James and the Giant Peach: Chapters 29–39

“I detest paint,” Miss Spider announced.

For what they now saw, swirling and twisting directly over their heads, was an immense black cloud, a terrible, dangerous, thundery-looking thing that began to rumble and roar even as they were staring at it.

It was a great solid mass of water that might have been a lake or a whole ocean dropping out of the sky on top of them, and down it came, down and down and down, crashing first onto the seagulls and then onto the peach itself, while the poor travelers shrieked with fear and groped around frantically for something to catch hold of...

But then, just as suddenly as it had started, the deluge stopped.

Faster and faster flew the seagulls, skimming across the sky at a tremendous pace, with the peach trailing out behind them.

Cloud after cloud went by on either side, all of them ghostly white in the moonlight, and several more times during the night the travelers caught glimpses of Cloud-Men moving around on the tops of these clouds, working their sinister magic upon the world below.

They saw the frost factories and the wind producers and the places where cyclones and tornadoes were manufactured and sent spinning down toward the Earth, and once, deep in the hollow of a large billowy cloud, they spotted something that could only have been a Cloud-Men’s city.

They saw the frost factories and the wind producers and the places where cyclones and tornadoes were manufactured and sent spinning down toward the Earth, and once, deep in the hollow of a large billowy cloud, they spotted something that could only have been a Cloud-Men’s city.

And hundreds of Cloud-Men’s children were frisking about all over the place and shrieking with laughter and sliding down the billows of the cloud on toboggans.

And hundreds of Cloud-Men’s children were frisking about all over the place and shrieking with laughter and sliding down the billows of the cloud on toboggans.

It circled round and round the peach, flapping its great wings slowly in the moonlight and staring at the travelers. Then it uttered a series of long deep melancholy cries and flew off again into the night.

At that height, the cars were like little beetles crawling along the streets, and people walking on the pavements looked no larger than tiny grains of soot.

A great round ball as big as a house had been sighted hovering high up in the sky over the very center of Manhattan, and the cry had gone up that it was an enormous bomb sent over by another country to blow the whole city to smithereens.

The Mayor of New York called up the President of the United States down in Washington, D.C., to ask him for help, and the President, who at that moment was having breakfast in his pajamas, quickly pushed away his half-finished plate of Sugar Crisps and started pressing buttons right and left to summon his Admirals and his Generals.

The Mayor of New York called up the President of the United States down in Washington, D.C., to ask him for help, and the President, who at that moment was having breakfast in his pajamas, quickly pushed away his half-finished plate of Sugar Crisps and started pressing buttons right and left to summon his Admirals and his Generals.

Round and round and upside down went the peach as it plummeted toward the earth, and they were all clinging desperately to the stem to save themselves from being flung into space.

And all the way along Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, and along all the other streets in the City, people who had not yet reached the underground shelters looked up and saw it coming, and they stopped running and stood there staring in a sort of stupor at what they thought was the biggest bomb in all the world falling out of the sky onto their heads.

James could see the skyscrapers rushing up to meet them at the most awful speed, and most of them had square flat tops, but the very tallest of them all had a top that tapered off into a long sharp point—like an enormous silver needle sticking up into the sky.

And suddenly—there was the giant peach, caught and spiked upon the very pinnacle of the Empire State Building.

He seemed to be enjoying enormously the commotion that he was causing.

“It’s a vermicious Knid! Oh, just look at its vermicious gruesome face!”

The Queen of Spain, again and again, has
summoned him by phone
To baby-sit and sing and knit and be a
chaperone
When nurse is off and all the royal children are all alone!

And the Grasshopper, ladies and gents, is a boon
In millions and millions of ways.

I’d like to introduce
This charming Glow-worm, lover of simplicity.

She is easy to install
On your ceiling or your wall,
And although this smacks a bit of eccentricity,
It’s really rather clever
For thereafter you will never
You will NEVER NEVER NEVER
Have the slightest need for using electricity.

At which, no less than fifty-two
Policemen cried, “If this is true
That creature’ll get some fabulous publicity!”

And what is more,
This Silkworm had, I’ll have you know,
The honor, not so long ago,
To spin and weave and sew and press
The Queen of England’s wedding dress.
And she’s already made and sent
A waistcoat for your President.

And so a procession was formed, and in the leading car (which was an enormous open limousine) sat James and all his friends.

Men with cranes and hooks had quickly hoisted it onto a very large truck and there it now sat, looking just as huge and proud and brave as ever.

And sometimes, if you were very lucky, you would find the Old-Green-Grasshopper in there as well, resting peacefully in a chair before the fire, or perhaps it would be the Ladybug who had dropped in for a cup of tea and a gossip, or the Centipede to show off a new batch of particularly elegant boots that he had just acquired.