There were many matters to be attended to at the Bobbsey home before the start could be made for Florida. Mr. Bobbsey had to leave some one in charge of his lumber business, and Mrs. Bobbsey had to plan for shutting up the house while the family were away. Sam and Dinah would go on a vacation while the others were in Florida, they said, and the pet animals, Snap and Snoop, would be taken care of by kind neighbors.
“What are you doing, Freddie?” his mother asked him one day, when she heard him and Flossie hurrying about in the playroom, while Mrs. Bobbsey was sorting over clothes to take on the trip.
“Oh, we’re getting out some things we want to take,” the little boy answered. “Our playthings, you know.”
“Can I take two of my dolls?” Flossie asked.
“I think one will be enough,” her mother said. “We can’t carry much baggage, and if we go out on the deep blue sea in a motor boat we shall have very little room for any toys. Take only one doll, Flossie, and let that be a small one.”
“All right,” Flossie answered.
Mrs. Bobbsey paid little attention to the small twins for a while as she and Nan were busy packing. Bert had gone down to the lumberyard office on an errand for his father. Pretty soon there arose a cry in the playroom.
“Mother, make Freddie stop!” exclaimed Flossie.
“What are you doing, Freddie?” his mother called.
“I’m not doing anything,” he answered, as he often did when Flossie and he were having some little trouble.
“He is too doing something!” Flossie went on. “He splashed a whole lot of water on my doll.”
“Well, it’s a rubber doll and water won’t hurt,” Freddie answered. “Anyhow I didn’t mean to.”
“There! He’s doing it again!” cried Flossie. “Make him stop, Mother!”
“Freddie, what are you doing?” demanded Mrs. Bobbsey. “Nan,” she went on in a lower voice, “you go and peep in. Perhaps Flossie is just too fussy.”
Before Nan could reach the playroom, which was down the hall from the room where Mrs. Bobbsey was sorting over the clothes in a large closet, Flossie cried again:
“There! Now you got me all over wet!”
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, laying aside a pile of garments. “I suppose I’ll have to go and see what they are doing!”
Before she could reach the playroom, however, Nan came back along the hall. She was laughing, but trying to keep quiet about it, so Flossie and Freddie would not hear her.
“What is it?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey. “What are they doing?”
“Freddie is playing with his toy fire engine,” Nan said. “And he must have squirted some water on Flossie, for she is wet.”
“Much?”
“No, only a little.”
“Well, he mustn’t do it,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “I guess they are so excited about going to Florida that they really don’t know what they are doing.”
Mrs. Bobbsey peered into the room where the two smaller twins had gone to play. Flossie was trying different dresses on a small rubber doll she had picked out to take with her. On the other side of the room was Freddie with his toy fire engine. It was one that could be wound up, and it had a small pump and a little hose that spurted out real water when a tank on the engine was filled. Freddie was very fond of playing fireman.
“There, he’s doing it again!” cried Flossie, just as her mother came in. “He’s getting me all wet! Mother, make him stop!”
Mrs. Bobbsey was just in time to see Freddie start his toy fire engine, and a little spray of water did shower over his twin sister.
“Freddie, stop it!” cried his mother. “You know you mustn’t do that!”
“I can’t help it,” Freddie said.
“Nonsense! You can’t help it? Of course you can help squirting water on your sister!”
“He can so!” pouted Flossie.
“No, Mother! I can’t, honest,” said Freddie. “The hose of my fire engine leaks, and that makes the water squirt out on Flossie. I didn’t mean to do it. I’m playing there’s a big fire and I have to put it out. And the hose busts—just like it does at real fires—and everybody gets all wet. I didn’t do it on purpose!”
“Oh, I thought you did,” said Flossie. “Well, if it’s just make believe I don’t mind. You can splash me some more, Freddie.”
“Oh, no he mustn’t!” said Mrs. Bobbsey, trying not to laugh, though she wanted to very much. “It’s all right to make believe you are putting out a fire, Freddie boy, but, after all, the water is really wet and Flossie is damp enough now. If you want to play you must fix your leaky hose.”
“All right, Mother, I will,” promised the little boy.
One corner of the room was his own special place to play with the toy fire engine. A piece of oil cloth had been spread down so water would not harm anything, and here Freddie had many good times.
There really was a hole in the little rubber hose of his engine, and the water did come out where it was not supposed to. That was what made Flossie get wet, but it was not much.
“And, anyhow, it didn’t hurt her rubber doll,” said Freddie.
“No, she likes it,” Flossie said. “And I like it too, Freddie, if it’s only make believe fun.”
“Well, don’t do it any more,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “You’ll soon have water enough all around you, when you sail on the blue sea, and that ought to satisfy you. Mend the hole in your fire engine hose, Freddie dear.”
“All right, Mother,” he answered. “Anyhow, I guess I’ll play something else now. Toot! Toot! The fire’s out!” he called, and Mrs. Bobbsey was glad of it.
Freddie put away his engine, which he and Flossie had to do with all their toys when they were done playing with them, and then ran out to find Snap, the dog with which he wanted to have a race up and down the yard, throwing sticks for his pet to bring back to him.
Flossie took her rubber doll and went over to Helen Porter’s house, while Nan and Mrs. Bobbsey went back to the big closet to sort over the clothes, some of which would be taken on the Florida trip with them.
“I’m going to take my fire engine with me,” Freddie said, when he had come in after having had fun with Snap.
“Do you mean on the ship?” asked Nan.
“Yes; I’m going to take my little engine on the ship with me. But first I’m going to have the hose mended.”
“You won’t need a fire engine on a ship,” said Mrs. Bobbsey.
“Oh, I might,” answered Freddie. “Sometimes ships get on fire, and you’ve got to put the fire out. I’ll take it all right.”
“Well, we’ll hope our ship doesn’t catch fire,” remarked his mother.
When Mr. Bobbsey came home to supper that evening, and heard what had happened, he said there would be no room for Freddie’s toy engine on the ship.
THEY WENT ON BOARD THE SHIP.
“The trip we are going to take isn’t like going to Meadow Brook, or to Uncle William’s seashore home,” said the father of the Bobbsey twins. “We can’t take all the trunks and bags we would like to, for we shall have to stay in two small cabins, or staterooms, on the ship. And perhaps we shall have even less room when we get on the boat with Cousin Jasper—if we go on a boat. So we can’t take fire engines and things like that.”
“But s‘posin’ the ship gets on fire?” asked Freddie.
“We hope it won’t,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “But, if it does, there are pumps and engines already on board. They won’t need yours, Freddie boy, though it is very nice of you to think of taking it.”
“Can’t I take any toys?”
“I think you won’t really need them,” his father said. “Once we get out on the ocean there will be so much to see that you will have enough to do without playing with the toys you use here at home. Leave everything here, I say. If you want toys we can get them in Florida, and perhaps such different ones that you will like them even better than your old ones.”
“Could I take my little rubber doll?” asked Flossie.
“Yes, I think you might do that,” her father said, with a smile at the little girl. “You can squeeze your rubber doll up smaller, if she takes up too much room.”
So it was arranged that way. At first Freddie felt sad about leaving his toy fire engine at home, but his father told him perhaps he might catch a fish at sea, and then Freddie began saving all the string he could find out of which to make a fish line.
Finally the last trunk and valise had been packed. The railroad and steamship tickets had been bought, Sam and Dinah got ready to go and stay with friends, Snap and Snoop were sent away—not without a rather tearful parting on the part of Flossie and Freddie—and then the Bobbsey family was ready to start for Florida.
They were to go to New York by train, and as nothing much happened during that part of the journey I will skip over it. I might say, though, that Freddie took from his pocket a ball of string, which he was going to use for his fishing, and the string fell into the aisle of the car.
Then the conductor came along and his feet got tangled in the cord, dragging the ball boundingly after him halfway down the coach.
“Hello! What’s this?” the conductor cried, in surprise.
“Oh, that’s my fish line!” answered Freddie.
“Well, you’ve caught something before you reached the sea,” said the ticket-taker as he untangled the string from his feet, and all the other passengers laughed.
After a pleasant ride the Bobbsey twins reached New York, and, after spending a night in a hotel, and going to a moving picture show, they went on board the ship the next morning. The ship was to take them down the coast to Florida, where Cousin Jasper was ill in a hospital, though Mr. Bobbsey had had a letter, just before leaving home, in which Mr. Dent said he was feeling much better.
“All aboard! All aboard!” called an officer on the ship, when the Bobbseys had left their baggage in the stateroom where they were to stay during the trip. “All ashore that’s going ashore!”
“That means every one must get off who isn’t going to Florida,” said Bert, who had been on a ship once before with his father.
Bells jingled, whistles blew, people hurried up and down the gangplank, or bridge from the dock to the boat, and at last the ship began to move.
Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey were waving good-bye to friends on the pier, and Nan and Bert were looking at the big buildings of New York, when Mrs. Bobbsey turned, putting away the handkerchief she had been waving, and asked:
“Where are Flossie and Freddie?”
“Aren’t they here?” asked Mr. Bobbsey quickly.
“No,” answered his wife. “Oh, where are they?”
The two little Bobbsey twins were not in sight.
There was so much going on with the sailing of the ship—so many passengers hurrying to and fro, calling and waving good-bye, so much noise made by the jingling bells and the tooting whistles—that Mrs. Bobbsey could hardly hear her own voice as she called:
“Flossie! Freddie! Where are you?”
But the little twins did not answer, nor could they be seen on deck near Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey where they stood with Bert and Nan.
“They were here a minute ago,” said Bert. “I saw Flossie holding up her rubber doll to show her the Woolworth Building.” This, as you know, is the highest building in New York, if not in the world.
“But where is Flossie now?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey, and there was a worried look on her face.
“Maybe she went downstairs,” said Mr. Bobbsey.
“And where is Freddie?” asked his mother.
“I saw him getting his ball of string ready to go fishing,” laughed Bert. “I told him to put it away until we got out on the ocean. Then I saw a fat man lose his hat and run after it and I didn’t watch Freddie any more.”
“Oh, don’t laugh, Bert! Where can those children be?” cried Mrs. Bobbsey. “I told them not to go away, but to stay on deck near us, and now they’ve disappeared!”
“Did they go ashore?” asked Nan. “Oh, Mother! if they did we’ll have to stop the ship and go back after them!”
“They didn’t go ashore,” said Bert. “They couldn’t get there, because the gangplank was pulled in while Freddie was standing here by me, getting out his ball of string.”
“Then they’re all right,” Mr. Bobbsey said. “They are on board, and we’ll soon find them. I’ll ask some of the officers or the crew. The twins can’t be lost.”
“Oh, but if they have fallen overboard!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey.
“Don’t worry,” said her husband. “We’d have heard of it before this if anything like that had happened. They’re all right.”
And so it proved. A little later Flossie and Freddie came walking along the deck hand in hand. Flossie was carrying her rubber doll, and Freddie had his ball of string, all ready to begin fishing as soon as the ship should get out of New York Harbor.
“Where have you been?” cried Mrs. Bobbsey. “You children have given us such a fright! Where were you?”
“We went to look at a poodle dog,” explained Flossie.
“A lady had him in a basket,” added Freddie.
“What do you mean—a poodle dog in a basket?” asked Bert.
Then Freddie explained, while Mr. Bobbsey went to tell the steward, or one of the officers of the ship, that the lost children had come safely back.
The smaller twins had seen one of the passengers with a pet dog in a blue silk-lined basket, and they had followed her around the deck to the other side of the ship, away from their parents, to get a better look at the poodle. It was a pretty and friendly little animal, and the children had been allowed to pat it. So they forgot what their mother had said to them about not going away.
“Well, don’t do it again,” warned Mr. Bobbsey, and Flossie and Freddie said they would not.
By this time the big ship was well on her way down New York Bay toward the Statue of Liberty, which the children looked at with wondering eyes. They took their last view of the tall buildings which cluster in the lower end of the island of Manhattan, and then they felt that they were really well started on their voyage.
“Oh, I hope we have lots of fun in Florida!” said Nan. “I’ve always wanted to go there, always!”
“So have I,” Bert said. “But maybe we won’t stay in Florida long.”
“Why not?” his sister asked.
“Because didn’t father say Cousin Jasper wanted us to take a trip with him?”
“So he did,” replied Nan. “I wonder where he is going.”
“That’s part of the strange news he’s going to tell,” said Bert. “Anyhow we’ll have a good time.”
“And maybe we’ll get shipwrecked!” exclaimed Freddie, who, with his little sister Flossie, was listening to what the older Bobbsey twins were saying.
“Shipwrecked!” cried Bert. “You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
“Maybe. If we could live on an island like Robinson Crusoe,” Freddie answered, “that would be lots of fun.”
“Yes, but if we had to live on an island without anything to eat and no water to drink, that wouldn’t be so much fun,” said Nan.
“If it was an island there’d be a lot of water all around it—that’s what an island is,” Flossie said. “I learned it in geogogafy at school. An island has water all around it, my geogogafy says.”
“Yes, but at sea the water is salty and you can’t drink it,” Bert said. “I don’t want to be shipwrecked.”
“Well, maybe I don’t want to, either,” said Freddie, after thinking about it a little. “Anyhow we’ll have some fun!”
“Yes,” agreed Bert, “I guess I will.”
“Now I’m going to fish,” remarked Freddie.
“You won’t catch anything,” Bert said.
“Why not?” Freddie wanted to know, as he again took the ball of string from his pocket.
“’Cause we’re not out at sea yet,” Bert replied. “This is only the bay, and fish don’t come up here on account of too many ships that scare ’em away. You’ll have to wait until we get out where the water is colored blue.”
“Do fish like blue water?” asked Flossie.
“I guess so,” answered Bert. “Anyhow, I don’t s’pose you can catch any fish here, Freddie.”
However, the little Bobbsey twin boy had his own idea about that. He had been planning to catch some fish ever since he had heard about the trip to Florida. Freddie had been to the seashore several times, on visits to Ocean Cliff, where Uncle William Minturn lived. But this was the first time the small chap had been on a big ship. He knew that fish were caught in the sea, for he had seen the men come in with boatloads of them at Ocean Cliff. And he had caught fish himself at Blueberry Island. But that, he remembered, was not in the sea.
“Come on, Flossie,” said Freddie, when Bert and Nan had walked away down the deck. “Come on, I’m going to do it.”
“Do what, Freddie?”
“I’m going to catch some fish. I’ve got my string all untangled now.”
“You haven’t any fishhook,” observed the little girl; “and you can’t catch any fish lessen you have a hook.”
“I can make one out of a pin, and I’ve got a pin,” answered Freddie. “I dassen’t ever have a real hook, anyhow, all alone by myself, till I get bigger. But I can catch a fish on a pin-hook.”
He did have a pin fastened to his coat, and this pin he now bent into the shape of a hook and stuck it through a knot in the end of the long, dangling string.
“Where are you going to fish?” asked Flossie. She and her brother were on the deck not far from the two staterooms of the Bobbsey family. Mrs. Bobbsey was sitting in a steamer chair near the door of her room, where she could watch the children.
“I’m going to fish right here,” Freddie said, pointing to the rail at the side of the ship. “I’m going to throw my line over here, with the hook on it, just like I fish off the bridge at home.”
“And I’ll watch you,” said Flossie.
Over the railing Freddie tossed his bent-pin hook and line. He thought it would reach down to the water, but he did not know how large the boat was on which he was sailing to Florida.
His little ball of string unwound as the end of it dropped over the rail, but the hook did not reach the water. Even if it had, Freddie could have caught nothing. In the first place a bent pin is not the right kind of hook, and, in the second place, Freddie had no bait on the hook. Bait is something that covers a hook and makes the fish want to bite on it. Then they are caught. But Freddie did not think of this just now, and his hook had nothing on it. Neither did it reach down to the water, and Freddie didn’t know that.
But, as his string was dangling over the side of the ship there came a sudden tug on it, and the little boy pulled up as hard as he could.
“Oh, I’ve caught a fish! I’ve caught a fish!” he cried. “Flossie, look, I’ve caught a fish!”
Of course Flossie could not see what was on the end of her brother’s line, but it was something! She could easily tell that by the way Freddie was hauling in on the string.
“Oh, what have you got?” cried the little girl.
“I’ve got a big fish!” said Freddie. “I said I’d catch a fish, and I did!”
From somewhere down below came shouts and cries.
“What’s that?” asked Flossie.
“Them’s the people hollering ’cause I caught such a big fish,” answered Freddie. “Look, there it is!”
Something large and black appeared above the edge of the rail.
“Oh! Oh!” cried Flossie.
Mrs. Bobbsey, from where she was sitting in her chair, heard the cries and came running over to the children.
“What are you doing, Freddie?” she asked.
“Catching a fish!” he answered. “I got one and—-”
The black thing on the end of his line was pulled over the rail and flapped to the deck. Flossie and Freddie stared at it with wide-open eyes. Then Flossie said:
“Oh, what a funny fish!”
And so it was, for it wasn’t a fish at all, but a woman’s big black hat, with feathers on it. Freddie’s bent-pin hook had caught in the hat which was being worn by a woman standing near the rail on the deck below where the Bobbsey family had their rooms. And Freddie had pulled the hat right off the woman’s head.
“No wonder the lady yelled!” laughed Bert when he came to see what was happening to his smaller brother and sister. “You’re a great fisherman, Freddie.”
“Well, next time I’ll catch a real fish,” declared the little boy.
Bert carried the woman’s hat down to her, and said Freddie was sorry for having caught it in mistake for a fish. The woman laughed heartily and said no harm had been done.
“But I couldn’t imagine what was pulling my hat off my head,” she told her friends. “First I thought it was one of the seagulls.”
Freddie wound up his string, and said he would not fish any more until he could see where his hook went to, and his father told him he had better wait until they got to St. Augustine, where he could fish from the shore and see what he was catching.
From the time they came on board until it was the hour to eat, the Bobbsey twins looked about the ship, seeing something new and wonderful on every side. They hardly wanted to go to bed when night came, but their mother said they must, as they would be about two days on the water, and they would have plenty of time to see everything.
Bert, Freddie and their father had one stateroom and Mrs. Bobbsey and the two girls slept in the other, “next door,” as you might say.
The night passed quietly, the ship steaming along over the ocean, and down the coast to Florida. The next day the four children were up early to see everything there was to see.
They found the ship now well out to sea, and out of sight of land. They were really on the deep ocean at last, and they liked it very much. Bert and Nan found some older children with whom to play, and Flossie and Freddie wandered off by themselves, promising not to go too far from Mrs. Bobbsey, who was on deck in her easy chair, reading.
After a while Flossie came running back to her mother in great excitement.
“Oh, Mother! Oh, Mother!” gasped the little girl. “He’s gone!”
“Who’s gone?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey, dropping her book as she quickly stood up.
“Freddie’s gone! We were playing hide-and-go-seek, and he went down a big pipe, and now I can’t see him! He’s gone!”
Mrs. Bobbsey hardly knew what to do for a moment. She just stood and looked at Flossie as if she had not understood what the little girl had said. Then Freddie’s mother spoke.
“You say he went down a big pipe?” she asked.
“Yes, Mother,” answered Flossie. “We were playing hide-and-go-seek, and it was my turn to blind. I hollered ‘ready or not I’m coming!’ and when I opened my eyes to go to find Freddie, I saw him going down a big, round pipe.”
“What sort of pipe?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey, thinking her little boy might have crawled in some place on deck to hide, and that to Flossie it looked like a pipe.
“It was a pipe sticking up like a smokestack,” Flossie went on, “and it was painted red inside.”
“Oh, you mean a ventilator pipe!” cried Mrs. Bobbsey. “If Freddie crawled down in one of those he’ll have a dreadful fall! Flossie, call your father!”
Flossie did not exactly know what a ventilator pipe was, but I’ll tell you that it is a big iron thing, like a funnel, that lets fresh air from above down into the boiler room where the firemen have to stay to make steam to push the ship along. But, though Flossie did not quite know what a ventilator pipe was, she knew her mother was much frightened, or she would not have wanted Mr. Bobbsey to come.
Flossie saw her father about halfway down the deck, talking to some other men, and, running up to him, she cried:
“Freddie’s down in a want-you-later pipe!”
“A want-you-later pipe?” repeated Mr. Bobbsey. “What in the world do you mean, Flossie?”
“Well, that’s what mother said,” went on the little girl. “Me and Freddie were playing hide-and-go-seek, and he hid down in a pipe painted red, and mother said it was a want-you-later. And she wants you now!”
“A want-you-later pipe!” exclaimed one of the men. “Oh, she must mean a ventilator. It does sound like that to a little girl.”
“Yes, that’s it,” said Flossie. “And please come quick to mother, will you, Daddy?”
Mr. Bobbsey set off on a run toward his wife, and some of the other men followed, one of them taking hold of Flossie’s hand.
“Oh, Dick!” cried Mrs. Bobbsey as her husband reached her, “something dreadful has happened! Freddie is down a ventilator pipe, and I don’t know what to do!”
Neither did Mr. Bobbsey for a moment or two, and as the men came crowding around him, one of them bringing up Flossie, a cry was heard, coming from one of the red-painted pipes not far away. It was not a loud cry, sounding in fact, as if the person calling were down in a cellar.
“Come and get me out! Come and get me out!” the voice begged, and when Flossie heard it she said:
“That’s him! That’s Freddie now. Oh, he’s down in the pipe yet!”
“Which pipe?” asked Mr. Bobbsey.
Flossie pointed to a ventilator not far away. Mr. Bobbsey and the men ran toward it, and, as they reached it, they could hear, coming out of the big opening that was shaped somewhat like a funnel, a voice of a little boy, saying:
“Come and get me out! I’m stuck!”
Mr. Bobbsey put his head down inside the pipe and looked around. There he saw Freddie, doubled up into a little ball, trying to get himself loose. Flossie’s brother was, indeed, stuck in the pipe, which was smaller below than it was at the opening—too small, in fact, to let the little boy slip through. So he was in no danger of falling.
“Oh, Freddie! what made you get in there?” asked his father, as he reached in, and, after pulling and tugging a bit, managed to get him out. “What made you do it?”
“I was hiding away from Flossie,” answered the little fellow. “I crawled in the pipe, and then I waited for her to come and find me. She didn’t know where I was.”
“Yes, I did so know where you went,” declared Flossie. “I saw you crawl into the pipe, and I didn’t peek, either. I just opened my eyes and I saw you go into the pipe, and I was scared and I ran and told mother.”
“Well, if you didn’t peek it’s all right,” Freddie said. “It was a good place to hide. I waited and waited for you to come and find me and then I thought you were going to let me come on in home free, and I tried to get out. But I couldn’t—I was stuck.”
“I should say you were!” laughed Mr. Bobbsey. He could laugh now, and so could Mrs. Bobbsey, though, at first, they were very much frightened, thinking Freddie might have been hurt.
“Don’t crawl in there again, little fireman,” said one of the men with whom Mr. Bobbsey had been talking, and who knew the pet name of Flossie’s brother. “This pipe wasn’t big enough to let you fall through, but some of the ventilator pipes might be, and then you’d fall all the way through to the boiler room. Don’t hide in any more pipes on the steamer.”
“I won’t,” Freddie promised, for he had been frightened when he found that he was stuck in the pipe and couldn’t get out. “Come on, Flossie; it’s your turn to hide now,” he said.
“I don’t want to play hide-and-go-seek any more,” the little girl said. “I’d rather play with my doll.”
“If I had my fire engine I’d play fireman,” Freddie said, for he did not care much about a doll.
“How would you like to go down to the engine room with me, and see where you might have fallen if the ventilator pipe hadn’t been too small to let you through?” asked Mr. Bobbsey.
“I’d like it,” Freddie said. “I like engines.”
So his father took him away down into the hold, or lower part of the boat, and showed him where the firemen put coal on the fire. There Freddie saw ventilator pipes, like the one he had hid in, reaching from the boiler room up to the deck, so the firemen could breathe cool, fresh air. And there were also pipes like it in the engine room.
Freddie watched the shining wheels go spinning round and he heard the hiss of steam as it turned the big propeller at the back of the ship, and pushed the vessel through the waters of the deep blue sea.
“Now we’ll go up on deck,” said Mr. Bobbsey, when Freddie had seen all he cared to in the engine room. “It’s cooler there.”
Freddie and his father found several women talking to Mrs. Bobbsey, who was telling them what had happened to her little boy, and Bert and Nan were also listening.
“I wonder what Freddie will do next?” said Bert to his older sister. “First he catches a lady’s hat for a fish, and then he nearly gets lost down a big pipe.”
“I hope he doesn’t fall overboard,” returned Nan.
“So do I,” agreed Bert. “And when we get on a smaller ship, if we go on a voyage with Cousin Jasper, we’ll have to look after Flossie and Freddie, or they will surely fall into the water.”
“Are we really, truly going on a voyage with Cousin Jasper, do you think?” Nan asked.
“Well, I heard father and mother talking about it, and they seemed to think maybe we’d take a trip on the ocean,” went on Bert.
“I hope we do!” exclaimed Nan. “I just love the water!”
“So do I!” her brother said. “When I get big I’m going to have a ship of my own.”
“Will you take me for a sail?” asked Nan.
“Course I will!” Bert quickly promised.
The excitement caused by Freddie’s hiding in the ventilator pipe soon passed, and then the Bobbsey family and the other passengers on the ship enjoyed the fine sail. The weather was clear and the sea was not rough, so nearly every one was out on deck.
“I wonder if we’ll see any shipwrecks,” remarked Bert a little later, as the four Bobbsey twins were sitting in a shady place not far from Mrs. Bobbsey, who was reading her book. She had told the children to keep within her sight.
“A shipwreck would be nice to see if nobody got drowned,” observed Nan. “And maybe we could rescue some of the people!”
“When there’s a shipwreck,” said Freddie, who seemed to have been thinking about it, “they have to get in the little boats, like this one,” and he pointed to a lifeboat not far away.
“That’s an awful little boat to go on the big ocean in,” said Flossie.
“It’s safe, though,” Bert said. “It’s got things in it to make it float, even if it’s half full of water. It can’t sink any more than our raft could sink.”
“Our raft nearly did sink,” said Flossie.
“No, it only got stuck on a mud bank,” answered Bert. “I was the one that sank down in my bare feet,” and he laughed as he remembered that time.
“Well, anyhow, we had fun,” said Freddie.
“Oh, look!” suddenly cried Nan. “There’s a small boat now—out there on the ocean. Maybe there’s been a shipwreck, Bert!”
Bert and the other Bobbsey twins looked at the object to which Nan pointed. Not far from the steamer was a small boat with three or four men in it, and they seemed to be in some sort of trouble. They were beating the water with oars and poles, and something near the boat was lashing about, making the waves turn into foam.
“That isn’t a shipwreck!” cried Bert. “That’s a fisherman’s boat!”
“And something is after it!” said Nan. “Oh, Bert! maybe a whale is trying to sink the fisherman’s boat!”
By this time Mrs. Bobbsey and a number of other passengers were crowding to the rail, looking at the small boat. The men in it did, indeed, seem to be fighting off something in the water that was trying to damage their boat.
“It’s a big shark!” cried one of the steamship sailors. “The fishermen have caught a big shark and they’re trying to kill it before it sinks their boat. Say, it’s a great, big shark! Look at it lash the water into foam! Those men may be hurt!”
“A shark! A shark!” cried the passengers, and from all over the ship they came running to where they could see what was happening to the small boat.
When the Bobbsey twins first saw the small boat, and the fishermen in it trying to beat off the shark that was trying to get at them, the steamer was quite a little distance off. The big vessel, though, was headed toward the fishing boat and soon came close enough for the passengers to see plainly what was going on. That is, they could not see the shark very plainly, for it was mostly under water, but they could see a long, black shape, with big fins and a large tail, and the tail was lashing up and down, making foam on the waves.
“Hi!” cried Freddie in great excitement. “That’s better’n a shipwreck, isn’t it?”
“Almost as bad, I should say,” remarked Mr. Bobbsey, who, with his wife and other passengers, stood near the rail with the children watching the ocean fight.
“The captain ought to stop the ship and go to the rescue of those fishermen,” said the man who had told Freddie not to get in the ventilator pipe again. “I guess the shark is bigger than those men thought when they tried to kill it.”
“Is that what they are trying to do?” asked Bert.
“It looks so,” replied his father. “Sometimes the fishermen catch a shark in their nets, and they kill it then, as sharks tear the nets, or eat up the fish in them. But I guess this is a larger shark than usual.”
“And is it going to sink the boat?” Nan wanted to know.
“That I can’t say,” Mr. Bobbsey replied. “Perhaps the fishermen caught the shark on a big hook and line, and want to get it into the boat to bring it to shore. Or maybe the shark is tangled in their net and is trying to get loose. Perhaps it thinks the boat is a big whale, or other fish, and it wants to fight.”
“Whatever it is, those fishermen are having a hard time,” said another passenger; and this seemed to be so, for, just as soon as the steamer came close enough to the small boat, some of the men in it waved their hands and shouted. All they said could not be heard, because of the noise made by the steamer, but a man near Mrs. Bobbsey said he heard the fisherman cry:
“Come and help us!”
“The captain ought to go to their help,” said Flossie’s mother. “It must be terrible to have to fight a big shark in a small boat.”
“I guess we are going to rescue them,” observed Bert. “Hark! There goes the whistle! And that bell means stop the engines!”
The blowing of a whistle and the ringing of a bell sounded even as he spoke, and the steamer began to move slowly.
Then a mate, or one of the captain’s helpers, came running along the deck with some sailors. They began to lower one of the lifeboats, and the Bobbsey twins and the other passengers watched them eagerly. Out on the sea, which, luckily, was not rough, the men in the small boat were still fighting the shark.
“Are you going to help them?” asked Mr. Bobbsey of the mate who got into the boat with the sailors.
“Yes, I guess they are in trouble with a big shark, or maybe there are two of them. We’ll help them kill the big fish.”
When the mate and the sailors were in the boat it was let down over the side of the ship to the water by long ropes. Then the sailors rowed toward the fishermen.
Anxiously the Bobbsey twins and the others watched to see what would happen. Over the waves went the rescuing boat, and when it got near enough the men in it, with long, sharp poles, with axes and with guns, began to help fight the shark. The waters foamed and bubbled, and the men in the boats shouted:
“There goes one!” came a call after a while, and, for a moment, something long and black seemed to stick up into the air.
“It’s a shark!” cried Bert. “I can tell by his pointed nose. Lots of sharks have long, pointed noses, and that’s one!”
“Yes, I guess it is,” his father said.
“Then there must be two sharks,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, “for the men are still fighting something in the water.”
“Yes, they certainly are,” her husband replied. “The fishermen must have caught one shark, and its mate came to help in the fight. Look, the fishing boat nearly went over that time!”
That really came near happening. One of the big fish, after it found that its mate had been killed, seemed to get desperate. It rushed at the fishermen’s boat and struck it with its head, sending it far over on one side.
Then the men from the steamer’s boat fired some bullets from a gun into the second shark and killed it so that it sank. The waters grew quiet and the boats were no longer in danger.
The mate and the sailors from the steamer stayed near the fishing boat a little while longer, the men talking among themselves, and then the sailors rowed back, and were hoisted upon deck in their craft.
“Tell us what happened!” cried Mr. Bobbsey.
“It was sharks,” answered the mate. "The fishermen came out here to lift their lobster pots, which had drifted a long way from shore. While they were doing this one of them baited a big hook with a piece of pork and threw it overboard, for he had seen some sharks about. A shark bit on the hook and then rammed the boat.
“Then another shark came along and both of them fought the fishermen, who might have been drowned if we had not helped them kill the sharks. But they are all right now—the fishermen, I mean—for the sharks are dead and on the bottom of the ocean by this time.”
“Were they big sharks?” asked Bert.
“Quite large,” the mate answered. “One was almost as long as the fishing boat, and they were both very ugly. It isn’t often that such big sharks come up this far north, but I suppose they were hungry and that made them bold.”
“I’m glad I wasn’t in that boat,” said Nan.
“Indeed we all may well be glad,” Mrs. Bobbsey said.
“Will those fishermen have to row all the way to shore?” asked Freddie, looking across the waters. No land was in sight.
“No, they don’t have to row,” said the mate of the steamer. “They have a little gasolene engine in their boat, and the land is not so far away as it seems, only five or six miles. They can get in all right if no more sharks come after them, and I don’t believe any will.”
The fishermen waved their hands to the passengers on the steamer, and the Bobbsey twins and the others waved back.
“Good-bye!” shouted the children, as loudly as they could. Whether the others heard them or not was not certain, but they continued to wave their hands.
It took some time to hoist the lifeboat up in its place on the steamer, and in this Freddie and the others were quite interested.
“I’d like to own a boat like that myself,” said the little boy.
“What would you do with it?” questioned Flossie.
“Oh, I’d have a whole lot of fun,” was the ready answer.
“Would you give me a ride?”
“Of course I would!”
At last the lifeboat was put in its proper place, and then the steamer started off again.
The Bobbsey twins had plenty to talk about now, and so did the other passengers. It was not often they witnessed a rescue of that kind at sea, and Bert, who, like Freddie, had been hoping he might sight a shipwreck—that is, he wished it if no one would be drowned—was quite satisfied with the excitement of the sharks.
“Only I wish they could have brought one over closer, so we could have seen how big it was,” he said.
“I don’t,” remarked Nan. “I don’t like sharks.”
“Not even when they’re dead and can’t hurt you?” asked Bert.
“Not even any time,” Nan said. “I don’t like sharks.”
“Neither do I,” said Flossie.
“Well, I’d like to see one if daddy would take hold of my hand,” put in Freddie. “Then I wouldn’t be afraid.”
“Maybe there’ll be sharks when we get to Cousin Jasper’s house,” said Flossie.
“His house isn’t in the ocean, and sharks is only in the ocean,” declared Freddie.
“Well, maybe his house is near the ocean,” went on the little “fat fairy.”
“Cousin Jasper is in the hospital,” Nan remarked; “and I guess they don’t have any sharks there.”
“Maybe they have alligators,” added Bert with a smile.
“Really?” asked Nan.
“Well, you know Florida is where they have lots of alligators,” went on her older brother. “And we’re going to Florida.”
“I don’t like alligators any more than I like sharks,” Nan said, with a little shivery sort of shake. “I just like dogs and cats and chickens.”
“And goats,” said Flossie. “You like goats, don’t you, Nan?”
“Yes, I like the kind of a goat we had when we went to Blueberry Island,” agreed Nan. “But look! What are the sailors doing?”
She pointed to some of the men from the ship, who were going about the decks, picking up chairs and lashing fast, with ropes, things that might roll or slide about.
“Maybe we’re almost there, and we’re getting ready to land,” said Freddie.
“No, we’ve got another night to stay on the ship,” Bert said. “I’m going to ask one of the men.” And he did, inquiring what the reason was for picking up the chairs and tying fast so many things.
“The captain thinks we’re going to run into a storm,” answered the sailor, “and we’re getting ready for it.”
“Will it be very bad?” asked Nan, who did not like storms.
“Well, it’s likely to be a hard one, little Miss,” the sailor said. “We will soon be off Cape Hatteras, and the storms there are fierce sometimes. So we’re making everything snug to get ready for the blow. But don’t be afraid. This is a strong ship.”
However, as the Bobbsey twins saw the sailors making fast everything, and lashing loose awnings and ropes, and as they saw the sky beginning to get dark, though it was not yet night, they were all a little frightened.