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Every one of us isabout to perish! I may be blind, you know, but that much I can see quite clearly.’
    ‘Off with my boots!’ shouted the Centipede. ‘I cannot swim with my boots on!’
    ‘I can’t swim at all!’ cried the Ladybird.
    ‘Nor can I,’ wailed the Glow-worm.
    ‘Nor I!’ said Miss Spider. ‘None of us three girls can swim a single stroke.’
    ‘But you won’t
have
to swim,’ said James calmly. ‘We are floating beautifully. And sooner or later a ship is bound to come along and pick us up.’
    They all stared at him in amazement.
    ‘Are you quite sure that we are not sinking?’ the Ladybird asked.
    ‘Of course I‘m sure,’ answered James. ‘Go and look for yourselves.’
    They all ran over to the side of the peach and peered down at the water below.
    ‘The boy is quite right,’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper said. ‘We are floating beautifully. Now we must all sit down and keep perfectly calm. Everything will be all right in the end.’
    ‘What absolute nonsense!’ cried the Earthworm. ‘Nothing is ever all right in the end, and well you know it!’
    ‘Poor Earthworm,’ the Ladybird said, whispering in James’s ear. ‘He loves to make everything into a disaster. He hates to be happy. He is only happy when he is gloomy. Now isn’t that odd? But then, I suppose just
being
an Earthworm is enough to make a person pretty gloomy, don’t you agree?’
    ‘If this peach is not going to sink,’ the Earthwormwas saying, ‘and if we are not going to be drowned, then every one of us is going to
starve
to death instead. Do you realize that we haven’t had a thing to eat since yesterday morning?’
    ‘By golly, he’s right!’ cried the Centipede. ‘For once, Earthworm is right!’
    ‘Of course I‘m right,’ the Earthworm said. ‘And we’re not likely to find anything around here either. We shall get thinner and thinner and thirstier and thirstier, and we shall all die a slow and grisly death from starvation. I am dying already. I am slowly shrivelling up for want of food. Personally, I would rather drown.’
    ‘But good heavens, you must be
blind!
’ said James.
    ‘You know very well I‘m blind,’ snapped the Earthworm. ‘There’s no need to rub it in.’
    ‘I didn’t mean that,’ said James quickly. ‘I‘m sorry. But can’t you
see
that – ’
    ’See?’ shouted the poor Earthworm. ‘How can I see if I am blind?’
    James took a deep, slow breath. ‘Can’t you
real ize
,’ he said patiently, ‘that we have enough food here to last us for weeks and weeks?’
    ‘Where?’ they said. ‘Where?’
    ‘Why, the peach of course! Our whole ship is made of food!’
    ‘Jumping Jehoshophat!’ they cried. ‘We never thought of that!’
    ‘My dear James,’ said the Old-Green-Grasshopper, laying a front leg affectionately on James’s shoulder, ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you.

    You are so clever. Ladies and gentlemen – we are saved again!’
    ‘We are most certainly not!’ said the Earthworm. ‘You must be crazy! You can’t eat the ship! It’s the only thing that is keeping us up!’
    ‘We shall starve if we don‘t!’ said the Centipede.
    ‘And we shall drown if we do!’ cried the Earthworm.
    ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said the Old-Green-Grasshopper. ‘Now we’re worse off than before!’
    ‘Couldn’t we just eat a
little
bit of it?’ asked Miss Spider. ‘I am so dreadfully hungry.’
    ‘You can eat all you want,’ James answered. ‘It would take us weeks and weeks to make any sort of a dent in this enormous peach. Surely you can see that?’
    ‘Good heavens, he’s right again!’ cried the Old-Green-Grasshopper, clapping his hands. ‘It would take weeks and weeks! Of course it would! But let’s not go making a lot of holes all over the deck. I think we’d better simply scoop it out of that tunnel over there – the one that we‘ve just come up by.’
    ‘An excellent idea,’ said the Ladybird.
    ‘What are you looking so worried about,