ince 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

THE RATS' WARNING

DRAGGING a ship through the sea is hard work. And after two or three
hours the swallows began to get tired in the wings and short of breath.
Then they sent a message down to the Doctor to say that they would have
to take a rest soon; and that they would pull the boat over to an
island not far off, and hide it in a deep bay till they had got breath
enough to go on.

And presently the Doctor saw the island they had spoken of. It had a
very beautiful, high, green mountain in the middle of it.

When the ship had sailed safely into the bay where it could not be seen
from the open sea, the Doctor said he would get off on to the island to
look for water--because there was none left to drink on his ship. And
he told all the animals to get out too and romp on the grass to stretch
their legs.

Now as they were getting off, the Doctor noticed