Page:The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle.djvu/258

 figure of the black man standing against the sky?—Now Chee-Chee spies us—he's waving. Don't you see them?"

I didn't—for my eyes were not as sharp as Miranda's. But presently from somewhere in the murky dusk I heard Bumpo singing his African comic songs with the full force of his enormous voice. And in a little, by peering and peering in the direction of the sound, I at last made out a dim mass of tattered, splintered wreckage—all that remained of the poor Curlew—floating low down upon the water.

A hulloa came through the night. And I answered it We kept it up, calling to one another back and forth across the calm night sea. And a few minutes later the two halves of our brave little ruined ship bumped gently together again.

Now that I was nearer and the moon was higher I could see more plainly. Their half of the ship was much bigger than mine.

It lay partly upon its side; and most of them were perched upon the top munching ship's biscuit.

But close down to the edge of the water, using the sea's calm surface for a mirror and a piece of broken bottle for a razor, John Dolittle was shaving his free by the light of the moon.