“Oh, let them come on,” said Jip. “We can fight the dirty rascals. There are only six of them. Let them come on. I’d love to tell that collie next door, when we get home, that I had bitten a real pirate. Let ’em come. We can fight them.” [Illustration: “‘Look here, Ben Ali—’”] “But they have pistols and swords,” said the Doctor. “No, that would never do. I must talk to him.... Look here, Ben Ali—” But before the Doctor could say any more, the pirates began to sail the ship nearer, laughing with glee, and saying one to another, “Who shall be the first to catch the pig?” Poor Gub-Gub was dreadfully frightened; and the pushmi-pullyu began to sharpen his horns for a fight by rubbing them on the mast of the ship; while Jip kept springing into the air and barking and calling Ben Ali bad names in dog-language. But presently something seemed to go wrong with the pirates; they stopped laughing and cracking jokes; they looked puzzled; something was making them uneasy. Then Ben Ali, staring down at his feet, suddenly bellowed out, “Thunder and Lightning!—Men, _the boat’s leaking_!” And then the other pirates peered over the side and they saw that the boat was indeed getting lower and lower in the water. And one of them said to Ben Ali, “But surely if this old boat were sinking we should see the rats leaving it.” And Jip shouted across from the other ship, “You great duffers, there are no rats there to leave! They left two hours ago! ‘Ha, ha,’ to you, ‘my fine friends!’” But of course the men did not understand him. Soon the front end of the ship began to go down and down, faster and faster—till the boat looked almost as though it were standing on its head; and the pirates had to cling to the rails and the masts and the ropes and anything to keep from sliding off. Then the sea rushed roaring in through all the windows and the doors. And at last the ship plunged right down to the bottom of the sea, making a dreadful gurgling sound; and the six bad men were left bobbing about in the deep water of the bay. Some of them started to swim for the shores of the island; while others came and tried to get on to the boat where the Doctor was. But Jip kept snapping at their noses, so they were afraid to climb up the side of the ship. Then suddenly they all cried out in great fear, “_The sharks!_ The sharks are coming! Let us get on to the ship before they eat us! Help, help!—The sharks! The sharks!” And now the Doctor could see, all over the bay, the backs of big fishes swimming swiftly through the water. And one great shark came near to the ship, and poking his nose out of the water he said to the Doctor, “Are you John Dolittle, the famous animal-doctor?” “Yes,” said Doctor Dolittle. “That is my name.” “Well,” said the shark, “we know these pirates to be a bad lot—especially Ben Ali. If they are annoying you, we will gladly eat them up for you—and then you won’t be troubled any more.”