22.Capture!(2)(1550)

B

‘Which of you foulpesters is wiggling my arm?’ he bellowed. ‘Is that you, you rotsome Manhugger?’

Suddenly he saw the soldiers. In a flash, he was sitting up. He looked around him. He saw more soldiers. With a roar, he leaped to his feet. The soldiers, petrified with   fear, froze where they were. They had no weapons with them. The Head of the Army put his jeep into reverse.

‘Human beans!’ the Fleshlumpeater yelled. ‘What is all you flushbunking rotsome

half-baked beans doing in our country?’ He made a grab at a soldier and swept him up in his hand.

‘I is having early suppers today!’ he shouted, holding the poor squirming soldier at arm’s length and roaring with laughter.

Sophie, standing on the palm of the BFG’s hand, was watching horrorstruck. ‘Do something!’ she cried. ‘Quick, before he eats him!’

‘Put that human bean down!’ the BFG shouted.

The Fleshlumpeater turned and stared at the BFG. ‘What is you doing here with all these grotty twiglets!’ he bellowed. ‘You is making me very suspichy!’

The BFG made a rush at the Fleshlumpeater, but the colossal fifty-four-foot-high

giant simply knocked him over with a flick of his free arm. At the same time, Sophie

fell off the BFG’s palm on to the ground. Her mind was racing. She must do something! She must! She must! She remembered the sapphire brooch the Queen had pinned on to  her chest. Quickly, she undid it.

‘I is guzzling you nice and slow!’ the Fleshlumpeater was saying to the soldier in his hand. ‘Then I is guzzling ten or twenty more of you midgy little maggots down there! You is not getting away from me because I is galloping fifty times faster than you!’

Sophie ran up behind the Fleshlumpeater. She was holding the brooch between her fingers. When she was right up close to the great naked hairy legs, she rammed the

three-inch-long pin of the brooch as hard as she could into the Fleshlumpeater’s right ankle. It went deep into the flesh and stayed there.

The giant gave a roar of pain and jumped high in the air. He dropped the soldier and made a grab for his ankle.

The BFG, knowing what a coward the Fleshlumpeater was, saw his chance. ‘You is bitten by a snake!’ he shouted. ‘I seed it biting you! It was a frightsome poisnowse

viper! It was a dreadly dungerous vindscreen viper!’

‘Save our souls!’ bellowed the Fleshlumpeater. ‘Sound the crumpets! I is bitten by a septicous venomsome vindscreen viper!’ He flopped to the ground and sat there

howling his head off and clutching his ankle with both hands. His fingers felt the

brooch. ‘The teeth of the dreadly viper is still sticking into me!’ he yelled. ‘I is feeling the teeth sticking into my anklet!’

The BFG saw his second chance. ‘We must be getting those viper’s teeth out at once!’ he cried. ‘Otherwise you is deader than duck-soup! I is helping you!’

The BFG knelt down beside the Fleshlumpeater. ‘You must grab your anklet very tight with both hands!’ he ordered. ‘That will stop the poisnowse juices from the

venomsome viper going up your leg and into your heart!’

The Fleshlumpeater grabbed his ankle with both hands.

‘Now close your eyes and grittle your teeth and look up to heaven and say your prayers while I is taking out the teeth of the venomsome viper,’ the BFG said.

The terrified Fleshlumpeater did exactly as he was told.

The BFG signalled for some rope. A soldier rushed it over to him. With both the

Fleshlumpeater’s hands gripping his ankle, it was a simple matter for the BFG to tie the ankles and hands together with a tight knot.

‘I is pulling out the frightsome viper’s teeth!’ the BFG said as he pulled the knot tight.

‘Do it quickly!’ shouted the Fleshlumpeater, ‘before I is pizzened to death!’

‘There we is,’ said the BFG, standing up. ‘You can look now.’

When the Fleshlumpeater saw that he was trussed up like a turkey, he gave a yell so loud that the heavens trembled. He rolled and he wriggled, he fought and he figgled,

he squirmed and he squiggled. But there was not a thing he could do.

‘Well done you!’ Sophie cried.

‘Well done you!’ said the BFG, smiling down at the little girl. ‘You is saving all of our lives!’

‘Will you please get that brooch back for me,’ Sophie said. ‘It belongs to the Queen.’

The BFG pulled the beautiful brooch out of the Fleshlumpeater’s ankle. The Fleshlumpeater howled. The BFG wiped the pin and handed it back to Sophie.

Curiously, not one of the other eight snoring giants had woken up during this

shimozzle. ‘When you is only sleeping one or two hours a day, you is sleeping extra doubly deep,’ the BFG explained.

The Head of the Army and the Air Force drove forward once again in their jeep.

‘Her Majesty will be very pleased with me,’ the Head of the Army said. ‘I shall probably get a medal. What’s the next move?’

‘Now you is all driving over to my cave to load up my bottles of dreams,’ the BFG said.

‘We can’t waste time with that rubbish,’ the Army General said.

‘It is the Queen’s order,’ Sophie said. She was now back on the BFG’s hand.

So the nine jeeps drove across to the BFG’s cave and the great dream-loading

operation began. There were fifty thousand jars in all to be loaded up, more than five thousand to each jeep, and it took over an hour to finish the job.

While the soldiers were loading the dreams, the BFG and Sophie disappeared over the mountains on a mysterious errand. When they came back, the BFG had a sack the size of a small house slung over his shoulder.

‘What’s that you’ve got in there?’ the Head of the Army demanded to know.

‘Curiosity is killing the rat,’ the BFG said, and he turned away from the silly man.

When he was sure that all his precious dreams had been safely loaded on to the  jeeps, the BFG said, ‘Now we is driving back to the bellypoppers and picking up the frightsome giants.’

The jeeps drove back to the helicopters. The fifty thousand dreams were carried

carefully, jar by jar, on to the helicopters. The soldiers climbed back on board, but the BFG and Sophie stayed on the ground. Then they all returned to where the nine giants were lying.

It was a fine sight to see them, these great air machines hovering over the trussed- up giants. It was an even finer sight to see the giants being woken up by the terrific

thundering of the engines overhead, and the finest sight of all was to observe those

nine hideous brutes squirming and twisting about on the ground like a mass of mighty snakes as they tried to free themselves from their ropes and chains.

‘I is flushbunkled!’ roared the Fleshlumpeater.

‘I is splitzwiggled!’ yelled the Ghildchewer.

‘I is swogswalloped!’ bellowed the Bonecruncher.

‘I is goosegruggled!’ howled the Manhugger.

‘I is gunzleswiped!’ shouted the Meatdripper.

‘I is fluckgungled!’ screamed the Maidmasher.

‘I is slopgroggled!’ squawked the Gizzardgulper.

‘I is crodsquinkled!’ yowled the Bloodbottler.

‘I is bopmuggered!’ screeched the Butcher Boy.

The nine giant-carrying helicopters each chose a separate giant and hovered directly over him. Very strong steel hawsers with hooks on the ends of them were lowered from the front and rear of each helicopter. The BFG quickly secured the hooks to the giants’   chains, one hook near the legs and the other near the arms. Then very slowly, the

giants were winched up into the air, parallel with the ground. The giants roared and bellowed, but there was nothing they could do.

The BFG, with Sophie once more resting comfortably in his ear, set off at a gallop for England. The helicopters all banked around and followed after him.

It was an amazing spectacle, those nine helicopters winging through the sky, each   with a trussed-up fifty-foot-long giant slung underneath it. The giants themselves must have found it an interesting experience. They never stopped bellowing, but their howls were drowned by the noise of the engines.

When it began to get dark, the helicopters switched on powerful searchlights and trained them on to the galloping giant so as to keep him in sight. They flew right

through the night and arrived in England just as dawn was breaking.

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