There was no answer.
Mrs Salt bent further forward to get a closer look. She was now kneeling right on the edge of the hole with her head down and her enormous behind sticking up in the air like a giant mushroom. It was a dangerous position to be in. She needed only one tiny little push... one gentle nudge in the right place... and that is exactly what the squirrels gave her! Over she toppled, into the hole head first, screeching like a parrot.
'Good gracious me!' said Mr Salt, as he watched his fat wife go tumbling down the hole, 'what a lot of rubbish there's going to be today!' He saw her disappearing into the darkness. 'What's it like down there, Angina?' he called out. He leaned further forward.
The squirrels rushed up behind him...
'Help!' he shouted.
But he was already toppling forward, and down the chute he went, just as his wife had done before him - and his daughter.
'Oh dear!' cried Charlie, who was watching with the others through the door, 'what on earth's going to happen to them now?'
'I expect someone will catch them at the bottom of the chute,' said Mr Wonka.
'But what about the great fiery incinerator?' asked Charlie.
'They only light it every other day,' said Mr Wonka. 'Perhaps this is one of the days when they let it go out. You never know... they might be lucky...'
'Ssshh!' said Grandpa Joe. 'Listen! Here comes another song!'
From far away down the corridor came the beating of drums. Then the singing began.
'Veruca Salt!' sang the Oompa-Loompas.
' Veruca Salt, the little brute,
Has just gone down the rubbish chute
(And as we very rightly thought
That in a case like this we ought
To see the thing completely through,
We've polished off her parents, too).
Down goes Veruca! Down the drain!
And here, perhaps, we should explain
That she will meet, as she descends,
A rather different set of friends
To those that she has left behind -
These won't be nearly so refined.
A fish head, for example, cut
This morning from a halibut.
"Hello! Good morning! How d'you do?
How nice to meet you! How are you?"
And then a little further down