The Story of Doctor Dolittle: Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts. Never Before Printed. by Hugh Lofting

Author:Hugh Lofting
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Fantasy literature, Human-animal communication -- Juvenile fiction, Animals -- Juvenile fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2026-01-10T18:40:40+00:00

XII

Medicine and Mag­ic

Very, very qui­et­ly, mak­ing sure that no one should see her, Poly­ne­sia then slipped out at the back of the tree and flew across to the prison.

She found Gub-Gub pok­ing his nose through the bars of the win­dow, try­ing to sniff the cook­ing-smells that came from the palace-kitchen. She told the pig to bring the Doc­tor to the win­dow be­cause she want­ed to speak to him. So Gub-Gub went and woke the Doc­tor who was tak­ing a nap.

“Lis­ten,” whis­pered the par­rot, when John Dolit­tle’s face ap­peared: “Prince Bumpo is com­ing here tonight to see you. And you’ve got to find some way to turn him white. But be sure to make him prom­ise you first that he will open the prison-door and find a ship for you to cross the sea in.”

“This is all very well,” said the Doc­tor. “But it isn’t so easy to turn a black man white. You speak as though he were a dress to be re-dyed. It’s not so sim­ple. ‘Shall the leop­ard change his spots, or the Ethiopi­an his skin,’ you know?”

“I don’t know any­thing about that,” said Poly­ne­sia im­pa­tient­ly. “But you must turn this coon white. Think of a way—think hard. You’ve got plen­ty of medicines left in the bag. He’ll do any­thing for you if you change his col­or. It is your on­ly chance to get out of prison.”

“Well, I sup­pose it might be pos­si­ble,” said the Doc­tor. “Let me see—,” and he went over to his medicine-bag, mur­mur­ing some­thing about “lib­er­at­ed chlo­rine on an­i­mal-pig­ment—per­haps zinc-oint­ment, as a tem­po­rary mea­sure, spread thick—”

Well, that night Prince Bumpo came se­cret­ly to the Doc­tor in prison and said to him,

“White Man, I am an un­hap­py prince. Years ago I went in search of The Sleep­ing Beau­ty, whom I had read of in a book. And hav­ing trav­eled through the world many days, I at last found her and kissed the la­dy very gen­tly to awak­en her—as the book said I should. ’Tis true in­deed that she awoke. But when she saw my face she cried out, ‘Oh, he’s black!’ And she ran away and wouldn’t mar­ry me—but went to sleep again some­where else. So I came back, full of sad­ness, to my fa­ther’s king­dom. Now I hear that you are a won­der­ful ma­gi­cian and have many pow­er­ful po­tions. So I come to you for help. If you will turn me white, so that I may go back to The Sleep­ing Beau­ty, I will give you half my king­dom and any­thing be­sides you ask.”

“Prince Bumpo,” said the Doc­tor, look­ing thought­ful­ly at the bot­tles in his medicine-bag, “sup­pos­ing I made your hair a nice blonde col­or—would not that do in­stead to make you hap­py?”

“No,” said Bumpo. “Noth­ing else will sat­is­fy me. I must be a white prince.”

“You know it is very hard to change the col­or of a prince,” said the Doc­tor—“one of the hard­est things a ma­gi­cian can do. You on­ly want your face white, do you not?”

“Yes, that is all,” said Bumpo. “Be­cause

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