James and the Giant Peach: Chapters 23–28

Even the Silkworm, looking white and thin and completely exhausted, came creeping out of the tunnel to watch this miraculous ascent.

Up and up they went, and soon they were as high as the top of a church steeple above the ocean.

Miss Spider clambered back onto the deck with a pleased but also rather puzzled look on her face.

“The whole sky is teeming with birds! What in the world are they doing? And wait! Wait a second! There are people on it! I can see them moving! There’s a—a—do I have this darned thing focused right? It looks like a little boy in short trousers! Yes, I can distinctly see a little boy in short trousers standing up there! And there’s a—there’s a—there’s a—a—a—a sort of giant ladybug!”

They are not violinists, they are wing-rubbers. And a rather inferior noise these wing-rubbers produce, too, if I may say so.

“Pest!” cried the Earthworm. “Why must you always be so rude and rambunctious to everyone? You ought to apologize to James at once.”

“We do it for the farmers. It makes the soil nice and light and crumbly so that things will grow well in it. If you really want to know, the farmers couldn’t do without us. We are essential. We are vital. So it is only natural that the farmer should love us. He loves us even more, I believe, than he loves the Ladybug.”

“The Ladybug!” said James, turning to look at her. “Do they love you, too?”
“I am told that they do,” the Ladybug answered modestly, blushing all over.

“On the other hand,” the Ladybug went on, “some of my less fortunate relatives have no more than two spots altogether on their shells! Can you imagine that? They are called Two-Spotted Ladybugs, and very common and ill-mannered they are, I regret to say. And then, of course, you have the Five-Spotted Ladybugs as well. They are much nicer than the Two-Spotted ones, although I myself find them a trifle too saucy for my taste.”

So she said, ‘I must make myself flat.
I must make myself sleek as a cat.
I shall do without dinner
To make myself thinner!'

The Centipede, who had begun dancing wildly around the deck during the song, had suddenly gone too close to the downward curving edge of the peach, and for three awful seconds he had stood teetering on the brink, swinging his legs frantically in circles in an effort to stop himself from falling over backward into space.

The Centipede, who had begun dancing wildly around the deck during the song, had suddenly gone too close to the downward curving edge of the peach, and for three awful seconds he had stood teetering on the brink, swinging his legs frantically in circles in an effort to stop himself from falling over backward into space.

Clouds like mountains towered high above their heads on all sides, mysterious, menacing, overwhelming.

Gradually it grew darker and darker, and then a pale three-quarter moon came up over the tops of the clouds and cast an eerie light over the whole scene.

The airplane comes clattering and roaring through the sky, and whatever might be lurking secretly up there in the great cloud-mountains goes running for cover at its approach.

But the peach...ah, yes...the peach was a soft, stealthy traveler, making no noise at all as it floated along.

They were not easy to see at first because they were almost as white as the cloud itself, but as the peach sailed closer, it became obvious that these “things” were actually living creatures—tall, wispy, wraithlike, shadowy white creatures who looked as though they were made out of a mixture of cotton-wool and candy-floss and thin white hairs.

They were not easy to see at first because they were almost as white as the cloud itself, but as the peach sailed closer, it became obvious that these “things” were actually living creatures—tall, wispy, wraithlike, shadowy white creatures who looked as though they were made out of a mixture of cotton-wool and candy-floss and thin white hairs.

The Centipede roared with laughter. “Those imbeciles couldn’t hear anything!” he cried. “They’re deaf as doorknobs! You watch!”

“Now you’ve done it, you loathsome pest!” whispered the Earthworm to the Centipede.

This evidently infuriated the Cloud-Men beyond belief. All at once, they spun around and grabbed great handfuls of hailstones and rushed to the edge of the cloud and started throwing them at the peach, shrieking with fury all the time.

The hailstones came whizzing through the air like bullets from a machine gun, and James could hear them smashing against the sides of the peach and burying themselves in the peach flesh with horrible squelching noises—plop! plop! plop! plop!

But the rest of them were too frightened or too hypnotized by the whole affair to make a move.

They all had huge brushes in their hands and they were splashing the paint onto the great curvy arch in a frenzy of speed, so fast, in fact, that in a few minutes the whole of the arch became covered with the most glorious colors—reds, blues, greens, yellows, and purples.

“Centipede!” they shouted. “You must come up and see this!” They were so enthralled by the beauty and brilliance of the rainbow that they forgot to keep their voices low any longer.

There were no noses, no mouths, no ears, no chins—only the eyes were visible in each face, two small black eyes glinting malevolently through the hairs.

The rest of the Cloud-Men were so flabbergasted at seeing one of their company carried away in this manner that they let go the ropes they were holding, and then of course down went the rainbow, both halves of it together, tumbling toward the earth below.

The infuriated Cloud-Men jumped up and ran after them along the cloud, pelting them mercilessly with all sorts of hard and horrible objects.

The infuriated Cloud-Men jumped up and ran after them along the cloud, pelting them mercilessly with all sorts of hard and horrible objects.

“James!” bawled the Centipede. “Please help me! Wash off this paint! Scrape it off! Anything!”