Doctor Dolittle’s Post Office

One morning in the first week of the return voyage when John Dolittle and his animals were all sitting at breakfast round the big table in the cabin, one of the swallows came down and said that he wanted to speak to the Doctor.

John Dolittle at once left the table and went out into the passage where he found the swallow-leader himself, a very neat, trim, little bird with long, long wings and sharp, snappy, black eyes. Speedy-the-Skimmer he was called—a name truly famous throughout the whole of the feathered world. He was the champion flycatcher and aerial acrobat of Europe, Africa, Asia, and America. For years every summer he had won all the flying races, having broken his own record only last year by crossing the Atlantic in eleven and a half hours—at a speed of over two hundred miles an hour.

"Well, Speedy," said John Dolittle. "What is it?"

"Doctor," said the little bird in a mysterious whisper, "we have sighted a canoe about a mile ahead of the ship and a little to the eastward, with only a black woman in it. She is weeping bitterly and isn't paddling the canoe at all. She is several miles from land—ten, at least, I should say—because at the moment we are crossing the Bay of Fantippo and can only just see the shore of Africa. She is really in dangerous straits, with such a little bit of a boat that far out at sea. But she doesn't seem to care. She's just sitting in the bottom of the canoe, crying as if she didn't mind what happens to her. I wish you would come and speak to her, for we fear she is in great trouble."

So off they went. And when they had come to the best place on the shore the Doctor took off his clothes and, tying them up in a bundle, he fastened them on his head, with the precious high hat on the top of all. Then he waded into the surf and, with Jip beside him, started swimming for the island.

Now this particular stretch of water they were trying to cross happened to be a bad place for swimming. And after about a quarter of an hour Jip and the Doctor felt themselves being carried out to sea in the grip of a powerful current. They tried their hardest to get to the island. But without any success.

"Let yourself drift, Doctor," panted Jip. "Don't waste your strength fighting the current. Let yourself drift. Even if we're carried past the island out to sea we can land on the mainland further down the coast, where the current isn't so strong."

But the Doctor didn't answer. And Jip could see from his face that his strength and breath were nearly gone.

Then Jip barked his loudest, hoping that possibly Dab-Dab might hear him on the mainland and fly out and bring help. But, of course, they were much too far from the town for anyone to hear.

"Turn back, Jip," gasped the Doctor. "Don't bother about me. I'll be all right. Turn back and try and make the shore."

But, instead, she presently heard the Doctor's agonized voice calling from the head of the stairs:

"Dab-Dab! Dab-Dab! I can't light it. We forgot to bring matches!"

"Well, what have you done with the matches, Doctor?" called Dab-Dab. "They were always in your coat."

"I left them beside my pipe on the information desk," came the Doctor's voice from the top of the dark stairs. "But there must be matches in the lighthouse somewhere. We must find them."

"What chance have we of that?" shouted Dab-Dab. "It's as black as black down here. And the ship is coming nearer every minute."

"Feel in the man's pockets," called John Dolittle. "Hurry!"

In a minute Dab-Dab went through the pockets of the man who lay so still upon the floor.

"He hasn't any matches on him," she shouted. "Not a single one."

"Confound the luck!" muttered John Dolittle.

And then there was a solemn silence in the lighthouse while the Doctor above and Dab-Dab below thought gloomily of that big ship sailing onward to her wreck because they had no matches.

But suddenly out of the black stillness came a small, sweet voice, singing, somewhere near.

"Dab-Dab!" cried the Doctor in a whisper. "Do you hear that? A canary! There's a canary singing somewhere—probably in a cage in the lighthouse kitchen!"

In a moment he was clattering down the stairs.

"Come on," he cried. "We must find the kitchen. That canary will know where the matches are kept. Find the kitchen!"

As soon as the Doctor had lit his pipe and got it well going he began:

"Many years ago, at the time I bought this thermometer, I was a very young doctor, full of hope, just starting out in business. I fancied myself a very good doctor, but I found that the rest of the world did not seem to think so. And for many months after I began I did not get a single patient. I had no one to try my new thermometer on. I tried it on myself quite often. But I was always so frightfully healthy I never had any temperature anyway. I tried to catch a cold. I didn't really want a cold, you understand, but I did want to make sure that my new thermometer worked. But I couldn't even catch a cold. I was very sad—healthy but sad.

"Well, about this time I met another young doctor who was in the same fix as myself—having no patients. Said he to me: 'I'll tell you what we'll do, let's start a sanitarium.'"

Dawn was beginning to show before they came in sight of the ship they sought. This made approaching the schooner without being seen extremely difficult. And the Doctor went all the way around the Island of No-Man's-Land, so as to come upon the ship from the other side, where he would not have to cross so large an open stretch of sea.

Paddling very, very softly, he managed to get the canoe right under the bow of the ship. Then, tying his own craft so it couldn't float away, he swarmed up the schooner's anchor chain and crept on to the boat on hands and knees.

Full daylight had not yet come and the light from a lamp could be seen palely shining up the stairs which led to the cabin. The Doctor slid forward like a shadow, tiptoed his way down the stairs and peered through the partly opened door.

The cross-eyed Wilkins was still seated at the table, as Dab-Dab had described, counting pearls. Two other men were asleep in bunks around the room. The Doctor swung open the door and jumped in. Instantly Wilkins sprang up from the table, snatched a pistol from his belt and leveled it at the Doctor's head.

"Wilkins levelled a pistol at the Doctor's head"

"Move an inch and you're a dead man!" he snarled.