SAILING homeward, the Doctor’s ship had to pass the coast of Barbary.
This coast is the seashore of the Great Desert. It is a wild, lonely
place—all sand and stones. And it was here that the Barbary pirates
lived.
These pirates, a bad lot of men, used to wait for sailors to be
shipwrecked on their shores. And often, if they saw a boat passing,
they would come out in their fast sailing-ships and chase it. When they
caught a boat like this at sea, they would steal everything on it; and
after they had taken the people off they would sink the ship and sail
back to Barbary singing songs and feeling proud of the mischief they
had done. Then they used to make the people they had caught write home
to their friends for money. And if the friends sent no money, the
pirates often threw the people into the sea.
Now one sunshiny day the Doctor and Dab-Dab were walking up and down on
the ship for exercise; a nice fresh wind was blowing the boat along,
and everybody was happy. Presently Dab-Dab saw the sail of another ship
a long way behind them on the edge of the sea. It was a red sail.
“I don’t like the look of that sail,” said Dab-Dab. “I have a feeling
it isn’t a friendly ship. I am afraid there is more trouble coming to
us.”
Jip, who was lying near taking a nap in the sun, began to growl and
talk in his sleep.
“I smell roast beef cooking,” he mumbled—“underdone roast beef—with
brown gravy over it.”
“Good gracious!” cried the Doctor. “What’s the matter with the dog? Is
he _smelling_ in his sleep—as well as talking?”
“I suppose he is,” said Dab-Dab. “All dogs can smell in their sleep.”
“But what is he smelling?” asked the Doctor. “There is no roast beef
cooking on our ship.”
“No,” said Dab-Dab. “The roast beef must be on that other ship over
there.”
“But that’s ten miles away,” said the Doctor. “He couldn’t smell that
far surely!”
“Oh, yes, he could,” said Dab-Dab. “You ask him.”
Then Jip, still fast asleep, began to growl again and his lip curled up
angrily, showing his clean, white teeth.
“I smell bad men,” he growled—“the worst men I ever smelt. I smell
trouble. I smell a fight—six bad scoundrels fighting against one brave
man. I want to help him. Woof—oo—WOOF!” Then he barked, loud, and woke
himself up with a surprised look on his face.
“See!” cried Dab-Dab. “That boat is nearer now. You can count its three
big sails—all red. Whoever it is, they are coming after us.... I wonder
who they are.”
“They are bad sailors,” said Jip; “and their ship is very swift. They
are surely the pirates of Barbary.”
“Well, we must put up more sails on our boat,” said the Doctor, “so we
can go faster and get away from them. Run downstairs, Jip, and fetch me
all the sails you see.”
The dog hurried downstairs and dragged up every sail he could find.
[Illustration: “‘They are surely the pirates of Barbary’”]
But even when all these were put up on the masts to catch the wind, the
boat did not go nearly as fast as the pirates’—which kept coming on
behind, closer and closer.
“This is a poor ship the Prince gave us,” said Gub-Gub, the pig—“the
slowest he could find, I should think. Might as well try to win a race
in a soup-tureen as hope to get away from them in this old barge. Look
how near they are now!—You can see the mustaches on the faces of the
men—six of them. What are we going to do?”
Then the Doctor asked Dab-Dab to fly up and tell the swallows that
pirates were coming after them in a swift ship, and what should he do
about it.
When the swallows heard this, they all came down on to the Doctor’s
ship; and they told him to unravel some pieces of long rope and make
them into a lot of thin strings as quickly as he could. Then the
ends of these strings were tied on to the front of the ship; and the
swallows took hold of the strings with their feet and flew off, pulling
the boat along.
And although swallows are not very strong when only one or two are
by themselves, it is different when there are a great lot of them
together. And there, tied to the Doctor’s ship, were a thousand
strings; and two thousand swallows were pulling on each string—all
terribly swift fliers.
And in a moment the Doctor found himself traveling so fast he had to
hold his hat on with both hands; for he felt as though the ship itself
were flying through waves that frothed and boiled with speed.
And all the animals on the ship began to laugh and dance about in the
rushing air, for when they looked back at the pirates’ ship, they could
see that it was growing smaller now, instead of bigger. The red sails
were being left far, far behind.
_THE FOURTEENTH CHAPTER_