Page:The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle.djvu/269

 "Long Arrow!" he cried, "don't you see, Stubbins?—Why, of course! Only a naturalist would think of doing a thing like this: giving his letter to a beetle—not to a common beetle, but to the rarest of all, one that other naturalists would try to catch—Well, well! Long Arrow!—A picture-letter from Long Arrow. For pictures are the only writing that he knows."

"Yes, but who is the letter to?" I asked.

"It's to me very likely. Miranda had told him, I know, years ago, that some day I meant to come here. But if not for me, then it's for any one who caught the beetle and read it. It's a letter to the world."

"Well, but what does it say? It doesn't seem to me that it's much good to you now you've got it."

"Yes, it is," he said, "because, look, I can read it now. First picture: men walking up a mountain—that's Long Arrow and his party; men going into a hole in a mountain—they enter a cave looking for medicine-plants or mosses; a mountain falling down—some hanging rocks must have slipped and trapped them, imprisoned them in the cave. And this was the only living creature that could carry a message for them to the outside world a beetle, who could burrow his way into the open air. Of course it was only a slim chance that the beetle would be ever caught and the letter read. But it was a chance; and when men are in great danger