The BFG

Capture!

The BFG had made thousands of journeys to and from Giant Country over the years, but he had never in his life made one quite like this, with nine huge helicopters roaring along just over his head. He had never before travelled in broad daylight either. He hadn’t dared to. But this was different. Now he was doing it for the Queen of England herself and he was frightened of nobody.

As he galloped across the British Isles with the helicopters thundering above him, people stood and gaped and wondered what on earth was going on. They had never seen the likes of it before. And they never would again.

Every now and then, the pilots of the helicopters would catch a glimpse of a small girl wearing glasses crouching in the giant’s right ear and waving to them. They always waved back. The pilots marvelled at the giant’s speed and at the way he leaped across wide rivers and over huge houses.

But they hadn’t seen anything yet.

‘Be careful to hang on tight!’ the BFG said. ‘We is going fast as a fizzlecrump!’ The BFG changed into his famous top gear and all at once he began to fly forward as though there were springs in his legs and rockets in his toes. He went skimming over the earth like some magical hop-skip-and-jumper with his feet hardly ever touching the ground. As usual, Sophie had to crouch low in the crevice of his ear to save herself from being swept clean away.

The nine pilots in their helicopters suddenly realized they were being left behind. The giant was streaking ahead. They opened their throttles to full speed, and even then they were only just able to keep up.

In the leading machine, the Head of the Air Force was sitting beside the pilot. He had a world atlas on his knees and he kept staring first at the atlas, then at the ground below, trying to figure out where they were going. Frantically he turned the pages of the atlas. ‘Where the devil are we going?’ he cried.

‘I haven’t the foggiest idea,’ the pilot answered. ‘The Queen’s orders were to follow the giant and that’s exactly what I’m doing.’

The pilot was a young Air Force officer with a bushy moustache. He was very proud of his moustache. He was also quite fearless and he loved adventure. He thought this was a super adventure. ‘It’s fun going to new places,’ he said.

‘New places!’ shouted the Head of the Air Force. ‘What the blazes d’you mean new places?’

‘This place we’re flying over now isn’t in the atlas, is it?’ the pilot said, grinning.

‘You’re darn right it isn’t in the atlas!’ cried the Head of the Air Force. ‘We’ve flown clear off the last page!’

‘I expect that old giant knows where he’s going,’ the young pilot said.

‘He’s leading us to disaster!’ cried the Head of the Air Force. He was shaking with fear. In the seat behind him sat the Head of the Army, who was even more terrified.

‘You don’t mean to tell me we’ve gone right out of the atlas?’ he cried, leaning forward to look.

‘That’s exactly what I am telling you!’ cried the Air Force man. ‘Look for yourself. Here’s the very last map in the whole flaming atlas! We went off that over an hour ago!’ He turned the page. As in all atlases, there were two completely blank pages at the very end. ‘So now we must be somewhere here,’ he said, putting a finger on one of the blank pages.

‘Where’s here?’ cried the Head of the Army.

The young pilot was still grinning broadly. He said to them, ‘That’s why they always put two blank pages at the back of the atlas. They’re for new countries. You’re meant to fill them in yourself.’

The Head of the Air Force glanced down at the ground below. ‘Just look at this godforsaken desert!’ he cried. ‘All the trees are dead and all the rocks are blue!’

‘The giant has stopped,’ the young pilot said. ‘He’s waving us down.’

The pilots throttled back the engines and all nine helicopters landed safely on the great yellow wasteland. Then each of them lowered a ramp from its belly. Nine jeeps, one from each helicopter, were driven down the ramps. Each jeep contained six soldiers and a vast quantity of thick rope and heavy chains.

‘I don’t see any giants,’ the Head of the Army said.

‘The giants is all just out of sight over there,’ the BFG told him. ‘But if you is taking these sloshbuckling noisy bellypoppers any closer, all the giants is waking up at once and then pop goes the weasel.’

‘So you want us to proceed by jeep?’ the Head of the Army said.

‘Yes,’ the BFG said. ‘But you must all be very very hushy quiet. No roaring of motors. No shouting. No mucking about. No piggery-jokery.’

The BFG, with Sophie still in his ear, trotted forward and the jeeps followed close behind.

Suddenly the most dreadful rumbling noise was heard by everyone. The Head of the Army went pea-green in the face. ‘Those are guns!’ he cried. ‘There is a battle raging somewhere up ahead of us! Turn back, the lot of you! Let’s get out of here!’

‘Pigspiffle!’ the BFG said. ‘Those noises is not guns.’

‘Of course they’re guns!’ shouted the Head of the Army. ‘I am a military man and I know a gun when I hear one! Turn back!’

‘Those is just the giants snortling in their sleep,’ the BFG said. ‘I is a giant myself and I know a giant’s snortle when I is hearing one.’

‘Are you quite sure?’ the Army man said anxiously.

‘Positive,’ the BFG said.

‘Proceed cautiously,’ the Army man ordered.

They all moved on.

Then they saw them!

Even at a distance, they were enough to scare the daylights out of the soldiers. But when they got close and saw what the giants really looked like, they began to sweat with fear. Nine fearsome, ugly, half-naked, fifty-feet-long brutes lay sprawled over the ground in various grotesque attitudes of sleep, and the sound of their snoring was indeed like gunfire in a battle.

The BFG raised a hand. The jeeps all stopped. The soldiers got out.

‘What happens if one of them wakes up?’ whispered the Head of the Army, his knees knocking together from fear.

‘If any one of them is waking up, he will gobble you down before you can say knack jife,’ the BFG answered, grinning hugely. ‘Me is the only one what won’t be gobbled up because giants is never eating giants. Me and Sophie is the only safe ones because I is hiding her if that happens.’

The Head of the Army took several paces to the rear. So did the Head of the Air Force. They climbed rather quickly back into their jeep, ready to make a fast getaway if necessary. ‘Go forward, men!’ the Head of the Army said. ‘Go forward and do your duty bravely!’

The soldiers crept forward with their ropes and chains. All of them were trembling mightily. None dared speak a word.

The BFG, with Sophie now sitting on the palm of his hand, stood near by watching the operation.

To give the soldiers their due, they were extremely courageous. There were six well-trained efficient men working on each giant and within ten minutes eight out of the nine giants had been trussed up like chickens and were still snoring contentedly. The ninth, who happened to be the Fleshlumpeater, was causing trouble for the soldiers because he was lying with his right arm tucked underneath his enormous body. It was impossible to tie his wrists and arms together without first getting that arm out from underneath him.

Very very cautiously, the six soldiers who were working on the Fleshlumpeater began to pull at the huge arm, trying to release it. The Fleshlumpeater opened his tiny piggy black eyes.

‘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 vind-screen 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 Childchewer.

‘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.