CHAPTER IX
SUE IN THE CELLAR
“Yes,” laughed Bunny Brown, as he steadied himself against his father’s legs and gazed off over the tumbling waves, “I guess this is the rolling ocean.”
“Do you like it?” asked Mr. Brown.
“Sure, I like it,” was the answer.
“Does it make you feel sick?” went on Bunny’s father.
“Sick? No,” answered the little boy.
“Well, don’t be afraid if you feel a little ill,” went on Mr. Brown. “Sometimes the rolling ocean makes people sick, but they soon get over it.”
“I’m not going to be sick,” declared Bunny.
“Maybe I am,” announced Sue hopefully. She had just come up on deck with her mother. “I feel sort of dizzy like.”
“I can’t say that I exactly like this rolling ocean,” remarked Mrs. Brown.
“Then you had better go below and lie down,” advised her husband. “Supper will soon be ready.”
“I don’t believe I’m going to care for any,” said Mrs. Brown in a low voice.
That night Sue’s mother was made a trifle ill by the heaving, rocking motion of the Beacon as the ship got farther and farther out on the rolling ocean. She did not want to eat anything, and the next day she was still sick.
Bunny and Sue, however, did not seem to mind the strange motion, and they braved it out with their father, who was not subject to seasickness. Toward the end of the day Mrs. Brown was feeling better. That is a way seasickness has. At first it makes you very ill indeed, and you think you are never going to get better. But it passes and you feel fine again.
“Well, Mr. Brown,” said Captain Ward, as he came into the dining cabin for the evening meal and saw the family at one of the tables, “have your folks found their sea legs yet?”
“Just about getting them on,” laughed Mr. Brown.
“That’s good. Well, things are going to be better from now on, I think. And we’ll soon be in very pleasant waters.”
“What does he mean about finding our sea legs?” whispered Sue to her mother. “I have the same legs I had, haven’t I?”
“Captain Ward means that you are over being seasick,” explained Mr. Brown. “The sailors say, when that happens, that a person has found his ‘sea legs’—that is, he can go about the heaving decks without feeling ill.”
“I feel fine!” cried Bunny Brown. “I’m going to fish to-morrow.”
“Well, don’t catch any more of my sailors’ hats!” laughed Captain Ward as he took his place at the table.
Bunny wondered for a moment how the captain knew about the accident with the string and the bent pin, but then he guessed that one of the crew told the others and so the story got around.
“You’ll be careful, will you, Bunny?” asked the captain, playfully shaking his finger at the little boy.
“Oh, yes, sir, I’ll be careful,” he promised.
Bunny asked his father for a real hook to fasten on the piece of cord, but Mr. Brown told the little fellow that it would be hard to catch fish on the simple cord.
“To get fish from a fast-moving steamer, Bunny,” said Mr. Brown, “you must have a very long line that will go away out beyond the propeller, and such a line must be very strong. Then, too, since it is pulled through the water very fast, there is not much chance for a fish to take the bait. Better wait until we anchor, and then it will be easier to fish.”
So Bunny, knowing his father’s advice was good, gave up the idea of trying to catch fish for the family dinner and found something else with which to amuse himself on the ship. There was plenty to do, and more to see, so he and Sue were not lonesome, though they could not run around as much nor roam as far as they could in the woods and fields at home.
“If Mr. Pott was here with us,” said Sue to Bunny that afternoon when they had finished playing a game of tag, “maybe he could find his ship with his son Harry on it and the treasure.”
“No, he couldn’t find it,” decided Bunny, after thinking it over.
“Why not?” Sue asked.
“Because the Mary Bell was sunk,” said Bunny. “It went down in the ocean. So how could Mr. Pott find it, even if he was here—and he isn’t here?”
“I know he isn’t here,” said Sue. “But he could be here if they would let him out of the hospital. Maybe there’s a little piece of his ship that didn’t sink, and he could find that.”
“Maybe,” admitted Bunny. “But even if there was a little piece of his schooner left, it wouldn’t be big enough for his son to be on it, nor the treasure.”
“Maybe not,” agreed Sue. “I wonder if anybody will take Mr. Pott some more flowers and apples, Bunny?”
“I guess maybe they will,” he said.
A little while after that, as Bunny was watching one of the sailors splice, or mend, a rope on deck, Sue thought she would go to the stateroom and get her doll.
“I guess my doll needs some sea air,” said the little girl to herself.
Mrs. Brown was lying down in the stateroom, half asleep, when Sue entered softly to get the doll.
“What are you going to do, my dear?” asked Mrs. Brown drowsily.
“I’m going up on deck with my doll,” answered the little girl.
“Is Bunny with you?”
“Yes, Mother, he’s up on deck. So is daddy.”
“All right. Be careful going up and down the stairs.”
“I will,” promised Sue.
Sue meant to be careful, but instead of going upstairs, or up one of the companionways, as stairs are usually called on a vessel, Sue started down.
Perhaps she was thinking too much about the sea air her doll was going to breathe, or perhaps she was thinking too much about poor Mr. Pott. At any rate, Sue went down instead of up. She went down and down and at last she found herself in a dim part of the ship where only a little electric light here and there gave an uncertain glow.
Then Sue realized that she had gone wrong. She looked about her, clutched her doll tightly under her arm, and exclaimed:
“Oh, I guess I’m down cellar!”
In a way, she was in the “cellar,” or hold, of the ship.
As Sue looked about her in the dimness she heard a noise. Then in the glow of one electric light she saw a black man coming toward her. The man was very big, bigger, Sue thought, than anybody she had ever seen.