Page:The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle.djvu/304

 she meant to get, I had no idea. She just disappeared from my side. But Jip, who had heard her, poked his nose between the bamboo bars of the fence to get a better view of the enemy and said,

"Likely enough she's gone after the Black Parrots. Let's hope she finds them in time. Just look at those ugly ruffians climbing down the rocks millions of 'em! This fight's going to keep us all hopping."

And Jip was right. Before a quarter of an hour had gone by our village was completely surrounded by one huge mob of yelling, raging Bag-jagderags.

I now come again to a part in the story of our voyages where things happened so quickly, one upon the other, that looking backwards I see the picture only in a confused kind of way. I know that if it had not been for the Terrible Three—as they came afterwards to be fondly called in Popsipetel history—Long Arrow, Bumpo and the Doctor, the war would have been soon over and the whole island would have belonged to the worthless Bag-jagderags. But the Englishman, the African and the Indian were a regiment in themselves; and between them they made that village a dangerous place for any man to try to enter.

The bamboo fencing which had been hastily set up around the town was not a very strong affair;