Mademoiselle Paula lifted one of the snakes up-a big, ugly
thing-and put it around her neck like a scarf.
"That looks like a boa constrictor," whispered Pippi to Tommy and
Annika. "I wonder what kind the other is.
She went over to the box and lifted up the other snake. It was
still larger and uglier. Pippi put it around her neck just as
Mademoiselle Paula had done. All the people in the menagerie cried
out in horror. Mademoiselle Paula threw her snake into the box and
rushed over to try to save Pippi from certain death. Pippi's snake
was frightened and angry from the noise and he couldn't at all
understand why he should be hanging around the neck of a little
redheaded girl instead of around Mademoiselle Paula's neck as he was
used to doing. He decided to teach the little redheaded girl a lesson
and contracted his body in a grip that would ordinarily choke an
ox,
"Don't try that old trick on me," said Pippi. "I've seen larger
snakes than you, you know, in Farthest India."
She pulled the snake away from her throat and put him back into
the box. Tommy and Annika stood there, pale with fright.
"That was a boa constrictor too," said Pippi, fastening one of her
garters that had come loose, "just as I thought."
Mademoiselle Paula scolded her for several minutes in some foreign
language, and all the people in the menagerie drew a long breath in
relief, but their relief was short-lived, for this was evidently a
day when things happened.
Afterward no one knew just how the next thing had happened. The
tigers had been fed large red chunks of meat, and the keeper said he
was sure he had locked the door of the cage, but a minute later a
terrible cry was heard-"A tiger is loose!"
It was. There, outside the cage, lay the yellow striped beast,
ready to spring. The people fled in all directions -all but one
little girl who stood squeezed into a corner right next to the
tiger.
"Stand perfectly still," the people called to her. They hoped the
tiger would not touch her if she didn't move. "What shall we do?"
they cried, wringing their hands. "Run for the police!" someone
suggested. "Call the Fire Department!" cried another. "Bring Pippi
Longstocking!" cried Pippi, and stepped forward. She squatted a
couple of yards from the tiger and called to him. "Pussy, pussy,
pussy!"
The tiger growled ferociously and showed his enormous teeth. Pippi
held up a warning finger. "If you bite me, I'll bite you. You can be
sure of that!" Then the tiger sprang right at her. "What's this?
Don't you understand a joke?" cried Pippi and pushed the tiger
away.
With a loud snarl that made cold shivers go up and down everyone's
back, the tiger threw himself at Pippi a second time. You could
plainly see that he intended to bite her throat.
"So you want to fight, eh?" said Pippi. "Well, just remember that
it was you who started it."
With one hand she pressed together the huge jaws of the tiger,
picked him up, and, cradling him in her arms, tenderly carried him
back to the cage, singing a little song. "Have you seen my little
pussy, little pussy, little pussy?"
The people drew a sigh of relief for a second time, and the little
girl who had stood squeezed into the corner ran to her mother and
said she never wanted to go to a menagerie again.
The tiger had torn the hem of Pippi's dress. Pippi looked at the
rags and said, "Does anyone have a pair of scissors?"
Mademoiselle Paula had a pair, and she wasn't angry with Pippi any
more.
"Here you are, you brave little girl," she said and gave Pippi the
scissors.
Pippi cut her dress off a few inches above the knees.
"There!" she said happily. "Now I'm finer than ever. My dress is
cut low at the neck and high at the knees; you really couldn't find a
finer dress."
She tripped off so elegantly that her knees hit each other at each
step. "Chawming!" she said.
You would have thought that there had been enough excitement for
one day at the fair, but fairs are never very quiet places and it was
soon evident that the people had again drawn their breath in relief
too soon.
In the little town lived a very bad man-a very strong bad man. All
the children were afraid of him-and not only the children but
everyone else too. Even the policemen preferred to stay out of the
way when the bad man, Laban, was on the warpath.
He wasn't angry all the time, only when he had drunk ale, and he
had had quite a bit of ale the day of the fair. Yelling and
"Out of the way," he cried, "for here comes Laban!"
The people anxiously backed up against the walls, and many
children cried in terror. There was no policeman in sight. Laban made
his way toward the carnival. He was terrible to look at with his long
black hair hanging down over his forehead, his big red nose, and one
yellow tooth sticking out of his mouth. The crowd at the carnival
thought that he looked even more ferocious than the tiger.
A little old man stood in a booth, selling sausages. Laban went up
to the booth, struck his fist on the counter, and yelled, "Give me a
sausage and be quick about it!"
The old man gave him a sausage at once. "That will be fifteen
cents," he said timidly.
"Do you charge for a sausage when you serve it to such a fine
gentleman as Laban? Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Hand over another
one."
The old man said that first he must have the money for the one
that Laban had already eaten. Then Laban took hold of the old man's
ears and shook him.
"Hand over another sausage," he demanded, "this instant!"
The old man didn't dare disobey, but the people who stood around
couldn't help muttering disapprovingly. One was even brave enough to
say, "It's disgraceful to treat a poor old man like that."
Laban turned around. He looked at the crowd with his bloodshot
eyes. "Did someone sneeze?" He sneered.
The crowd sensed trouble and wanted to leave.
"Stand still!" shouted Laban. "I'll bash in the head of the first
one who moves. Stand still, I say, for Laban will now give a little
show."
He took a whole handful of sausages and began to juggle them. He
threw them into the air and caught some of them in his mouth and some
in his hands, but several fell on the ground. The poor old sausage
man almost cried.
Suddenly a little form darted out of the crowd. Pippi stopped
right in front of Laban.
"Whose little boy can this be?" she asked sweetly. "And what will
his Mommy say when he throws his breakfast around like this?"
Laban gave a terrifying growl. "Didn't I say that everyone should
stand still?" he shouted.
"Do you always turn on the loudspeaker?" wondered Pippi.
Laban raised a threatening fist and yelled, "Brat!!! Do I have to
make hash out of you before you shut up?"
Pippi stood with h
er hands at her sides and looked at him with
interest. "What was it you did to the sausages? Was it this?" She
threw Laban high up into the air and juggled with him for a few
minutes. The people cheered. The old man clapped his little wrinkled
hands and smiled.
When Pippi had finished, a very much frightened and confused Laban
sat on the ground, looking around.
"Now I think the bad man should go home," said Pippi.
Laban had no objection.
"But before you go there are some sausages to be paid for," said
Pippi.
Laban stood up and paid for eighteen sausages, and then he left
without a word. He was never quite himself after that day.
"Three cheers for Pippi!" cried the people.
"Hurrah for Pippi!" cried Tommy and Annika.
"We don't need a policeman in this town," somebody said, "as long
as we have Pippi Longstocking."
"No, sir!" said someone else. "She takes care of both tigers and
bad men."
"Of course we have to have a policeman," said Pippi. "Someone has
to see to it that the bicycles stand decently parked in the wrong
places."
"Oh, Pippi, you were wonderful!" said Annika as the children
walked home from the fair.
"Oh, yes, chawming!" said Pippi.
She held up her skirt-which already came only halfway to her
knees. "Really, most chawming!"
6.
Pippi Is Shipwrecked
EVERY day as soon as school was out Tommy and Annika rushed over
to Villa Villekulla. They didn't even want to do their homework at
their own house but took their books over to Pippi's instead.
"That's good," said Pippi. "Sit here and study, and no doubt a
little knowledge will soak into me. Not that I really think I need
it, but I suppose I can never be a really fine lady unless I know how
many Hottentots there are in Australia."
in front of them. Pippi sat in the middle of the table with her legs
tucked under her.
"Just think," said Pippi thoughtfully, pressing her finger on the
end of her nose. "Suppose I did learn how many Hottentots there are
in Australia and then one of them should go and get pneumonia and
die, my count would be wrong; I would have had all that trouble for
nothing, and I still wouldn't be a really fine lady."
She thought about it a few minutes. "Someone ought to tell the
Hottentots to behave themselves so there wouldn't be any mistakes in
your schoolbooks."
When Tommy and Annika were through with their homework the fun
began. If the weather was nice they played in the garden, rode
horseback a little, or clambered up on the laundry roof and sat there
drinking coffee, or climbed up into the old hollow oak tree and let
themselves down into the trunk. Pippi said that it was a very
remarkable tree, for soda pop grew in it. That seemed to be true, for
every time the children climbed down into their hiding place inside
the oak they found three bottles of soda pop waiting for them. Tommy
and Annika couldn't understand what happened to the empty bottles,
but Pippi said they wilted away as soon as they were emptied. Yes, it
was indeed a strange tree, thought both Tommy and Annika. Sometimes
chocolate bars grew there too, but Pippi said that was only on
Thursdays. Tommy and Annika were very careful to go there and pick
chocolate bars every Thursday. Pippi said that if you just gave
yourself time to water the tree decently you could probably get
French bread to grow there too, and perhaps even a small roast of
veal.
If it rained they had to stay in the house, and that wasn't bad
either. They could look at all the fine things in Pippi's chest, or
sit in front of the stove and watch Pippi make waffles or fry apples,
or climb into the wood-box and sit there listening to Pippi telling
exciting stories about the time when she sailed the seas.
"Goodness, how it stormed!" Pippi would say. "Even the fishes were
seasick and wanted to go ashore. I saw a shark that was absolutely
green in the face and an octopus that sat holding his head in all his
many arms. My, my, what a storm that was!"
"Oh, weren't you afraid, Pippi?" asked Annika.
"Yes, just suppose you had been shipwrecked!" said Tommy.
"Oh, well," said Pippi, "I've been more or less shipwrecked so
many times that I wasn't exactly afraid-not at first, anyway. I
wasn't afraid when the raisins blew out of the fruit soup at dinner,
and not when the cook's false teeth blew out either. But when I saw
that only the skin was left on the ship's cat, and that he himself
was flying off completely naked toward the Far East, I began to feel
a little unpleasant."
"I have a book about a shipwreck," said Tommy. "It's called
Robinson Crusoe."
"Oh, yes, it's so good," said Annika. "Robinson-he came to a
desert island."
"Have you ever been shipwrecked," asked Tommy, making himself a
little more comfortable in the wood-box, "and landed on a desert
island?"
"I should say I have!" said Pippi emphatically. "You'd have to
hunt far and wide to find anyone as shipwrecked as I. Robinson's got
nothing on me. I should think that there are only about eight or ten
islands in the Atlantic and the Pacific that I have not landed on
after shipwrecks. They are in a special blacklist in the tourists'
books."
"Isn't it wonderful to be on a desert island?" asked Tommy. "I'd
so much like to be shipwrecked just once!"
"That's easily arranged," said Pippi. "There's no shortage of
islands."
"No-I know one not at all far away from here," said Tommy.
"Is it in a lake?" asked Pippi.
"Sure," said Tommy.
"Swell!" said Pippi. "For if it had been on dry land it would have
been no good."
Tommy was wild with excitement. "Let's get shipwrecked!" he cried.
"Let's go now, right away!"
In two days Tommy's and Annika's summer vacation was to begin, and
at the same time their mother and father were going away. You
couldn't find a better time to play Robinson Crusoe!
"If you're going to be shipwrecked you first have to have a boat,"
said Pippi.
"And we haven't any," said Annika.
"I saw an old, broken rowboat lying at the bottom of the river,"
said Pippi.
"But that has already been shipwrecked," said Annika.
"So much the better," said Pippi. "Then it knows what to do."
It was a simple matter for Pippi to pull out the sunken rowboat.
She spent a whole day down by the river, mending the boat with boards
and tar, and one rainy morning in the woodshed, making a pair of
oars.
Tommy's and Annika's vacation began, and their parents went
away.
"Well be home in two days," said the children's mother. "Now be
very good and obedient and remember that you must do just as Ella
says."
Ella was the maid, and she was going to look after Tommy and
Annika while their mother and father
were away. But when the children
were alone with Ella, Tommy said, "You don't need to look after us at
all, because we're going to be with Pippi the whole time."
"We can look after ourselves," said Annika. "Pippi never has
anyone to look after her. Why can't we be left alone for two days at
least?"
Ella had no objection to having a couple of days off, and when
Tommy and Annika had begged and teased long enough, Ella said she
would go home and visit with her mother a while. But the children
must promise to eat and sleep properly and not run out at night
without putting on warm sweaters. Tommy said he would gladly put on a
dozen sweaters, if only Ella would leave them alone.
So Ella left, and two hours later Pippi, Tommy and Annika, the
horse, and Mr. Nilsson started on their trip to the desert
island.
It was a mild evening in early summer. The air was warm, although
the sky was cloudy. They had to walk quite a way before they came to
the lake where the desert island was. Pippi carried the boat on her
head. She had loaded an enormous sack and a tent on the horse's
back.
"What's in the sack?" asked Tommy.
"Food and firearms, a blanket and an empty bottle," said Pippi,
"for I think we ought to have quite a comfortable shipwreck, since
it's your first one. Otherwise when I'm shipwrecked I usually shoot
an antelope or a llama and eat the meat raw, but there might not be
any antelopes or llamas on this island, and it would be a shame if we
should have to starve to death just on account of a little thing like
that."
"What are you going to use the empty bottle for?" asked
Annika.
"What am I going to use the empty bottle for? How can you ask
anything so stupid? A boat is, of course, the most important thing
when you're going to be shipwrecked, but next comes an empty bottle.
My father taught me that when I was still in the cradle. 'Pippi,' he
said, 'it doesn't matter if you forget to wash your feet when you're
going to be presented at Court, but if you forget the empty bottle
when you're going to be shipwrecked, you might as well give up.'"
"Yes, but what are you going to use it for?" insisted Annika.
"Haven't you ever heard of a bottle-letter? You write a letter and
ask for help," said Pippi. "Then you stuff it in the bottle, put the
stopper in, and throw the bottle into the water. And then it floats
to someone who can come and save you. How on earth do you think you
could be saved otherwise? Leave everything to chance? No, sir!
"Oh, I see," said Annika.
Soon they came to the edge of the little lake, and there in the
middle of the lake was the desert island. The sun was just breaking
through the clouds, throwing a warm glow over the early summer
foliage.
"Really," said Pippi, "this is one of the nicest desert islands
I've ever seen."
She quickly launched the boat onto the lake, lifted the pack off
the horse, and stuffed everything into the bottom of the boat. Annika
and Tommy and Mr. Nilsson jumped in.
Pippi patted the horse. "My dear horse, no matter how much I would
like it, I cannot ask you to sit in the bottom of the boat. I hope
you can swim. It's very simple. Look!"
Pippi jumped into the lake with all her clothes on and swam a few
strokes. "It's lots of fun, you know, and if you want to have still
more fun you can play whale, like this."
Pippi filled her mouth with water, lay on her back, and squirted
like a fountain. The horse didn't look as if he thought it would be
much fun, but when Pippi crawled into the boat, took the oars, and
rowed off, the horse threw himself into the water and swam after her.
He didn't play whale, though.
When they had almost reached the island, Pippi yelled, "Man all