An ancient spell, 140 tortoises, and a little bit of magic . . .

  Mr. Hoppy is in love with his neighbor, Mrs. Silver; but she is in love with someone else—Alfie, her pet tortoise. With all her attention focused on Alfie, Mrs. Silver doesn’t even know Mr. Hoppy is alive. And Mr. Hoppy is too shy to even ask Mrs. Silver over for tea. Then one day Mr. Hoppy comes up with a brilliant idea to get Mrs. Silver’s attention. If Mr. Hoppy’s plan works, Mrs. Silver will certainly fall in love with him. After all, everyone knows the way to a woman’s heart is through her tortoise.

  Puffin Books by Roald Dahl

  The BFG

  Boy: Tales of Childhood

  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

  Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

  Danny the Champion of the World

  Dirty Beasts

  The Enormous Crocodile

  Esio Trot

  Fantastic Mr. Fox

  George’s Marvelous Medicine

  The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me

  Going Solo

  James and the Giant Peach

  The Magic Finger

  Matilda

  The Minpins

  The Missing Golden Ticket and Other Splendiferous Secrets

  Revolting Rhymes

  The Twits

  The Vicar of Nibbleswicke

  The Witches

  The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

  to Clover and Luke

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2190, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1990

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1990

  Published in Puffin Books, 1992

  Reissued in Puffin Books, 1999

  This edition reissued in Puffin Books, 2009

  Text copyright © Roald Dahl, 1990

  Illustrations copyright © Quentin Blake, 1990

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PREVIOUS PUFFIN BOOKS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Dahl, Roald.

  Esio Trot / by Roald Dahl; illustrated by Quentin Blake.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Shy Mr. Hoppy devises a plan to win the heart of his true love by teaching her a spell to make her tortoise grow bigger.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-65302-9

  [1. Turtles—Fiction. 2. Size—Fiction. 3. Magic—Fiction.] I. Blake, Quentin, ill. II. Title. PZ7.D1515Es 1992 [Fic]—dc20 92-16931

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  Version_2

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  Esio Trot

  Author’s Note

  Some years ago, when my own children were small, we usually kept a tortoise or two in the garden. In those days, a pet tortoise was a common sight crawling about on the family lawn or in the backyard. You could buy them quite cheaply in any pet shop and they were probably the least troublesome of all childhood pets, and quite harmless.

  Tortoises used to be brought into England by the thousand, packed in crates, and they came mostly from North Africa. But not many years ago a law was passed that made it illegal to bring any tortoises into the country. This was not done to protect us. The little tortoise was not a danger to anybody. It was done purely out of kindness to the tortoise itself. You see, the traders who brought them in used to cram hundreds of them tightly into the packing-crates without food or water and in such horrible conditions that a great many of them always died on the sea journey over. So rather than allow this cruelty to go on, the Government stopped the whole business.

  The things you are going to read about in this story all happened in the days when anyone could go out and buy a nice little tortoise from a pet shop.

  ESIO TROT

  Mr Hoppy lived in a small flat high up in a tall concrete building. He lived alone. He had always been a lonely man and now that he was retired from work he was more lonely than ever.

  There were two loves in Mr Hoppy’s life. One was the flowers he grew on his balcony. They grew in pots and tubs and baskets, and in summer the little balcony became a riot of colour.

  Mr Hoppy’s second love was a secret he kept entirely to himself.

  The balcony immediately below Mr Hoppy’s jutted out a good bit further from the building than his own, so Mr Hoppy always had a fine view of what was going on down there. This balcony belonged to an attractive middle-aged lady called Mrs Silver. Mrs Silver was a widow who also lived alone. And although she didn’t know it, it was she who was the object of Mr Hoppy’s secret love. He had loved her from his balcony for many years, but he was a very shy man and he had never been able to bring himself to give her even the smallest hint of his love.

  Every morning, Mr Hoppy and Mrs Silver exchanged polite conversation, the one looking down from above, the other looking up, but that was as far as it ever went. The distance between their balconies might not have been more than a few yards, but to Mr Hoppy it seemed like a million miles. He longed to invite Mrs Silver up for a cup of tea and a biscuit, but every time he was about to form the words on his lips, his courage failed him. As I said, he was a very very shy man.

  Oh, if only, he kept telling himself, if only he could do something tremendous like saving her life or rescuing her from a gang of armed thugs, if only he could perform some great feat that would make him a hero in her eyes. If only…

  The trouble with Mrs Silver was that she gave all her love to somebody else, and that somebody was a small tortoise called Alfie. Every day, when Mr Hoppy looked over his balcony and saw Mrs Silver whispering endearments to Alfie and stroking his shell, he felt absurdly jealous. He wouldn’t even have minded becoming a tortoise himself if it meant Mrs Silver stroking his shell each morning and whispering endearments to him.

  Alfie had been with Mrs Silver for years and he lived on her balcony summer and winter. Planks had been placed around the sides of the balcony so that Alfie could walk about without toppling over the edge, and in one corner there was a little house into which Alfie would crawl every night to keep warm.

  When the colder weather came along in November, Mrs Silver would fill Alfie’s house with dry hay, and the tortoise would crawl in there and bury himself deep under the hay and go to sleep for months on end without food or water. This is called hibernating.

  In early spring, when Alfie felt the warmer weather through his shell, he would wake up and crawl very slowly out of his house onto the balcony. And Mrs Silver would clap her hands with joy and cry out, “Welcome back, my darling one! Oh, how I have missed you!”

  It was at times like these that Mr Hoppy wished more than ever that he could change places with Alfie and become a tortoise.

  Now we come to a certain bright morning in May when something happened that changed and indeed electrified Mr Hoppy’s life. He was leaning over his balcony rail watching Mrs Silver serving Alfie his breakfast.

  “Here’s the heart of the lettuce for you, my lovely,” she was saying. “And here’s a slice of fresh tomato and a piece of crispy celery.”

  “Good morning, Mrs Silver,” Mr Hoppy said. “Alfie’s looking well this morning.”

  “Isn’t he gorgeous!” Mrs Silver said, looking up and beaming at him.

  “Absolutely gorgeous,” Mr Hoppy said, not meaning it. And now, as he looked down at Mrs Silver’s smiling face gazing up into his own, he thought for the thousandth time how pretty she was, how sweet and gentle and full of kindness, and his heart ached with love.

  “I do so wish he would grow a little faster,” Mrs Silver was saying. “Every spring, when he wakes up from his winter sleep, I weigh him on the kitchen scales. And do you know that in all the eleven years I’ve had him he’s not gained more than three ounces! That’s almost nothing!”

  “What does he weigh now?” Mr Hoppy asked her.

  “Just thirteen ounces,” Mrs Silver answered. “About as much as a grapefruit.”

  “Yes, well, tortoises are very slow growers,” Mr Hoppy said s
olemnly. “But they can live for a hundred years.”

  “I know that,” Mrs Silver said. “But I do so wish he would grow just a little bit bigger. He’s such a tiny wee fellow.”

  “He seems just fine as he is,” Mr Hoppy said.

  “No, he’s not just fine!” Mrs Silver cried. “Try to think how miserable it must make him feel to be so titchy! Everyone wants to grow up.”

  “You really would love him to grow bigger, wouldn’t you?” Mr Hoppy said, and even as he said it his mind suddenly went click and an amazing idea came rushing into his head.

  “Of course I would!” Mrs Silver cried. “I’d give anything to make it happen! Why, I’ve seen pictures of giant tortoises that are so huge people can ride on their backs! If Alfie were to see those he’d turn green with envy!”

  Mr Hoppy’s mind was spinning like a fly-wheel. Here, surely, was his big chance! Grab it, he told himself. Grab it quick!

  “Mrs Silver,” he said. “I do actually happen to know how to make tortoises grow faster, if that’s really what you want.”

  “You do?” she cried. “Oh, please tell me! Am I feeding him the wrong things?”

  “I worked in North Africa once,” Mr Hoppy said. “That’s where all these tortoises in England come from, and a bedouin tribesman told me the secret.”

  “Tell me!” cried Mrs Silver. “I beg you to tell me, Mr Hoppy! I’ll be your slave for life.”

  When he heard the words your slave for life, a little shiver of excitement swept through Mr Hoppy. “Wait there,” he said. “I’ll have to go in and write something down for you.”

  In a couple of minutes Mr Hoppy was back on the balcony with a sheet of paper in his hand. “I’m going to lower it to you on a bit of string,” he said, “or it might blow away. Here it comes.”

  Mrs Silver caught the paper and held it up in front of her. This is what she read:

  ESIO TROT, ESIO TROT,

  TEG REGGIB REGGIB!

  EMOC NO, ESIO TROT,

  WORG PU, FFUP PU, TOOHS PU!

  GNIRPS PU, WOLB PU, LLEWS PU!

  EGROG! ELZZUG! FFUTS! PLUG!

  TUP NO TAF, ESIO TROT, TUP NO TAF!

  TEG NO, TEG NO! ELBBOG DOOF!

  “What does it mean?” she asked. “Is it another language?”

  “It’s tortoise language,” Mr Hoppy said. “Tortoises are very backward creatures. Therefore they can only understand words that are written backwards. That’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” Mrs Silver said, bewildered.

  “Esio trot is simply tortoise spelled backwards,” Mr Hoppy said. “Look at it.”

  “So it is,” Mrs Silver said.

  “The other words are spelled backwards, too,” Mr Hoppy said. “If you turn them round into human language, they simply say:

  TORTOISE, TORTOISE,

  GET BIGGER BIGGER!

  COME ON, TORTOISE,

  GROW UP, PUFF UP, SHOOT UP!

  SPRING UP, BLOW UP, SWELL UP!

  GORGE! GUZZLE! STUFF! GULP!

  PUT ON FAT, TORTOISE, PUT ON FAT!

  GET ON, GET ON! GOBBLE FOOD!”

  Mrs Silver examined the magic words on the paper more closely. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “How clever. But there’s an awful lot of poos in it. Are they something special?”

  “Poo is a very strong word in any language,” Mr Hoppy said, “especially with tortoises. Now what you have to do, Mrs Silver, is hold Alfie up to your face and whisper these words to him three times a day, morning, noon and night. Let me hear you practice them.”

  Very slowly and stumbling a little over the strange words, Mrs Silver read the whole message out loud in tortoise language.

  “Not bad,” Mr Hoppy said. “But try to get a little more expression into it when you say it to Alfie. If you do it properly I’ll bet you anything you like that in a few months’ time he’ll be twice as big as he is now.”

  “I’ll try it,” Mrs Silver said. “I’ll try anything. Of course I will. But I can’t believe it’ll work.”

  “You wait and see,” Mr Hoppy said, smiling at her.

  Back in his flat, Mr Hoppy was simply quivering all over with excitement. Your slave for life, he kept repeating to himself. What bliss!

  But there was a lot of work to be done before that happened.

  The only furniture in Mr Hoppy’s small living room was a table and two chairs. These he moved into his bedroom. Then he went out and bought a sheet of thick canvas and spread it over the entire living room floor to protect his carpet.

  Next, he got out the telephone book and wrote down the address of every pet shop in the city. There were fourteen of them altogether.

  It took him two days to visit each pet shop and choose his tortoises. He wanted a great many, at least one hundred, perhaps more. And he had to choose them very carefully.

  To you and me there is not much difference between one tortoise and another. They differ only in their size and in the colour of their shells. Alfie had a darkish shell, so Mr Hoppy chose only the darker-shelled tortoises for his great collection.

  Size, of course, was everything. Mr Hoppy chose all sorts of different sizes, some weighing only slightly more than Alfie’s thirteen ounces, others a great deal more, but he didn’t want any that weighed less.

  “Feed them cabbage leaves,” the pet shop owners told him. “That’s all they’ll need. And a bowl of water.”

  When he had finished, Mr Hoppy, in his enthusiasm, had bought no less than one hundred and forty tortoises and he carried them home in baskets, ten or fifteen at a time. He had to make a lot of trips and he was quite exhausted at the end of it all, but it was worth it. Boy, was it worth it! And what an amazing sight his living room was when they were all in there together! The floor was swarming with tortoises of different sizes, some walking slowly about and exploring, some munching cabbage leaves, others drinking water from a big shallow dish. They made just the faintest rustling sound as they moved over the canvas sheet, but that was all. Mr Hoppy had to pick his way carefully on his toes between this moving sea of brown shells whenever he walked across the room. But enough of that. He must get on with the job.

  Before he retired Mr Hoppy had been a mechanic in a bus-garage. And now he went back to his old place of work and asked his mates if he might use his old bench for an hour or two.

  What he had to do now was to make something that would reach down from his own balcony to Mrs Silver’s balcony and pick up a tortoise. This was not difficult for a mechanic like Mr Hoppy.

  First he made two metal claws or fingers, and these he attached to the end of a long metal tube. He ran two stiff wires down inside the tube and connected them to the metal claws in such a way that when you pulled the wires, the claws closed, and when you pushed them, the claws opened. The wires were joined to a handle at the other end of the tube. It was all very simple.

  Mr Hoppy was ready to begin.

  Mrs Silver had a part-time job. She worked from noon until five o’clock every weekday afternoon in a shop that sold newspapers and sweets. That made things a lot easier for Mr Hoppy.

  So on that first exciting afternoon, after he had made sure that Mrs Silver had gone to work, Mr Hoppy went out onto his balcony armed with his long metal pole. He called this his tortoise-catcher. He leaned over the balcony railings and lowered the pole down onto Mrs Silver’s balcony below. Alfie was basking in the pale sunlight over to one side.

  “Hello Alfie,” Mr Hoppy said. “You are about to go for a little ride.”

  He wiggled the tortoise-catcher till it was right above Alfie. He pushed the hand-lever so that the claws opened wide. Then he lowered the two claws neatly over Alfie’s shell and pulled the lever. The claws closed tightly over the shell like two fingers of a hand. He hauled Alfie up on to his own balcony. It was easy.

  Mr Hoppy weighed Alfie on his own kitchen scales just to make sure that Mrs Silver’s figure of thirteen ounces was correct. It was.