CHAPTER XII
BUNNY IS LOCKED IN
Nothing causes more excitement on board a ship than the cry of “man overboard!” Of course, Sue did not say a man was overboard. She called out about some one named “Elizabeth.” As the little girl clung to her father she sobbed aloud and repeated over and over again:
“Elizabeth will be drowned! Elizabeth will be drowned!”
Mr. Brown did not know what to make of it. He knew that he and his two children were the only people standing near the deckhouse where they could watch the big waves. He knew there had been no little girl named Elizabeth near them. Yet Sue had cried out that Elizabeth had gone overboard.
“Did you see some little girl washed over the rail by the wave?” asked Mr. Brown. He thought perhaps some of the other passengers might have had a little girl named Elizabeth—though, if so, why he had not seen her playing with Sue he could not imagine—and that she had been standing near the rail and had been washed away.
Whether Sue did not hear her father’s question because of the roar of the storm or whether she was crying too hard to answer, does not much matter, for a moment later some sailors who were on deck and who heard the little girl’s sobbing cry shouted:
“Man overboard! Lower a boat! Man overboard!”
Of course there was not a man overboard. Sue had spoken of “Elizabeth.” But on a ship, no matter who falls into the water, whether a man, a woman, or a child, the cry of alarm is always the same: “Man overboard!”
Sailors know and understand that warning better than any other.
But before a boat could be lowered or even some of the cork life-rings tossed over the rail, another big wave came up and washed across the decks. On the crest of this wave something white fluttered.