'They must be absolutely mad!' the Centipede said. 'There's nothing to be afraid of here!'
'Be quiet, you pest!' the Earthworm whispered. 'We shall all be eaten if they see us!'
But the Cloud-Men were much too busy with what they were doing to have noticed the great peach floating silently up behind them.
Then the watchers on the peach saw one of the Cloud-Men raising his long wispy arms above his head and they heard him shouting, 'All right, boys! That's enough! Get the shovels!' And all the other Cloud-Men immediately let out a strange high-pitched whoop of joy and started jumping up and down and waving their arms in the air. Then they picked up enormous shovels and rushed over to the pile of marbles and began shovelling them as fast as they could over the side of the cloud, into space. 'Down they go!' they chanted as they worked.
'Down they go!
Hail and snow!
Freezes and sneezes and noses will blow!'
'It's hailstones!' whispered James excitedly. 'They've been making hailstones and now they are showering them down on to the people in the world below!'
'Hailstones?' the Centipede said. 'That's ridiculous! This is summertime. You don't have hailstones in summertime.'
'They are practising for the winter,' James told him.
'I don't believe it!' shouted the Centipede, raising his voice.
'Ssshh!' the others whispered. And James said softly, 'For heaven's sake, Centipede, don't make so much noise.'
The Centipede roared with laughter. 'Those imbeciles couldn't hear anything!' he cried. 'They're deaf as doorknobs! You watch!' And before anyone could stop him, he had cupped his front feet to his mouth and was yelling at the Cloud-Men as loud as he could. 'Idiots!' he yelled. 'Nincompoops! Half-wits! Blunderheads! Asses! What on earth do you think you're doing over there!'
The effect was immediate. The Cloud-Men jumped round as if they had been stung by wasps. And when they saw the great golden peach floating past them not fifty yards away in the sky, they gave a yelp of surprise and dropped their shovels to the ground. And there they stood with the moonlight streaming down all over them, absolutely motionless, like a group of tall white hairy statues, staring and staring at the gigantic fruit as it went sailing by.
The passengers on the peach (all except the Centipede) sat frozen with terror, looking back at the Cloud-Men and wondering what was going to happen next.
'Now you've done it, you loathsome pest!' whispered the Earthworm to the Centipede.
'I'm not frightened of them!' shouted the Centipede, and to show everybody once again that he wasn't, he stood up to his full height and started dancing about and making insulting signs at the Cloud-Men with all forty-two of his legs.
This evidently infuriated the Cloud-Men beyond belief. All at once, they spun round and grabbed great handfuls of hailstones and rushed to the edge of the cloud and started throwing them at the peach, shrieking with fury all the time.
'Look out!' cried James. 'Quick! Lie down! Lie flat on the deck!'
It was lucky they did! A large hailstone can hurt you as much as a rock or a lump of lead if it is thrown hard enough - and my goodness, how those Cloud-Men could throw! The hailstones came whizzing through the air like bullets from a machine-gun, and James could hear them smashing against the sides of the peach and burying themselves in the peach flesh with horrible squelching noises - plop! plop! plop! plop! And then ping! ping! ping! as they bounced off the poor Ladybird's shell because she couldn't lie as flat as the others. And then crack! as one of them hit the Centipede right on the nose and crack! again as another one hit him somewhere else.
'Ow!' he cried. 'Ow! Stop! Stop! Stop!'
But the Cloud-Men had no intention of stopping. James could see them rushing about on the cloud like a lot of huge hairy ghosts, picking up hailstones from the pile, dashing to the edge of the cloud, hurling the hailstones at the peach, dashing back again to get more, and then, when the pile of stones was all gone, they simply grabbed handfuls of cloud and made as many more as they wanted, and much bigger ones now, some of them as large as cannon balls.
'Quickly!' cried James. 'Down the tunnel or we'll all be wiped out!'
There was a rush for the tunnel entrance, and half a minute later everybody was safely downstairs inside the stone of the peach, trembling with fright and listening to the noise of the hailstones as they came crashing against the side of the peach.
'I'm a wreck!' groaned the Centipede. 'I am wounded all over!'
'It serves you right,' said the Earthworm.
'Would somebody kindly look and see if my shell is cracked?' the Ladybird said.
'Give us some light!' shouted the Old-Green-Grasshopper.
'I can't!' wailed the Glow-worm. 'They've broken my bulb!'
'Then put in another one!' the Centipede said.