Thirty-eight
Five minutes later, they were all safely down, and James was excitedly telling his story to a group offlabbergasted officials.
And suddenly – everyone who had come over on the peach was a hero! They were all escorted to thesteps of City Hall, where the Mayor of New York made a speech of welcome. And while he was doingthis, one hundred steeplejacks, armed with ropes and ladders and pulleys, swarmed¹ up to the top of theEmpire State Building and lifted the giant peach off the spike² and lowered it to the ground.
Then the Mayor shouted, ‘We must now have a ticker-tape parade for our wonderful visitors!’
And so a procession was formed, and in the leading car (which was an enormous open limousine³) satJames and all his friends.
Next came the giant peach itself. Men with cranes and hooks had quickly hoisted⁴ it on to a very largetruck and there it now sat, looking just as huge and proud and brave as ever. There was, of course, a bitof a hole in the bottom of it where the spike of the Empire State Building had gone in, but who caredabout that – or indeed about the peach juice that was dripping out of it on to the street?
Behind the peach, skidding⁵ about all over the place in the peach juice, came the Mayor’s limousine,and behind the Mayor’s limousine came about twenty other limousines⁶ carrying all the importantpeople of the City.
And the crowds went wild with excitement. They lined the streets and they leaned out of thewindows of the skyscrapers⁷, cheering and yelling and screaming and clapping and throwing out bits ofwhite paper and ticker-tape, and James and his friends stood up in their car and waved back at them asthey went by.
Then a rather curious thing happened. The procession was moving slowly along Fifth Avenue whensuddenly a little girl in a red dress ran out from the crowd and shouted, ‘Oh, James, James! Could Iplease have just a tiny taste of your marvellous peach?’

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