Free James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl Page B

fruit as it went sailing by.
    The passengers on the peach (all except the Centipede) sat frozen with terror, looking back at the Cloud-Men and wondering what was going to happen next.
    ‘Now you‘ve done it, you loathsome pest!’ whispered the Earthworm to the Centipede.
    ‘I‘m not frightened of
them
!’ shouted the Centipede, and to show everybody once again that he wasn‘t, he stood up to his full height and started dancing about and making insulting signs at the Cloud-Men with all forty-two of his legs.
    This evidently infuriated the Cloud-Men beyond belief. All at once, they spun round and grabbed great handfuls of hailstones and rushed to the edge of the cloud and started throwing them at the peach, shrieking with fury all the time.
    ‘Look out!’ cried James. ‘Quick! Lie down! Lie flat on the deck!’
    It was lucky they did! A large hailstone can hurt you as much as a rock or a lump of lead if it isthrown hard enough – and my goodness, how those Cloud-Men could throw! The hailstones came whizzing through the air like bullets from a machine-gun, and James could hear them smashing against the sides of the peach and burying themselves in the peach flesh with horrible squelching noises –
plop! plop! plop! plop!
And then
ping! ping! ping!
as they bounced off the poor Ladybird’s shell because she couldn’t lie as flat as the others. And then
crack!
as one of them hit the Centipede right on the nose and
crack!
again as another one hit him somewhere else.
    ‘Ow!’ he cried. ‘Ow! Stop! Stop! Stop!’
    But the Cloud-Men had no intention of stopping. James could see them rushing about on the cloud like a lot of huge hairy ghosts, picking up hailstones from the pile, dashing to the edge of the cloud, hurling the hailstones at the peach, dashing back again to get more, and then, when the pile of stones was all gone, they simply grabbed handfuls of cloud and made as many more as they wanted, and much bigger ones now, some of them as large as cannon balls.
    ‘Quickly!’ cried James. ‘Down the tunnel or we’ll all be wiped out!’
    There was a rush for the tunnel entrance, and half a minute later everybody was safely downstairs inside the stone of the peach, trembling with fright and listening to the noise of the hailstones as they came crashing against the side of the peach.
    ‘I‘m a wreck!’ groaned the Centipede. ‘I amwounded all over!’
    ‘It serves you right,’ said the Earthworm.
    ‘Would somebody kindly look and see if my shell is cracked?’ the Ladybird said.
    ‘Give us some light!’ shouted the Old-Green-Grasshopper.
    ‘I can‘t!’ wailed the Glow-worm. ‘They‘ve broken my bulb!’
    ‘Then put in another one!’ the Centipede said.
    ‘Be quiet a moment,’ said James. ‘Listen! I do believe they’re not hitting us any more!’
    They all stopped talking and listened. Yes – the noise had ceased. The hailstones were no longer smashing against the peach.
    ‘We‘ve left them behind!’
    ‘The seagulls must have pulled us away out of danger.
    ‘Hooray! Let’s go up and see!’
    Cautiously, with James going first, they all climbed back up the tunnel. James poked his head out and looked around. ‘It’s all clear!’ he called. ‘I can’t see them anywhere!’

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 cloud-mountainson 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