Page 32 of James and the Giant Peach

But the travellers were not in the clear yet. The infuriated Cloud-Men jumped up and ran after them along the cloud, pelting them mercilessly with all sorts of hard and horrible objects. Empty paint buckets, paint brushes, stepladders, stools, saucepans, frying-pans, rotten eggs, dead rats, bottles of hair-oil - anything those brutes could lay their hands on came raining down upon the peach. One Cloud-Man, taking very careful aim, tipped a gallon of thick purple paint over the edge of the cloud right on to the Centipede himself.

The Centipede screamed with anger. 'My legs!' he cried. 'They are all sticking together! I can't walk! And my eyelids won't open! I can't see! And my boots! My boots are ruined!'

But for the moment everyone was far too busy dodging the things that the Cloud-Men were throwing to pay any attention to the Centipede.

'The paint is drying!' he moaned. 'It's going hard! I can't move my legs! I can't move anything!'

'You can still move your mouth,' the Earthworm said. 'And that is a great pity.'

'James!' bawled the Centipede. 'Please help me! Wash off this paint! Scrape it off! Anything!'

Twenty-nine

It seemed like a long time before the seagulls were able to pull the peach away from that horrible rainbow-cloud. But they managed it at last, and then everybody gathered around the wretched Centipede and began arguing about the best way to get the paint off his body.

He really did look a sight. He was purple all over, and now that the paint was beginning to dry and harden, he was forced to sit very stiff and upright, as though he were encased in cement. And all forty-two of his legs were sticking out straight in front of him, like rods. He tried to say something, but his lips wouldn't move. All he could do now was to make gurgling noises in his throat.

The Old-Green-Grasshopper reached out and touched him carefully on the stomach. 'But how could it possibly have dried so quickly?' he asked.

'It's rainbow-paint,' James answered. 'Rainbow-paint dries very quick and very hard.'

'I detest paint,' Miss Spider announced. 'It frightens me. It reminds me of Aunt Spiker - the late Aunt Spiker, I mean - because the last time she painted her kitchen ceiling my poor darling grandmother stepped into it by mistake when it was still wet, and there she stuck. And all through the night we could hear her calling to us, saying "Help! help! help!" and it was heartbreaking to listen to her. But what could we do? Not a thing until the next day when the paint had dried, and then of course we all rushed over to her and calmed her down and gave her some food. Believe it or not, she lived for six months like that, upside down on the ceiling with her legs stuck permanently in the paint. She really did. We fed her every day. We brought her fresh flies straight from the web. But then on the twenty-sixth of April last, Aunt Sponge - the late Aunt Sponge, I mean - happened to glance up at the ceiling, and she spotted her. "A spider!" she cried. "A disgusting spider! Quick! Fetch me the mop with the long handle!" And then - Oh, it was so awful I can't bear to think of it...' Miss Spider wiped away a tear and looked sadly at the Centipede. 'You poor thing,' she murmured. 'I do feel sorry for you.'

'It'll never come off,' the Earthworm said brightly. 'Our Centipede will never move again. He will turn into a statue and we shall be able to put him in the middle of the lawn with a bird-bath on the top of his head.'

'We could try peeling him like a banana,' the Old-Green-Grasshopper suggested.

'Or rubbing him with sandpaper,' the Ladybird said.

'Now if he stuck out his tongue,' the Earthworm said, smiling a little for perhaps the first time in his life, 'if he stuck it out really far, then we could all catch hold of it and start pulling. And if we pulled hard enough, we could turn him inside out and he would have a new skin!'

There was a pause while the others considered this interesting proposal.

'I think,' James said slowly, 'I think that the best thing to do...' Then he stopped. 'What was that?' he asked quickly. 'I heard a voice! I heard someone shouting!'

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 t

o 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!'

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