hen he said,

"For four days I have had nothing to eat or drink. I have lived on
snuff."

"There you are!" said Jip. "What did I tell you?"

So they struck some more matches and made their way out through the
passage into the daylight; and the Doctor hurried the man down to the
boat to get some soup.

When the animals and the little boy saw the Doctor and Jip coming back
to the ship with a red-headed man, they began to cheer and yell and
dance about the boat. And the swallows up above started whistling at
the top of their voices--thousands and millions of them--to show that
they too were glad that the boy's brave uncle had been found. The
noise they made was so great that sailors far out at sea thought that a
terrible storm was coming. "Hark to that gale howling in the East!"
they said.

And Jip was awfully proud of himself--though he tried hard not to look
conceited. When Dab-Dab came to him and said, "Jip, I had no idea you
were so clever!" he just tossed his head and answered,

"Oh, that's nothing special. But it takes a dog to find a man, you
know. Birds are no good for a game like that."

Then the Doctor asked the red-haired fisherman where his home was. And
when he had told him, the Doctor asked the swallows to guide the ship
there first.

And when they had come to the land which the man had spoken of, they
saw a little fishing-town at the foot of a rocky mountain; and the man
pointed out the house where he lived.

And while they were letting down the anchor, the little boy's mother
(who was also the man's sister) came running down to the shore to meet
them, laughing and crying at the same time. She had been sitting on a
hill for twenty days, watching the sea and waiting for them to return.

And she kissed the Doctor many times, so that he giggled and blushed
like a school-girl. And she tried to kiss Jip too; but he ran away and
hid inside the ship.

"It's a silly business, this kissing," he said. "I don't hold by it.
Let her go and kiss Gub-Gub--if she MUST kiss something."

The fisherman and his sister didn't want the Doctor to go away again in
a hurry. They begged him to spend a few days with them. So John
Dolittle and his animals had to stay at their house a whole Saturday
and Sunday and half of Monday.

And all the little boys of the fishing-village went down to the beach
and pointed at the great ship anchored there, and said to one another
in whispers,

"Look! That was a pirate