Thirty-four
‘Come on, Centipede, bite through the first string,’ James ordered.
The Centipede took one of the silk strings¹ between his teeth and bit through it. And once again (butnot with an angry Cloud-Man dangling² from the end of the string this time) a single seagull came awayfrom the rest of the flock³ and went flying off on its own.
‘Bite another,’ James ordered.
The Centipede bit through another string.
‘Why aren’t we sinking?’
‘We are sinking!’
‘No, we’re not!’
‘Don’t forget the peach is a lot lighter⁴ now than when we started out,’ James told them. ‘It lost anawful lot of juice when all those hailstones hit it in the night. Cut away two more seagulls, Centipede!’
‘Ah, that’s better!’
‘Here we go!’
‘Now we really are sinking!’
‘Yes, this is perfect! Don’t bite any more, Centipede, or we’ll sink too fast! Gently does it!’
Slowly the great peach began losing height, and the buildings and streets down below began comingcloser and closer.
‘Do you think we’ll all get our pictures in the papers when we get down?’ the Ladybird asked.
‘My goodness, I‘ve forgotten to polish my boots!’ the Centipede said. ‘Everyone must help me topolish my boots before we arrive.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ said the Earthworm. ‘Can’t you ever stop thinking about –’
But he never finished his sentence. For suddenly… WHOOOSH!… and they looked up and saw ahuge four-engined plane come shooting out of a near-by cloud and go whizzing past them not morethan twenty feet over their heads. This was actually the regular early morning passenger plane comingin to New York from Chicago, and as it went by, it sliced right through every single one of the silkenstrings, and immediately the seagulls broke away, and the enormous peach, having nothing to hold it upin the air any longer, went tumbling⁵ down towards the earth like a lump of lead.
‘Help!’ cried the Centipede.
‘Save us!’ cried Miss Spider.

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