Seventeen
At this moment, the scene inside the peach itself was one of indescribable chaos¹. James Henry Trotterwas lying bruised² and battered³ on the floor of the room amongst a tangled⁴ mass of Centipede andEarthworm and Spider and Ladybird and Glowworm and Old-Green-Grasshopper. In the whole historyof the world, no travellers had ever had a more terrible journey than these unfortunate creatures. It hadstarted out well, with much laughing and shouting, and for the first few seconds, as the peach hadbegun to roll slowly forward, nobody had minded being tumbled about a little bit. And when it wentBUMP !, and the Centipede had shouted, ‘That was Aunt Sponge!’ and then BUMP! again, and ‘Thatwas Aunt Spiker!’ there had been a tremendous burst of cheering all round.
But as soon as the peach rolled out of the garden and began to go down the steep hill, rushing andplunging and bounding madly downward, then the whole thing became a nightmare. James foundhimself being flung up against the ceiling, then back on to the floor, then sideways against the wall,then up on to the ceiling again, and up and down and back and forth⁵ and round and round, and at thesame time all the other creatures were flying through the air in every direction, and so were the chairsand the sofa, not to mention the forty-two boots belonging to the Centipede. Everything and all of themwere being rattled⁷ around like peas inside an enormous rattle⁶ that was being rattled by a mad giant whorefused to stop. To make it worse, something went wrong with the Glow-worm’s lighting⁸ system, andthe room was in pitchy darkness. There were screams and yells and curses and cries of pain, andeverything kept going round and round, and once James made a frantic

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