quickly, he asked her if
she would now go ahead of us and show us the way to Spidermonkey Island.
Next, he gave orders to the porpoises to leave my old piece of the ship
and push the bigger half wherever the Bird-of-Paradise should lead us.

How much he had lost in the wreck besides his razor I did not
know--everything, most likely, together with all the money he had saved
up to buy the ship with. And still he was smiling as though he wanted
for nothing in the world. The only things he had saved, as far as I
could see--beyond the barrel of water and bag of biscuit--were his
precious note-books. These, I saw when he stood up, he had strapped
around his waist with yards and yards of twine. He was, as old Matthew
Mugg used to say, a great man. He was unbelievable.

And now for three days we continued our journey slowly but
steadily--southward.

The only inconvenience we suffered from was the cold. This seemed to
increase as we went forward. The Doctor said that the island, disturbed
from its usual paths by the great gale, had evidently drifted further
South than it had ever been before.

On the third night poor Miranda came back to us nearly frozen. She told
the Doctor that in the morning we would find the island quite close to
us, though we couldn't see it now as it was a misty dark night. She said
that she must hurry back at once to a warmer climate; and that she would
visit the Doctor in Puddleby next August as usual.

"Don't forget, Miranda," said John Dolittle, "if you should hear
anything of what happened to Long Arrow, to get word to me."

The Bird-of-Paradise assured him she would. And after the Doctor had
thanked her again and again for all that she had done for us, she wished
us good luck and disappeared into the night.

We were all awake early in the morning, long before it was light,
waiting for our first glimpse of the country we had come so far to see.
And as the rising sun turned the eastern sky to gray, of course it
was old Polynesia who first shouted that she could see palm-trees and
mountain tops.

With the growing light it became plain to all of us: a long island with
high rocky mountains in the middle--and so near to us that you could
almost throw your hat upon the shore.

The porpoises gave us one last push and our strange-looking craft bumped
gently on a low beach. Then, thanking our lucky stars for a chance to
stretch our cramped legs, we all bundled off on to the land--the first
land, eve