Page:The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle.djvu/268

 while we all stared at the leaf, fascinated and mystified.

"I think this is written in blood," said the Doctor at last. "It turns that color when it's dry. Somebody pricked his finger to make these pictures. It's an old dodge when you're short of ink—but highly unsanitary—What an extraordinary thing to find tied to a beetle's leg! I wish I could talk beetle language, and find out where the Jabizri got it from."

"But what is it?" I asked—"Rows of little pictures and signs. What do you make of it, Doctor?"

"It's a letter," he said—"a picture letter. All these little things put together mean a message—But why give a message to a beetle to carry—and to a Jabizri, the rarest beetle in the world?—What an extraordinary thing!"

Then he fell to muttering over the pictures. "I wonder what it means: men walking up a mountain; men walking into a hole in a mountain; a mountain falling down—it's a good drawing, that; men pointing to their open mouths; bars—prison-bars, perhaps; men praying; men lying down—they look as though they might be sick; and last of all, just a mountain—a peculiar-shaped mountain."

All of a sudden the Doctor looked up sharply at me, a wonderful smile of delighted understanding spreading over his face.