28 Twenty-eight

Twenty-eight One by one, the travellers came out again on to the top of the peach and gazed carefully around. The moon was still shining as brightly as ever, and there were still plenty of huge shimmering cloudmountains on all sides. But there were no Cloud-Men in sight now. 'The peach is leaking!' shouted the Old-Green-Grasshopper, peering over the side. 'It's full of holes and the juice is dripping out everywhere!' 'That does it!' cried the Earthworm. 'If the peach is leaking then we shall surely sink!' 'Don't be an ass!' the Centipede told him. 'We're not in the water now!' 'Oh, look!' shouted the Ladybird. 'Look, look, look! Over there!' Everybody swung round to look.

In the distance and directly ahead of them, they now saw a most extraordinary sight. It was a kind of arch, a colossal curvy-shaped thing that reached high up into the sky and came down again at both ends. The ends were resting upon a huge flat cloud that was as big as a desert. 'Now what in the world is that?' asked James. 'It's a bridge!' 'It's an enormous hoop cut in half!' 'It's a giant horseshoe standing upside down!' 'Stop me if I'm wrong,' murmured the Centipede, going white in the face, 'but might those not be Cloud-Men climbing all over it?' There was a dreadful silence. The peach floated closer and closer. 'They are Cloud-Men!' 'There are hundreds of them!' 'Thousands!' 'Millions!' 'I don't want to hear about it!' shrieked the poor blind Earthworm. 'I'd rather be on the end of

a fish hook and used as bait than come up against those terrible creatures again!' 'I'd rather be fried alive and eaten by a Mexican!' wailed the Old-Green-Grasshopper. 'Please keep quiet,' whispered James. 'It's our only hope.' They crouched very still on top of the peach, staring at the Cloud-Men. The whole surface of the cloud was literally swarming with them, and there were hundreds more up above climbing about on that monstrous crazy arch. 'But what is that thing?' whispered the Ladybird. 'And what are they doing to it?' 'I don't care what they're doing to it!' the Centipede said, scuttling over to the tunnel entrance. 'I'm not staying up here! Good-bye!' But the rest of them were too frightened or too hypnotized by the whole affair to make a move. 'Do you know what?' James whispered. 'What?' they said. 'What?' 'That enormous arch – they seem to be painting it! They've got pots of paint and big brushes! You

look!' And he was quite right. The travellers were close enough now to see that this was exactly what the Cloud-Men were doing. They all had huge brushes in their hands and they were splashing the paint on to the great curvy arch in a frenzy of speed, so fast, in fact, that in a few minutes the whole of the arch became covered with the most glorious colours – reds, blues, greens, yellows, and purples. 'It's a rainbow!' everyone said at once. 'They are making a rainbow!' 'Oh, isn't it beautiful!' 'Just look at those colours!' 'Centipede!' they shouted. 'You must come up and see this!' They were so enthralled by the beauty and brilliance of the rainbow that they forgot to keep their voices low any longer. The Centipede poked his head cautiously out of the tunnel entrance. 'Well, well, well,' he said. 'I've always wondered how those things were made. But why

all the ropes? What are they doing with those ropes?' 'Good heavens, they are pushing it off the cloud!' cried James. 'There it goes! They are lowering it down to the earth with ropes!' 'And I'll tell you something else,' the Centipede said sharply. 'If I'm not greatly mistaken, we ourselves are going to bump right into it!' 'Bless my soul, he's right!' the Old-Green-Grasshopper exclaimed. The rainbow was now dangling in the air below the cloud. The peach was also just below the level of the cloud, and it was heading directly towards the rainbow, travelling rather fast. 'We are lost!' Miss Spider cried, wringing her feet again. 'The end has come!' 'I can't stand it!' wailed the Earthworm. 'Tell me what's happening!' 'We're going to miss it!' shouted the Ladybird. 'No, we're not!' 'Yes, we are!'

'Yes! – Yes! – No! – Oh, my heavens!' 'Hold on, everybody!' James called out, and suddenly there was a tremendous thud as the peach went crashing into the top of the rainbow. This was followed by an awful splintering noise as the enormous rainbow snapped right across the middle and became two separate pieces. The next thing that happened was extremly unfortunate. The ropes that the Cloud-Men had