James and the Giant Peach Read online

  The passengers on the peach (all except the Centipede) sat frozen with terror, looking back at the Cloud-Men and wondering what was going to happen next.

  'Now you've done it, you loathsome pest!' whispered the Earthworm to the Centipede.

  'I'm not frightened of them!' shouted the Centipede, and to show everybody once again that he wasn't, he stood up to his full height and started dancing about and making insulting signs at the Cloud-Men with all forty-two of his legs.

  This evidently infuriated the Cloud-Men beyond belief. All at once, they spun round and grabbed great handfuls of hailstones and rushed to the edge of the cloud and started throwing them at the peach, shrieking with fury all the time.

  'Look out!' cried James. 'Quick! Lie down! Lie flat on the deck!'

  It was lucky they did! A large hailstone can hurt you as much as a rock or a lump of lead if it is thrown hard enough - and my goodness, how those Cloud-Men could throw! The hailstones came whizzing through the air like bullets from a machine-gun, and James could hear them smashing against the sides of the peach and burying themselves in the peach flesh with horrible squelching noises - plop! plop! plop! plop! And then ping! ping! ping! as they bounced off the poor Ladybird's shell because she couldn't lie as flat as the others. And then crack! as one of them hit the Centipede right on the nose and crack! again as another one hit him somewhere else.

  'Ow!' he cried. 'Ow! Stop! Stop! Stop!'

  But the Cloud-Men had no intention of stopping. James could see them rushing about on the cloud like a lot of huge hairy ghosts, picking up hailstones from the pile, dashing to the edge of the cloud, hurling the hailstones at the peach, dashing back again to get more, and then, when the pile of stones was all gone, they simply grabbed handfuls of cloud and made as many more as they wanted, and much bigger ones now, some of them as large as cannon balls.

  'Quickly!' cried James. 'Down the tunnel or we'll all be wiped out!'

  There was a rush for the tunnel entrance, and half a minute later everybody was safely downstairs inside the stone of the peach, trembling with fright and listening to the noise of the hailstones as they came crashing against the side of the peach.

  'I'm a wreck!' groaned the Centipede. 'I am wounded all over!'

  'It serves you right,' said the Earthworm.

  'Would somebody kindly look and see if my shell is cracked?' the Ladybird said.

  'Give us some light!' shouted the Old-Green-Grasshopper.

  'I can't!' wailed the Glow-worm. 'They've broken my bulb!'

  'Then put in another one!' the Centipede said.

  'Be quiet a moment,' said James. 'Listen! I do believe they're not hitting us any more!'

  They all stopped talking and listened. Yes - the noise had ceased. The hailstones were no longer smashing against the peach.

  'We've left them behind!'

  'The seagulls must have pulled us away out of danger.

  'Hooray! Let's go up and see!'

  Cautiously, with James going first, they all climbed back up the tunnel. James poked his head out and looked around. 'It's all clear!' he called. 'I can't see them anywhere!'

  Twenty-eight

  One by one, the travellers came out again on to the top of the peach and gazed carefully around. The moon was still shining as brightly as ever, and there were still plenty of huge shimmering cloud-mountains on all sides. But there were no Cloud-Men in sight now.

  'The peach is leaking!' shouted the Old-Green-Grasshopper, peering over the side. 'It's full of holes and the juice is dripping out everywhere!'

  'That does it!' cried the Earthworm. 'If the peach is leaking then we shall surely sink!'

  'Don't be an ass!' the Centipede told him. 'We're not in the water now!'

  'Oh, look!' shouted the Ladybird. 'Look, look, look! Over there!'

  Everybody swung round to look.

  In the distance and directly ahead of them, they now saw a most extraordinary sight. It was a kind of arch, a colossal curvy-shaped thing that reached high up into the sky and came down again at both ends. The ends were resting upon a huge flat cloud that was as big as a desert.

  'Now what in the world is that?' asked James.

  'It's a bridge!'

  'It's an enormous hoop cut in half!'

  'It's a giant horseshoe standing upside down!'

  'Stop me if I'm wrong,' murmured the Centipede, going white in the face, 'but might those not be Cloud-Men climbing all over it?'

  There was a dreadful silence. The peach floated closer and closer.

  'They are Cloud-Men!'

  'There are hundreds of them!'

  'Thousands!'

  'Millions!'

  'I don't want to hear about it!' shrieked the poor blind Earthworm. 'I'd rather be on the end of a fish hook and used as bait than come up against those terrible creatures again!'

  'I'd rather be fried alive and eaten by a Mexican!' wailed the Old-Green-Grasshopper.

  'Please keep quiet,' whispered James. 'It's our only hope.'

  They crouched very still on top of the peach, staring at the Cloud-Men. The whole surface of the cloud was literally swarming with them, and there were hundreds more up above climbing about on that monstrous crazy arch.

  'But what is that thing?' whispered the Ladybird. 'And what are they doing to it?'

  'I don't care what they're doing to it!' the Centipede said, scuttling over to the tunnel entrance. 'I'm not staying up here! Good-bye!'

  But the rest of them were too frightened or too hypnotized by the whole affair to make a move.

  'Do you know what?' James whispered.

  'What?' they said. 'What?'

  'That enormous arch - they seem to be painting it! They've got pots of paint and big brushes! You look!'

  And he was quite right. The travellers were close enough now to see that this was exactly what the Cloud-Men were doing. They all had huge brushes in their hands and they were splashing the paint on to the great curvy arch in a frenzy of speed, so fast, in fact, that in a few minutes the whole of the arch became covered with the most glorious colours - reds, blues, greens, yellows, and purples.

  'It's a rainbow!' everyone said at once. 'They are making a rainbow!'

  'Oh, isn't it beautiful!'

  'Just look at those colours!'

  'Centipede!' they shouted. 'You must come up and see this!' They were so enthralled by the beauty and brilliance of the rainbow that they forgot to keep their voices low any longer. The Centipede poked his head cautiously out of the tunnel entrance.

  'Well, well, well,' he said. 'I've always wondered how those things were made. But why all the ropes? What are they doing with those ropes?'

  'Good heavens, they are pushing it off the cloud!' cried James. 'There it goes! They are lowering it down to the earth with ropes!'

  'And I'll tell you something else,' the Centipede said sharply. 'If I'm not greatly mistaken, we ourselves are going to bump right into it!'

  'Bless my soul, he's right!' the Old-Green-Grasshopper exclaimed.

  The rainbow was now dangling in the air below the cloud. The peach was also just below the level of the cloud, and it was heading directly towards the rainbow, travelling rather fast.

  'We are lost!' Miss Spider cried, wringing her feet again. 'The end has come!'

  'I can't stand it!' wailed the Earthworm. 'Tell me what's happening!'

  'We're going to miss it!' shouted the Ladybird.

  'No, we're not!'

  'Yes, we are!'

  'Yes! - Yes! - No! - Oh, my heavens!'

  'Hold on, everybody!' James called out, and suddenly there was a tremendous thud as the peach went crashing into the top of the rainbow. This was followed by an awful splintering noise as the enormous rainbow snapped right across the middle and became two separate pieces.

  The next thing that happened was extremly unfortunate. The ropes that the Cloud-Men had been using for lowering the rainbow got tangled up with the silk strings that went up from the peach to the seagulls! The peach was