“Foolish King!” answered Polynesia. “Have you forgotten that you are talking to John Dolittle, M.D.—the most wonderful man on earth? Of course you cannot see me. I have made myself invisible. There is nothing I cannot do. Now listen: I have come here to-night to warn you. If you don’t let me and my animals travel through your kingdom, I will make you and all your people sick like the monkeys. For I can make people well: and I can make people ill—just by raising my little finger. Send your soldiers at once to open the dungeon door, or you shall have mumps before the morning sun has risen on the hills of Jolliginki.” Then the King began to tremble and was very much afraid. “Doctor,” he cried, “it shall be as you say. Do not raise your little finger, please!” And he jumped out of bed and ran to tell the soldiers to open the prison door. As soon as he was gone, Polynesia crept downstairs and left the palace by the pantry window. But the Queen, who was just letting herself in at the backdoor with a latch-key, saw the parrot getting out through the broken glass. And when the King came back to bed she told him what she had seen. Then the King understood that he had been tricked, and he was dreadfully angry. He hurried back to the prison at once. But he was too late. The door stood open. The dungeon was empty. The Doctor and all his animals were gone. _THE SEVENTH CHAPTER_ THE BRIDGE OF APES QUEEN ERMINTRUDE had never in her life seen her husband so terrible as he got that night. He gnashed his teeth with rage. He called everybody a fool. He threw his tooth-brush at the palace cat. He rushed round in his night-shirt and woke up all his army and sent them into the jungle to catch the Doctor. Then he made all his servants go too—his cooks and his gardeners and his barber and Prince Bumpo’s tutor—even the Queen, who was tired from dancing in a pair of tight shoes, was packed off to help the soldiers in their search. All this time the Doctor and his animals were running through the forest towards the Land of the Monkeys as fast as they could go. Gub-Gub, with his short legs, soon got tired; and the Doctor had to carry him—which made it pretty hard when they had the trunk and the hand-bag with them as well. The King of the Jolliginki thought it would be easy for his army to find them, because the Doctor was in a strange land and would not know his way. But he was wrong; because the monkey, Chee-Chee, knew all the paths through the jungle—better even than the King’s men did. And he led the Doctor and his pets to the very thickest part of the forest—a place where no man had ever been before—and hid them all in a big hollow tree between high rocks. “We had better wait here,” said Chee-Chee, “till the soldiers have gone back to bed. Then we can go on into the Land of the Monkeys.” So there they stayed the whole night through.