James and the Giant Peach Read Online Free PDF Page B

bunch of tickets in her hand, and the first stream of early morning sightseers was visible in the distance climbing up the hill to view the peach.
    ‘We shall make a fortune today,’ Aunt Spiker was saying. ‘Just look at all those people!’
    ‘I wonder what became of that horrid little boy of ours last night,’ Aunt Sponge said. ‘He never did come back in, did he?’
    ‘He probably fell down in the dark and broke his leg,’ Aunt Spiker said.
    ‘Or his neck, maybe,’ Aunt Sponge said hopefully.
    ‘Just
wait
till I get my hands on him,’ Aunt Spiker said, waving her cane. ‘He’ll never want tostay out all night again by the time
I‘ve
finished with him. Good gracious me! What’s that awful noise?’
    Both women swung round to look.
    The noise, of course, had been caused by the giant peach crashing through the fence that surrounded it, and now, gathering speed every second, it came rolling across the garden towards the place where Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker were standing.
    They gaped. They screamed. They started torun. They panicked. They both got in each other’s way. They began pushing and jostling, and each one of them was thinking only about saving herself. Aunt Sponge, the fat one, tripped over a box that she’d brought along to keep the money in, and fell flat on her face. Aunt Spiker immediately tripped over Aunt Sponge and came down on top of her. They both lay on the ground, fighting and clawing and yelling and struggling frantically to get up again, but before they could do this, the mighty peach was upon them.

    There was a crunch.
    And then there was silence.
    The peach rolled on. And behind it, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker lay ironed out upon the grass as flat and thin and lifeless as a couple of paper dolls cut out of a picture book.

Sixteen
    And now the peach had broken out of the garden and was over the edge of the hill, rolling and bouncing down the steep slope at a terrific pace. Faster and faster and faster it went, and the crowds of people who were climbing up the hill suddenly caught sight of this terrible monster plunging down upon them and they screamed and scattered to right and left as it went hurtling by.
    At the bottom of the hill it charged across theroad, knocking over a telegraph pole and flattening two parked cars as it went by.
    Then it rushed madly across about twenty fields, breaking down all the fences and hedges in its path. It went right through the middle of a herd of fine Jersey cows, and then through a flock of sheep, and then through a paddock full of horses, and then through a yard full of pigs, and soon the whole countryside was a seething mass of panic-stricken animals stampeding in all directions.
    The peach was still going at a tremendous speed with no sign of slowing down, and about a mile farther on it came to a village.
    Down the main street of the village it rolled, with people leaping frantically out of its path right and left, and at the end of the street it went crashing right through the wall of an enormous building and out the other side, leaving two gaping round holes in the brickwork.
    This building happened to be a famous factory where they made chocolate, and almost at once a great river of warm melted chocolate came pouring out of the holes in the factory wall. A minute later, this brown sticky mess was flowing through every street in the village, oozing under the doors of houses and into people’s shops and gardens. Children were wading in it up to their knees, and some were even trying to swim in it and all of them were sucking it into their mouths in great greedy gulps and shrieking with joy.
    But the peach rushed on across the countryside – on and on and on, leaving a trail of destruction inits wake. Cowsheds, stables, pigsties, barns, bungalows, hayricks, anything that got in its way went toppling over like a ninepin. An old man sitting quietly beside a stream had his fishing rod whisked out of his hands as it went dashing by, and a woman