Pippi Goes on Board

by Astrid Lindgren

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

  bellowing, he came down Main Street, swinging his huge arms.

  "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."

  Tommy and Annika sat at the kitchen table with their geographies

  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