ey chew; it tasted like
cabbage. I didn't want anything more to eat all that day. Tommy had some
himself; he says now he doesn't think it was the right kind of twig.
Tommy told me that the Gherkins' mothers teach them to prowl when they
are very young, and that they are always prowling. Tommy showed me how
to prowl. You have to lie flat on your stomach, and wriggle about as if
you were swimming. He says it makes the Gherkins very hardy. They always
do it, Tommy says, even when they have a half-holiday. To do it properly
you have to breathe through the back of your throat and move your ears.

When the KING went to India, Tommy says he was surprised at the
Gherkins. They used to prowl before him, and he was very glad. He said
they were very hardy.

Tommy says they are very brave because they don't know what fear is; his
father told him that. He says no one has ever seen a Gherkin blub; if
they have to, they go and do it somewhere else.

There is only one way you can kill them. Tommy knows the way, but he
daren't tell anyone.

Tommy says that when they want to kill a man they prowl after him for
five miles, and then come back as silently as they went. He says it is
no good shooting at them, because they are not there.

He showed me how they killed people. They come up behind you and catch
you round the neck, and it's no good saying, "Shut up," because they
don't understand English; then you make a noise like gargling for sore
throats, and that's how they know you are dead. It makes the people very
angry, Tommy says.

If they take a dislike to anyone, you are sure to get killed, because
they prowl after you until they do. And when you come to look at the
dead man, you can see he has died a horrible death, and if you turn him
over there isn't a mark on him. You see he didn't hear them coming.
That's what Tommy Brown told me.

Tommy says a Gherkin once saved his father's life by killing a snake.
Tommy's father gave the Gherkin a lot of money to put in his pocket, but
he wouldn't take it. The Gherkins don't have pockets, Tommy says.

Tommy says, that if two Germans stood back to back to see who was the
taller, a Gherkin could cut through both of them with his two-handled
knife, and it would be done so quickly that neither of the Germans would
know which was killed first. They do it by practice, Tommy told me. They
always use two-handled knives, so that when they are tired with using
one handle they can use the other.