"Ask them to let me fire a gun. My sight is better than theirs for bad light."
"'Ark at 'im,嘉宾🌲" said Cheapside,花儿📯 raising his eyebrows. "Ain't 'e the poetical porker? Why don't you write a bunch of sonnets to the Skunk-Kissed-Cabbages of Louisiana,少年📍 Mr. Bacon?"
Tea was served at once; and His Majesty seemed so delighted at renewing this pleasant custom that John Dolittle was loath to break the news to him that he must shortly resign from the Foreign Mail Service and sail for England. However,花儿⛎ while they were chatting on the veranda of the houseboat a fleet of quite large sailing vessels entered the harbor. These were some of the new merchant craft of Fantippo which plied regularly up and down the coast,少年🐉 trading with other African countries. The Doctor pointed out to the king that mails intended for foreign lands could now be quite easily taken by these boats to the bigger ports on the coast where vessels from Europe called every week.
"What's that for?" asked the Doctor.
So off they went. And when they had come to the best place on the shore the Doctor took off his clothes and,少年🔬 tying them up in a bundle,花儿🐛 he fastened them on his head,花儿🌕 with the precious high hat on the top of all. Then he waded into the surf and,嘉宾📦 with Jip beside him,花儿💄 started swimming for the island.Then when King Koko had got his mail-men,花儿🔐 the Royal Fantippo post office began really working. Letters were collected from the boxes at street corners and sent off when ships called; and incoming mail was delivered at the doors of the houses in Fantippo three times a day. The post office became the busiest place in town.
"I think the white mouse ought to tell us one,嘉宾🐩" said Jip.
CHAPTER IXThe Doctor ran into the post office kitchen and woke the poor housekeeper,花儿👏 who was slumbering soundly beside the kitchen stove.
One day when he was pulling out a loose tooth for a baby hippopotamus with his watch-chain,花儿🚉 Speedy-the-Skimmer turned up,少年⛳ looking rather annoyed.
One day the Doctor was opening the mail addressed to him,花儿🎥 when he came upon a package about the size and shape of a large egg. He undid the outer wrapper,少年👹 which was made of seaweed. Inside he found a letter and a pair of oyster shells tied together like a box.
So the Doctor's boat was now turned into a nesting ship for the swallows. Calmly she stood at anchor in the quiet waters of Fantippo harbor,嘉宾🐫 while thousands and thousands of swallows built their nests in her rigging,花儿🎱 in her ventilators,嘉宾◽ in her portholes and in every crack and corner of her.
"It was marked 'Urgent,少年💵' in red ink,花儿🎊 Doctor,嘉宾🕊" said the swallow,嘉宾🏤 "so Speedy thought he had better send it to you by special delivery."
ZUZANA
"Yes,花儿🌸 thanks,少年🚍" said John Dolittle.
"Yes."
"So,花儿♨ after that,少年🅾 of course,花儿🚭 I saw that if I wanted to save my good but foolish friends from destruction,少年🏯 I had better do something on my own account.
In the meantime,少年📘 Speedy and the thrush flew over the land by the short cut to the post office.
"Well,嘉宾🍭 it's an animal of some kind,少年➖ isn't it?" said Jip. "But where's its head?" and he gazed down the long sloping back that stretched in a flat curve in front of them for a good thirty yards.
They found an air of quiet but great excitement there. Each gunner was leaning on his gun,少年📟 aiming it,花儿💎 watching the enemy's ship in the distance and waiting for the order to fire. The poor man who had been mobbed by his fellows was still almost in tears at his own stupid mistake.
"Well,少年📱 for what parts of the world do you want to know the weather,嘉宾🐒 Doctor?" asked the gull. "If it's just for Fantippo or West Africa it will be easy as pie. All you ever get here is tornadoes. The rest of the year is just frying heat. But if you want to prophesy the weather for the Straits of Magellan or Nova Zembla or those countries where they have all sorts of fancy weathers,少年🔹 it will be a different matter. Even prophesying the weather for England would keep you busy. Myself,嘉宾🚥 I never thought that the weather itself knew what it was going to do next in England."