"There's one gone," said the squirrel, pleased "and easily too. Now how about the other five?"
"I don't know," said Teddy doubtfully, "had I better peel the last orange?"
"I suppose you had," said the squirrel, "it's your last chance, and if it doesn't work, we're lost."
Teddy nodded as he was too busy to answer. He was throwing the pieces of peel at the giants, and as he threw them they turned into little sharp stones, and hit them, and hurt them and that made them still more angry, and they called all the louder to him, but they didn't dare step on the sea.
When Teddy finished the orange he laid it carefully down beside him, and waited to see what would happen. For at least five minutes it stayed where he had put it, and then it disappeared and Teddy began to be awfully frightened, when all of a sudden he heard a very strange sound, and turned to look in the direction from which it came. The sound continued drawing nearer and nearer. It was a funny noise, swishy and squashy, now faint, now loud, but surely coming closer all the time. The giants heard it, and grew uneasy; they pressed to the shore of the sea, and threatened Teddy more and more with their clubs.
Suddenly, just as Teddy had begun to think Mammy-Know-all had gone back on him altogether, a cloud of great white birds appeared, thousands of them, all flapping their wings together, till it sounded like the roll of drums. They descended upon the giants, pecking them with their bills, and smothering them with their wings, till the giants in desperation, ran out on the sea, and all fell through!
The very second the green one sank out of sight, the Looking-glass Sea turned into water, and Teddy and the Squirrel were glad enough to scramble into a piece of orange peel which had turned into a little yellow boat.
Just as they were wondering which way they ought to go they heard a great hullabaloo from the opposite shore, and there were all the gnomes, ranged along the bank, shouting and waving at Teddy, begging him to make haste over, that they might crown him their king.
But Teddy didn't want to go over, he didn't want to be a king, he was tired of the gnomes, and their blue elephants, and their hollow trees, and he didn't propose to go back, and be told to kill anything more, so he asked the squirrel if he knew how he could get home some other way, and the squirrel said, "shut your eyes, and say:
One, two, three,