Free James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl Page A

as the peach sailed closer, it became obvious that these ‘things’ were actually living creatures – tall, wispy, wraithlike, shadowy, white creatures who looked as though they were made out of a mixture of cotton-wool and candyfloss and thin white hairs.
    ‘Oooooooooooooh!’ the Ladybird said. ‘I don’t like this at all!’
    ‘Ssshh!’ James whispered back. ‘Don’t let them hear you! They must be Cloud-Men!’
    ‘Cloud-Men!’
they murmured, huddling closer together for comfort. ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’

    ‘I‘m glad I‘m blind and can’t see them,’ the Earthworm said, ‘or I would probably scream.’
    ‘I hope they don’t turn round and see
us
,’ Miss Spider stammered.
    ‘Do you think they would eat us?’ the Earthworm asked.
    ‘They would eat
you
,’ the Centipede answered, grinning. ‘They would cut you up like a salami and eat you in thin slices.’
    The poor Earthworm began to quiver all over with fright.
    ‘But what are they
doing
?’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper whispered.
    ‘I don’t know,’ James answered softly. ‘Let’s watch and see.’
    The Cloud-Men were all standing in a group, and they were doing something peculiar with their hands. First, they would reach out (all of them at once) and grab handfuls of cloud. Then they would roll these handfuls of cloud in their fingers until they turned into what looked like large white marbles. Then they would toss the marbles to one side and quickly grab more bits of cloud and start over again.
    It was all very silent and mysterious. The pile of marbles beside them kept growing larger and larger. Soon there was a truckload of them there at least.
    ‘They must be absolutely mad!’ the Centipede said. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of here!’
    ‘Be quiet, you pest!’ the Earthworm whispered. ‘We shall
all
be eaten if they see us!’
    But the Cloud-Men were much too busy with what they were doing to have noticed the great peach floating silently up behind them.
    Then the watchers on the peach saw one of the Cloud-Men raising his long wispy arms above his head and they heard him shouting, ‘All right, boys! That’s enough! Get the shovels!’ And all the otherCloud-Men immediately let out a strange high-pitched whoop of joy and started jumping up and down and waving their arms in the air. Then they picked up enormous shovels and rushed over to the pile of marbles and began shovelling them as fast as they could over the side of the cloud, into space. ‘
Down they go!
’ they chanted as they worked.

    ‘
Down they go!
    Hail and snow!
    Freezes and sneezes and noses will blow!
’
    ‘It’s
hailstones
!’ whispered James excitedly. ‘They‘ve been making hailstones and now they are showering them down on to the people in the world below!’
    ‘Hailstones?’ the Centipede said. ‘That’s ridiculous! This is summertime. You don’t have hailstones in summertime.’
    ‘They are practising for the winter,’ James told him.
    ‘I don’t believe it!’ shouted the Centipede, raising his voice.
    ‘Ssshh!’ the others whispered. And James said softly, ‘For heaven’s sake, Centipede, don’t make so much noise.’
    The Centipede roared with laughter. ‘Those imbeciles couldn’t hear anything!’ he cried. ‘They’re deaf as doorknobs! You watch!’ And before anyone could stop him, he had cupped his front feet to his mouth and was yelling at the Cloud-Men as loud as he could. ‘Idiots!’ he yelled. ‘Nincompoops!Half-wits! Blunderheads! Asses! What on earth do you think you’re doing over there!’
    The effect was immediate. The Cloud-Men jumped round as if they had been stung by wasps. And when they saw the great golden peach floating past them not fifty yards away in the sky, they gave a yelp of surprise and dropped their shovels to the ground. And there they stood with the moonlight streaming down all over them, absolutely motionless, like a group of tall white hairy statues, staring and staring at the gigantic