At this time an elderly fly said it was the hour for the evening song to be sung; and, on a signal being given, all the bluebottle flies began to buzz at once in a sumptuous and sonorous manner, the melodious and mucilaginous sounds echoing all over the waters, and resounding across the tumultuous tops of the transitory titmice upon the intervening and verdant mountains with a serene and sickly suavity only known to the truly virtuous. The moon was shining slobaciously from the star-bespangled sky, while her light irrigated the smooth and shiny sides and wings and backs of the bluebottle flies with a peculiar and trivial splendor, while all nature cheerfully responded to the cerulean and conspicuous circumstances.
In many long-after years the four little travelers looked back to that evening as one of the happiest in all their lives; and it was already past midnight when—the sail of the boat having been set up by the quangle-wangle, the tea-kettle and churn placed in their respective positions, and the pussy-cat stationed at the helm—the children each took a last and affectionate farewell of the bluebottle flies, who walked down in a body to the water’s edge to see the travelers embark.
As a token of parting respect and esteem, Violet made a courtesy quite down to the ground, and stuck one of her few remaining parrot-tail feathers into the back hair of the most pleasing of the bluebottle flies; while Slingsby, Guy, and Lionel offered them three small boxes, containing, respectively, black pins, dried figs, and Epsom salts; and thus they left that happy shore forever.
Overcome by their feelings, the four little travelers instantly jumped into the tea-kettle and fell fast asleep. But all along the shore, for many hours, there was distinctly heard a sound of severely suppressed sobs, and of a vague multitude of living creatures using their pocket-handkerchiefs in a subdued simultaneous snuffle, lingering sadly along the walloping waves as the boat sailed farther and farther away from the land of the happy bluebottle flies.
Nothing particular occurred for some days after these events, except that, as the travelers were passing a low tract of sand, they perceived an unusual and gratifying spectacle; namely, a large number of crabs and crawfish—perhaps six or seven hundred—sitting by the waterside, and endeavoring to disentangle a vast heap of pale pink worsted, which they moistened at intervals with a fluid composed of lavender-water and white-wine negus.
“Can we be of any service to you, oh, crusty crabbies?” said the four children.
“Thank you kindly,” said the crabs consecutively. “We are trying to make some worsted mittens, but do not know how.”
On which Violet, who was perfectly acquainted with the art of mitten-making, said to the crabs, “Do your claws unscrew, or are they fixtures?”
“They are all made to unscrew,” said the crabs; and forthwith they deposited a great pile of claws close to the boat, with which Violet uncombed all the pale pink worsted, and then made the loveliest mittens with it you can imagine. These the crabs, having resumed and screwed on their claws, placed cheerfully upon their wrists and walked away rapidly on their hind-legs, warbling songs with a silvery voice and in a minor key.
After this the four little people sailed on again till they came to a vast and wide plain of astonishing dimensions, on which nothing whatever could be discovered at first; but, as the travelers walked onward, there appeared in the extreme and dim distance a single object, which on a nearer approach, and on an accurately cutaneous inspection, seemed to be somebody in a large white wig, sitting on an arm-chair made of sponge-cakes and oyster-shells. “It does not quite look like a human being,” said Violet doubtfully; nor could they make out what it really was till the quangle-wangle (who had previously been round the world) exclaimed softly in a loud voice, “It is the coöperative cauliflower!”