing spectacle, those nine helicopters winging through the sky, each with a trussed-up fifty-foot-long giant slung underneath it. The giants themselves must have found it an interesting experience. They never stopped bellowing, but their howls were drowned by the noise of the engines.

  When it began to get dark, the helicopters switched on powerful searchlights and trained them on to the galloping giant so as to keep him in sight. They flew right through the night and arrived in England just as dawn was breaking.

  Feeding Time

  While the giants were being captured, a tremendous bustle and hustle was going on back home in England. Every earth-digger and mechanical contrivance in the country had been mobilized to dig the colossal hole in which the nine giants were to be permanently imprisoned.

  Ten thousand men and ten thousand machines worked ceaselessly through the night under powerful arc-lights, and the massive task was completed only just in time.

  The hole itself was about twice the size of a football field and five hundred feet deep. The walls were perpendicular and engineers had calculated that there was no way a giant could escape once he was put in. Even if all nine giants were to stand on each other's shoulders, the topmost giant would still be some fifty feet from the top of the hole.

  The nine giant-carrying helicopters hovered over the massive pit. The giants, one by one, were lowered to the floor. But they were still trussed up and now came the tricky business of releasing them from their bonds. Nobody wanted to go down and do this because the moment a giant was freed, he would be sure to turn on the wretched person who had freed him and gobble him up.

  As usual, the BFG had the answer. 'I has told you before,' he said, 'giants is never eating giants, so I is going down and I shall untie them myself before you can say rack jobinson.'

  With thousands of fascinated spectators, including the Queen, peering down into the pit, the BFG was lowered on a rope. One by one, he released the giants. They stood up, stretched their stiffened limbs and started leaping about in fury.

  'Why is they putting us down here in this grobsludging hole?' they shouted at the BFG.

  'Because you is guzzling human beans,' the BFG answered. 'I is always warning you not to do it and you is never taking the titchiest bit of notice.'

  'In that case,' the Fleshlumpeater bellowed, 'I think we is guzzling you instead!'

  The BFG grabbed the dangling rope and was hoisted out of the pit just in time.

  The great bulging sack he had brought back with him from Giant Country lay at the top of the pit.

  'What's in there?' the Queen asked him.

  The BFG put an arm into the sack and pulled out a gigantic black and white striped object the size of a man.