Thirty
They all raised their heads, listening.
‘Ssshh! There it is again!’
But the voice was too far away for them to hear what it was saying.
‘It’s a Cloud-Man!’ Miss Spider cried. ‘I just know it’s a Cloud-Man! They’re after us again!’
‘It came from above!’ the Earthworm said, and automatically everybody looked upward, everybodyexcept the Centipede, who couldn’t move.
‘Ouch!’ they said. ‘Help! Mercy! We’re going to catch it this time!’ For what they now saw, swirlingand twisting directly over their heads, was an immense black cloud, a terrible, dangerous, thundery-looking thing that began to rumble² and roar even as they were staring at it. And then, from high up onthe top of the cloud, the faraway voice came down to them once again, this time very loud and clear.
‘On with the faucets³!’ it shouted. ‘On with the faucets! On with the faucets!’
Three seconds later, the whole underneath⁴ of the cloud seemed to split and burst open like a paperbag, and then – out came the water! They saw it coming. It was quite easy to see because it wasn’t justraindrops. It wasn’t raindrops at all. It was a great solid mass of water that might have been a lake or awhole ocean dropping out of the sky on top of them, and down it came, down and down and down,crashing first on to the seagulls and then on to the peach itself, while the poor travellers shrieked⁵ withfear and groped around frantically⁶ for something to catch hold of – the peach stem, the silk strings⁷,anything they could find – and all the time the water came pouring and roaring down upon them,bouncing and smashing and sloshing and slashing⁸ and swashing and swirling¹ and surging and whirlingand gurgling and

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