THE BRIDGE OF APES
QUEEN ERMINTRUDE had never in her life seen her husband so terrible as he got that night. He gnashed his teeth with rage. He called everybody a fool. He threw his tooth-brush at the palace cat. He rushed round in his night-shirt and woke up all his army and sent them into the jungle to catch the Doctor.
Then he made all his servants go too--his cooks and his gardeners and his barber and Prince Bumpo's tutor--even the Queen, who was tired from dancing in a pair of tight shoes, was packed off to help the soldiers in their search.
All this time the Doctor and his animals were running through the forest towards the Land of the Monkeys as fast as they could go.
Gub-Gub, with his short legs, soon got tired; and the Doctor had to carry him--which made it pretty hard when they had the trunk and the hand-bag with them as well.
The King of the Jolliginki thought it would be easy for his army to find them, because the Doctor was in a strange land and would not know his way. But he was wrong; because the monkey, Chee-Chee, knew all the paths through the jungle--better even than the King's men did. And he led the Doctor and his pets to the very thickest part of the forest--a place where no man had ever been before--and hid them all in a big hollow tree between high rocks.
"We had better wait here," said Chee-Chee, "till the soldiers have gone back to bed. Then we can go on into the Land of the Monkeys."
So there they stayed the whole night through.
They often heard the King's men searching and talking in the jungle round about. But they were quite safe, for no one knew of that hiding-place but Chee-Chee--not even the other monkeys.
At last, when daylight began to come through the thick leaves overhead, they heard Queen Ermintrude saying in a very tired voice that it was no use looking any more--that they might as well go back and get some sleep.
As soon as the soldiers had all gone home, Chee-Chee brought the Doctor and his animals out of the hiding-place and they set off for the Land of the Monkeys.
It was a long, long way; and they often got very tired--especially Gub-Gub. But when he cried they gave him milk out of the cocoanuts which he was very fond of.
They always had plenty to eat and drink; because Chee-Chee and Polynesia knew all the different kinds of fruits and vegetables that grow in the jungle, and where to find them--like dates and figs and ground-nuts and ginger and yams. They used to make their lemonade out of the juice of wild oranges, sweetened with honey which they got from the bees' nests in hollow trees. No matter what it was they asked for, Chee-Chee and Polynesia always seemed to be able to get it for them--or something like it.
They even got the Doctor some tobacco one day, when he had finished what he had brought with him and wanted to smoke.
At night they slept in tents made of palm- leaves, on thick, soft beds of dried grass. And after a while they got used to walking such a lot and did not get so tired and enjoyed the life of travel very much.
But they were always glad when the night came and they stopped for their resting-time.
Then the Doctor used to make a little fire of sticks; and after they had had their supper, they would sit round it in a ring, listening to Polynesia singing songs about the sea, or to Chee-Chee telling stories of the jungle.
And many of the tales that Chee-Chee told were very interesting. Because although the monkeys had no history-books of their own before Doctor Dolittle came to write them for them, they remember everything that happens by telling stories to their children. And Chee-Chee spoke of many things his grandmother had told him--tales of long, long, long ago, before Noah and the Flood--of the days when men dressed in bear-skins and lived in holes in the rock and ate their mutton raw, because they did not know what cooking was--having never seen a fire.
And he told them of the Great Mammoths and Lizards, as long as a train, that wandered over the mountains in those times, nibbling from the tree-tops. And often they got so interested listening, that when he had finished they found their fire had gone right out; and they had to scurry round to get more sticks and build a new one.
