Twenty-six
The Centipede, who had begun dancing wildly round the deck during this song, had suddenly gone tooclose to the downward curving edge of the peach, and for three awful seconds he had stood teetering onthe brink¹, swinging his legs frantically² in circles in an effort to stop himself from falling over backwardinto space. But before anyone could reach him – down he went! He gave a shriek³ of terror as he fell,and the others, rushing to the side and peering over, saw his poor long body tumbling over and overthrough the air, getting smaller and smaller until it was out of sight.
‘Silkworm!’ yelled James. ‘Quick! Start spinning!’
The Silkworm sighed, for she was still very tired from spinning all that silk for the seagulls, but shedid as she was told.
‘I‘m going down after him!’ cried James, grabbing the silk string as it started coming out of theSilkworm and tying the end of it around his waist. ‘The rest of you hold on to Silkworm so I don’t pullher over with me, and later on, if you feel three tugs⁴ on the string, start hauling me up again!’
He jumped, and he went tumbling down after the Centipede, down, down, down towards the seabelow, and you can imagine how quickly the Silkworm had to spin to keep up with the speed of his fall.
‘We’ll never see either of them again!’ cried the Ladybird. ‘Oh, dear! Oh dear! Just when we wereall so happy, too!’
Miss Spider, the Glow-worm, and the Ladybird all began to cry. So did the Earthworm. ‘I don’t carea bit about the Centipede,’ the Earthworm sobbed⁵. ‘But I really did love that little boy.’
Very softly, the Old-Green-Grasshopper started to play the Funeral March on his violin, and by thetime he had finished, everyone, including himself, was in a flood of tears.
Suddenly, there came three sharp tugs on the rope. ‘Pull!’ shouted the Old-Green-Grasshopper.
‘Everyone get behind me and pull!’
There was about a mile of string to be hauled in, but they all worked like mad, and in the end, overthe side of the peach, there appeared a dripping-wet James with a dripping-wet Centipede clinging tohim tightly with all forty-two of his legs.

分享到：