The BFG by Roald Dahl Page A

everywhere all the time even without the giants is guzzling them up. Human beans is killing each other much quicker than the giants is doing it.’
    ‘But they don’t eat each other,’ Sophie said.
    ‘Giants isn’t eating each other either,’ the BFG said. ‘Nor is giants killing each other. Giants is not very lovely, but they is not killing each other. Nor is crockadowndillies killing other crockadowndillies. Nor is pussy-cats killing pussycats.’
    ‘They kill mice,’ Sophie said.
    ‘Ah, but they is not killing their own kind,’ the BFG said. ‘Human beans is the only animals that is killing their own kind.’
    ‘Don’t poisonous snakes kill each other?’ Sophie asked. She was searching desperately for another creature that behaved as badly as the human.
    ‘Even poisnowse snakes is never killing each other,’ the BFG said. ‘Nor is the most fearsome creatures like tigers and rhinostossterisses. None of them is ever killing their own kind. Has you ever thought about that?’
    Sophie kept silent.
    ‘I is not understanding human beans at all,’ the BFG said. ‘You is a human bean and you is saying it is grizzling and horrigust for giants to be eating human beans. Right or left?’
    ‘Right,’ Sophie said.
    ‘But human beans is squishing each other all the time,’ the BFG said. ‘They is shootling guns and going up in aerioplanes to drop their bombs on each other’s heads every week. Human beans is always killing other human beans.’
    He was right. Of course he was right and Sophie knew it. She was beginning to wonder whether humans were actually any better than giants. ‘Even so,’ she said, defending her own race, ‘I think it’s rotten that those foul giants should go off every night to eat humans. Humans have never done them any harm.’
    ‘That is what the little piggy-wig is saying every day’ the BFG answered. ‘He is saying, “I has never done any harm to the human bean so why should he be eating me?” ’
    ‘Oh dear,’ Sophie said.
    ‘The human beans is making rules to suit themselves,’ the BFG went on. ‘But the rules they is making do not suit the little piggy-wiggies. Am I right or left?’
    ‘Right,’ Sophie said.
    ‘Giants is also making rules. Their rules is not suiting the human beans. Everybody is making his own rules to suit himself.’
    ‘But you don’t like it that those beastly giants are eating humans every night, do you?’ Sophie asked.
    ‘I do not,’ the BFG answered firmly. ‘One right is not making two lefts. Is you quite cosy down there in my pocket?’
    ‘I’m fine,’ Sophie said.
    Then suddenly, once again, the BFG went into that magical top gear of his. He began hurtling forward with phenomenal leaps. His speed was unbelievable. The landscape became blurred and again Sophie had to duck down out of the whistling gale to save her head from being blown off her shoulders. She crouched in the pocket and listened to the wind screaming past. It came knifing in through the tiny peep-hole in the pocket and whooshed around her like a hurricane.
    But this time the BFG didn’t stay in top gear long. It seemed as though he had had some barrier to cross, a vast mountain perhaps or an ocean or a great desert, but having crossed it, he once again slowed down to his normal gallop and Sophie was able to pop her head up and look out once more at the view.
    She noticed immediately that they were now in an altogether paler country. The sun had disappeared above a film of vapour. The air was becoming cooler every minute. The land was flat and treeless and there seemed to be no colour in it at all.
    Every minute, the mist became thicker. The air became colder still and everything became paler and paler until soon there was nothing but grey and white all around them. They were in a country of swirling mists and ghostly vapours. There was some sort of grass underfoot but it was not green. It was ashy grey. There was no sign of a living creature and no sound at all