FLOSSIE WAS TRYING TO PULL AWAY.
Nan and Bert, who, with Freddie, were splashing out in the water a little way from where Flossie sat on the beach, heard the cries of the little girl and hurried to her. But Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey were the first to reach Flossie.
“What is it?” asked Mr. Bobbsey.
“What’s the matter?” asked Flossie’s mother.
“Oh, he’s pulling me! He’s pulling me!” answered the little girl.
And, surely enough, something behind her, which Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey could not see, did appear to have hold of the little short skirt of the bathing suit Flossie wore.
“Can it be a little dog playing with her?” asked Mr. Bobbsey.
“We’d hear him bark if it was,” his wife answered. “And I don’t believe there are any dogs on this island.”
Flossie was trying to pull away from whatever had hold of her, and the little girl was having a hard time of it. Her bare feet dug in the white sand, and she leaned forward, just as she would have done if a dog had had hold of her short skirt from behind.
Mr. Bobbsey, running fast, caught Flossie in his arms, and when he saw what was behind her he gave a loud shout.
“It’s a turtle!” he cried. “A great, big turtle, and it took a bite out of your dress, Flossie girl!”
“Will it bite me?” asked the little “fairy.”
“Not now!” the twins’ father answered with a laugh. “There, I’ll get you loose from him!”
Mr. Bobbsey gave a hard pull on Flossie’s bathing suit skirt. There was a sound of tearing cloth and then Mr. Bobbsey could lift his little girl high in his arms. As he did so Mrs. Bobbsey, who hurried up just then, saw on the beach behind Flossie a great, big turtle, and in its mouth, which looked something like that of a parrot, was a piece of the bathing skirt. Mr. Bobbsey had torn it loose.
“Oh, if he had bitten you instead of your dress!” cried Mrs. Bobbsey. “Flossie, are you hurt?”
“No, she isn’t hurt a bit,” her father said. “But of course it is a good thing that the turtle did not bite her. How did it happen, Flossie?”
“Well, I was resting here, after I tried to swim,” answered the little girl, for she was learning to swim; “and, all of a sudden, I wanted to get up, for Freddie called me to come and see how he could float. But I couldn’t get up. This mud turkle had hold of me.”
“It isn’t a mud turtle,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “But it certainly had hold of you.”
Just then Cousin Jasper came along and saw the turtle crawling back toward the water.
“Ha! I’ll stop that and we’ll have some turtle soup for dinner to-morrow!” he cried. “Not so fast, Mr. Turtle!”
With that Cousin Jasper turned the turtle over on its back, and there the big creature lay, moving its flippers, which it had instead of legs. They were broad and flat.
“Won’t it bite you?” asked Freddie, who, with Nan and Bert, had waded ashore.
“Not if I don’t put my hand too near its mouth,” Cousin Jasper answered. “If I did that it would take hold of me, as it took hold of Flossie’s dress. But I’m not going to let it. Did the turtle scare you, little fat fairy?”
“I—I guess it did,” she answered. “Anyhow I hollered.”
“You certainly did,” her father said with a laugh. “At least, you hallooed.”
“What are you going to do with it?” asked Bert, as he watched the big turtle, which still had hold of the piece torn from Flossie’s bathing skirt.
“We’ll eat him—that is part of him, made into soup,” answered Cousin Jasper.
“Can’t he get away?” Nan inquired.
“Not when he’s on his back,” said Mr. Dent. “That’s how the people down here catch turtles. They go out on the beach, and when any of the crawling creatures are seen, they are turned over as soon as possible. There they stay until they can be picked up and put into a boat to be taken to the mainland and sold.”
“Can they bite hard?” asked Bert.
“Pretty hard, yes. See what a hold it has of Flossie’s dress. I had to tear it to get it loose,” returned Mr. Bobbsey. And the turtle still held in his mouth, which was like the beak of a parrot, a piece of the cloth.
“He looks funny,” put in Nan. “But I feel sorry for him.”
Bert and Freddie laughed at Nan for this.
“The turtle must have been crawling along the beach, to go back into the ocean for a swim,” said Cousin Jasper, “and it ran right into Flossie as she sat on the sand. Then, not knowing just what sort of danger was near, the turtle bit on the first thing it saw, which was Flossie’s dress.”
“And it held on awful tight,” said the little girl. “It was just like, sometimes, when our dog Snap takes hold of a stick and pulls it away from you. At first I thought it was Snap.”
“Snap couldn’t swim away down here from Lakeport!” said Freddie, with some scorn.
“I know he couldn’t!” said his little sister. “But only at first I thought it was Snap. Are there any more turkles here, Cousin Jasper?”
“Well, yes, a great many, I suppose. They come up out of the sea now and then to lie on the sand in the sun. But I don’t believe any more of them will take hold of you. Just look around before you sit down, and you’ll be all right.”
“My, he’s a big one!” cried Bert, as he looked at the wiggling creature turned on its back.
“Oh, that isn’t half the size of some,” said Cousin Jasper. “They often get to weigh many hundreds of pounds. But this one is large enough to make plenty of soup for us. I’ll tell Captain Crane to send the men over to get it.”
A little later the turtle was taken on board the Swallow in the boat, and the cook got it ready for soup.
“And I think he’ll make very good soup, indeed,” said the cook.
“He certainly ought to make good soup,” answered Captain Crane. “It will be nice and fresh, if nothing else.”
While Mr. Chase and his men were mending the broken engine, and the cook was making turtle soup, the Bobbsey twins, with their father and mother and Cousin Jasper, stayed on Palm Island. They walked along the shore, under the shady trees, and watched the blue waves break up on the white sand. Overhead, birds wheeled and flew about, sometimes dashing down into the water with a splash to catch a fish or get something else to eat.
“It’s getting near dinner time,” said Mr. Bobbsey, after a while. “I guess you children had better get ready to go back to the boat for a meal. You must be hungry.”
“I am,” answered Nan. “It always makes me hungry to go in swimming.”
“I’m hungry anyhow, even if I don’t go in swimming,” Bert said.
“Perhaps we could have a little lunch here, on Palm Island, without going back to the Swallow,” Mrs. Bobbsey suggested.
“Oh, that would be fun!” cried Nan.
“Daddy and I’ll go to the ship in the boat and get the things to eat,” proposed Bert. “Then we’ll bring ’em here and have a picnic.”
“Yes, we might do that,” Mr. Bobbsey agreed. “It will save work for the cook, who must be busy with that turtle. We’ll go and get the things for an island picnic.”
“This is almost like the time we were on Blueberry Island,” said Nan, when her father and brother had rowed back to the Swallow.
“Only there isn’t any cave,” Freddie said.
“Maybe there is,” returned Nan. “We haven’t looked around yet. Maybe we might find a cave here; mightn’t we, Mother?”
“Oh, yes, you might. But don’t go looking for one. I don’t want you to get lost here. We must all stay together.”
In a little while Bert and Mr. Bobbsey came back with baskets filled with good things to eat. They were spread out on a cloth on the clean sand, not far from where the waves broke on the beach, and then, under the waving palms, the picnic was held, Captain Crane and Cousin Jasper having a share in it. On the Swallow the men still worked to mend the broken engine.
“How long shall we be here?” Mr. Bobbsey asked.
“About two days more,” answered Captain Crane. “It will take longer than we at first thought to fix the break.”
“Oh, I’m sorry about that!” exclaimed Cousin Jasper. “I wanted to get to the other island as soon as we could, and save Jack. It must be very lonesome for him there, and perhaps he is hurt, or has become ill. I wish we could get to him.”
“We’ll go there as soon as we can,” promised Captain Crane. “I am as anxious to get that poor boy as you are, Mr. Dent. At the same time I hope he has, before this, been taken off the island by some other boat that may have seen him waving to them.”
“I hope so, too,” said Mr. Dent. “Still I would feel better if we were at the other island and had Jack safe with us.”
They all felt sorry for the poor boy, and wondered what he was doing just then.
“I hope he has something as good to eat as we have.” Nan spoke with a sigh of satisfaction.
“Indeed, this is a very nice meal, for a picnic,” said her mother. “We ought to be very thankful to Cousin Jasper for taking us on such a nice voyage.”
“I am glad you like it,” returned Mr. Dent. "All the while I was in the hospital, as soon as I was able to think, my thoughts were with this poor boy.
"I tried to get the hospital people to send a boat to rescue Jack; but they said he could not be on the island, or the sailors who brought me off would have seen him. Then they thought I was out of my head with illness, and paid little attention to me.
“Then I thought of you, Dick, and I wrote to you. I knew you liked traveling about, and especially when it was to help some one.”
“Indeed I do,” said the father of the Bobbsey twins. “And if all goes well we’ll soon rescue Jack!”
After the picnic lunch the Bobbseys and their friends sat in the shade of the palms and talked over what had so far happened on the voyage. Flossie and Freddie wandered down the beach, and the little girl was showing her brother where she sat when the turtle grabbed her dress.
“Let’s dig a hole in the sand,” Freddie said, a little later.
“We haven’t any shovels,” Flossie answered.
“We can take shells,” said Freddie.
Soon the two little twins were having fun in the sand of the beach. They had not been digging very long when Freddie gave a shout.
“Oh, I hope nothing more has happened!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, starting up.
“What is it, Freddie?” called Mr. Bobbsey.
“Look at the funny nest we found!” answered the little boy. “It’s a funny nest in the sand, and it’s got a lot of chicken’s eggs in it! Come and look!”
“What is the child saying?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey of her husband, for she did not hear all that Freddie said.
“He’s calling about having found a hen’s nest,” Mr. Bobbsey answered, “but he must be mistaken. There can’t be any chickens on this island.”
“Maybe there are,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “Perhaps, after all, some one lives here, on the other side where we haven’t been. And they may keep chickens.”
“Oh, no,” answered her husband.
“I hardly think so,” said Cousin Jasper. “But we’ll go to look at what Freddie has found.”
Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey, with Cousin Jasper, followed by Bert and Nan, hurried down the beach to Flossie and Freddie, standing beside a hole they had dug in the sand. The children were looking down into it.
“I busted one egg with my clam-shell shovel,” Freddie was saying, “but there’s a lot left.”
“They were all covered with sand,” added Flossie. “And we dug ’em up! Didn’t we, Freddie? We dug up the chickie’s nest!”
“But we didn’t see any chickens,” said the little boy.
“And for a very good reason,” stated Cousin Jasper with a laugh, as he looked down into the little sand pit. “Those are the eggs of a turtle. Perhaps the very turtle that had hold of your dress, Flossie.”
“Do turtles lay eggs?” asked Freddie in surprise.
“Indeed they do,” said Cousin Jasper.
“O-o-oh!” gasped Flossie.
“And the turtle’s eggs are good to eat, too. They are not quite as nice as the eggs of a hen, but lots of people, especially those who live on some of these islands, like them very much,” went on Mr. Dent.
“Does a turkle lay its eggs in a nest like a hen?” Flossie questioned. “What made them all be covered up?”
“Well,” answered Cousin Jasper, as they all looked at the eggs in the sand, “a turtle lays eggs like a hen, but she cannot hover over them, and hatch them, as a hen can, because a turtle has no warm feathers. You know it takes warmth and heat to make an egg hatch. And, as a turtle isn’t warm enough to do that, she lays her eggs in the warm sand, and covers them up. The heat of the sun, and the warm sand soon hatch the little turtles out of the eggs.”
“Would turtles come out of these eggs?” asked Nan.
“Really, truly?” added Flossie.
“Just as surely as little chickens come out of hen’s eggs,” answered Cousin Jasper. “But they must be kept warm.”
“Then we’d better cover ’em up again!” exclaimed Freddie. “We found the turtle’s eggs when we were digging in the sand—Flossie and me. And I didn’t know they were there and I busted one of the eggs. First I thought they were white stones, but when I busted one, and the white and yellow came out, I found they were eggs.”
“And the shells aren’t hard,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, as she leaned over the hole and touched the queer eggs in the sand-nest. “The shells are like the shell of a soft egg a hen sometimes lays.”
“Except that the shells, or rather, skins, of these eggs are thicker than those of a chicken,” explained Cousin Jasper. “These egg-skins are like a piece of leather. If they were hard, like the eggs of a hen, perhaps the little turtles could not break their way out, as a turtle, though it can give a hard bite, has no pointed beak to pick a hole in the shell.”
“Well, you have made quite a discovery,” said Mr. Bobbsey to the little twins. “Better cover the eggs up now, so the little turtles in them will not get cold and die.”
“Are there turtles in them now?” asked Freddie.
“No, these eggs must be newly laid,” Cousin Jasper said. “But if they are kept warm long enough the little turtles will come to life in them and break their way out. Would you like some to eat?” he asked Mr. Bobbsey.
The father of the twins shook his head.
“I don’t believe I care for any,” he answered. “I’m not very fond of eggs, anyhow, and I’ll wait until we can find some that feathered chickens lay.”
“Well, I’ll take a few for myself, and I know Captain Crane likes them,” said Cousin Jasper. “The rest we will leave to be hatched by the warm sun.”
Mr. Dent took some of the eggs out in his hat, and then Flossie and Freddie covered the rest with sand again.
“We’ll dig in another place, so we won’t burst any more turtle’s eggs,” said the little boy, as he walked down the beach with Flossie, each one carrying a clam shell.
It was so nice on Palm Island that Mrs. Bobbsey said they would have supper there, before going back on board the Swallow to spend the night. So more things to eat were brought off in the small boat, and, as the sun was sinking down in the west, turning the blue waves of the sea to a golden color, the travelers sat on the beach and ate.
“Maybe we could build a little campfire here and stay for a while after dark,” suggested Bert, who felt that he was getting to be quite a large boy now.
“Oh, no indeed! We won’t stay here after dark!” cried Mrs. Bobbsey. “Snakes and turtles and all sorts of things might crawl up out of the ocean and walk all around us on the beach. As soon as it gets dark we’ll go back to the ship.”
“Yes, I think that would be best,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “When we get to the other island, where we hope to find Jack, it will be time enough to camp out.”
“Shall we stay there long?” Bert wanted to know.
“It all depends on how we find that poor boy,” answered Cousin Jasper. “If he is all right, and doesn’t mind staying a little longer, we can make a camp on the island. There are some tents on board and we can live in them while on shore.”
“Oh, that’ll be almost as much fun as Blueberry Island!” cried Nan.
“It’ll be nicer!” Bert said. “Blueberry Island was right near shore, but this island is away out in the middle of the ocean, isn’t it, Cousin Jasper?”
“Well, not exactly in the middle of the ocean,” was the answer. “But I think, perhaps, there is more water around it than was around your Blueberry Island.”
After supper, which, like their lunch, was eaten on the beach under the palm trees, the Bobbsey twins and the others went back to the Swallow. The men working for the engineer, Mr. Chase, had not yet gotten the engine fixed, and it would take perhaps two more days, they said, as the break was worse than they had at first thought.
“Well, we’ll have to stay here, that’s all,” said Cousin Jasper. “I did hope we would hurry to the rescue of Jack, but it seems we can’t. Anyhow it would not do to go on with a broken engine. We might run into a storm at sea and then we would be wrecked. So we will wait until everything is all right before we go sailing over the sea again.”
“It seems like being back home,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, as she sat down later in a deck chair.
“Didn’t you like it on the island?” asked Bert.
“Yes. But after it got dark some big turtle might have come up out of the sea and pulled on you, as one did on Flossie,” and Bert’s mother smiled.
“Well, no mud turkles can get on our ship, can they?” asked the little “fat fairy.”
“No turtles can get on board here, unless they climb up the anchor cable,” said Captain Crane with a laugh. “Now we’ll get all snug for the night, so if it comes on to blow, or storm, we shall be all right.”
It was a little too early to go to bed, so the Bobbsey twins and the grown folks sat on deck in the moonlight. The men of the crew, and the cook, sat on the other end of the deck, and also talked. It was very warm, for the travelers were now in southern waters, nearer the equator than they had ever been before. Even with very thin clothes on the air felt hot, though, of course, just as at Lakeport or Meadow Brook, it was cooler in the evening than during the day.
“It’s almost too hot to go down into the staterooms,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “I wonder if we couldn’t sleep out on deck?”
“Yes, we could have the mattresses brought up,” said Cousin Jasper. “I have often slept on the deck of my own boat.”
“Some of the crew are going to, they tell me,” Captain Crane said.
“Then we will,” Mr. Bobbsey decided. “It will be more like camping out. And it certainly is very hot, even with the sun down.”
“We may have a thunderstorm in the night,” the captain said, “but we can sleep out until then.”
So the mattresses and bed covers were brought up from the stateroom.
“This is a new kind of camping out, isn’t it?” remarked Flossie, as she viewed the bringing up of the bed things with great interest.
“It’s a good deal like moving, I think,” answered Freddie. “Only, of course, we haven’t got any moving van to load the things on to.”
“What would you do with a moving van out here on a boat?” demanded Bert.
“I could put it on another boat—one of those flat ones, like they have down at New York, where the horses and wagons walk right on,” insisted Freddie, thinking of a ferryboat.
“Well, we haven’t any such boats around here, so we’d better not have any moving vans either,” remarked Mr. Bobbsey, with a laugh.
“I don’t want to move anywhere, anyway,” said Flossie. “I’m too tired to do it. I’m going to stay right where I am.”
“Oh, so’m I going to stay!” cried Freddie quickly. “Come on—let us make our beds right over here,” and he caught up one of the smaller mattresses. He struggled to cross the deck with it, but got his feet tangled up in one end, and pitched headlong.
“Look out there, Freddie Bobbsey, or you’ll go overboard!” cried his brother, as he rushed to the little boy’s assistance.
“If I went overboard, could I float on the mattress?” questioned Freddie, as he scrambled to his feet.
“I don’t think so,” answered his father. “And, anyway, I wouldn’t try it.”
Presently the mattresses and bedcovers were distributed to everyone’s satisfaction, and then all lay down to rest.
For a time, Flossie and Freddie, as well as Nan and Bert, tossed about, but at last they fell asleep. It was very quiet on the sea, the only noise being the lapping of the waves against the sides of the Swallow.
Mrs. Bobbsey was just falling into a doze when there was a sudden splash in the water, and a loud cry.
“Man overboard! Man overboard!” some one yelled.
“Oh, if it should be one of the children!” cried Mrs. Bobbsey. For, no matter whether it is a boy, girl or woman that falls off a ship at sea, a sailor will always call: “‘Man’ overboard!” I suppose that is easier and quicker to say.
“Who is it? What’s the matter?” cried Mr. Bobbsey, awakened suddenly from his sleep.
There was more splashing in the water alongside the boat, and then Captain Crane turned on a lamp that made the deck and the water about very light.
“Jim Black fell overboard,” answered Mr. Chase, the engineer. “He got up to draw a bucket of water to soak his head in so he could cool off, and he reached over too far.”
“Is he all right?” asked Captain Crane.
“Yes, I’m all right,” was the answer of the sailor himself. “I feel cooler now.”
At this the older people laughed.
He had fallen in with the clothes on, in which he had been sleeping, but as soon as he struck the water he swam up, made his way to the side of the ship, grabbed a rope that was hanging over the side, and pulled himself to the deck.
“My! what a fright I had!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. “I thought one of the children had rolled into the ocean!”
“That couldn’t happen,” said Captain Crane. “There is a strong railing all about the deck.”
“Well, it’s cooler now,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “I think I’ll take the twins and go to our regular beds.”
She did this and was glad of it, for a little later a thunderstorm broke, and it began to rain, driving every one below. The rest of the night the storm kept up, and though the thunder was loud and the lightning very bright, the rain did one good service—it made the next day cooler.
“Well, shall we go ashore again?” asked Mr. Bobbsey, when breakfast had been eaten aboard the Swallow.
“Oh, yes!” cried the twins. “We want to go swimming again!”
“And I’m going to watch out for ‘mud turkles,’” said Flossie, as she called them.
Once more they went to the beach of Palm Island, and they had dinner on the shady shore. In the afternoon, leaving the engineer and his helpers on board to work away at the motor, the whole party of travelers, Captain Crane, Cousin Jasper and all, started on a walk to the other side of the island. This took them out of sight of the boat.
They found many pretty things at which to look—flowers, a spring of sweet water where they got a drink, little caves and dells, and a place where hundreds of birds made their nests on a rocky cliff. The birds wheeled and soared about, making loud noises as they saw the Bobbsey twins and the others near their nests.
It was along in the afternoon when they went back to the beach where they had eaten, and where they were to have supper. Bert, who had run on ahead around a curve in the woodland path, came to a stop on the beach.
“Why—why!” he cried. “She’s gone! The Swallow is gone!” and he pointed to the little bay.
The motor boat was no longer at anchor there!
“What’s that you say?” asked Captain Crane. “The Swallow gone?”
“She isn’t there,” Bert answered. “But maybe that isn’t the bay where she was anchored. Maybe we’re in the wrong place.”
“No, this is the place all right,” said Cousin Jasper. “But our boat is gone!”
There was no doubt of it. The little bay that had held the fine, big motor boat was indeed empty. The small boat was drawn up on the sand, but that was all.
“Where can it have gone?” asked Mr. Bobbsey. “Did you know the men we left on it were going away, Captain Crane?”
“No, indeed, I did not! I can’t believe that Mr. Chase and the others have gone, and yet the boat isn’t here.”
Captain Crane was worried. So were Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey and Cousin Jasper. Even Flossie and Freddie, young as they were, could tell that.
“Maybe a big mud turkle came and pulled the ship away,” said Flossie.
“Or a whale,” added Freddie. Any big fish or swimming animal, the little twins thought, might do such a thing as that.
“No, nothing like that happened,” said Captain Crane. “And yet the Swallow is gone. The men could not have thought a storm was coming up, and gone out to sea to be safe. There is no sign of a storm, and they never would have gone away, unless something happened, without blowing a whistle to tell us.”
“Maybe,” said Bert, “they got word from Jack, on the other island, to come and get him right away, and they couldn’t wait for us.”
Captain Crane shook his head.
“That couldn’t happen,” he said, “unless another boat brought word from poor Jack. And if there had been another boat we’d have seen her.”
“Unless both boats went away together,” suggested Mr. Bobbsey.
“No, I think nothing like that happened,” said the captain.
“But what can we do?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey. “Shall we have to stay on this island until the Swallow comes back?”
“She may not be gone very long,” Mr. Bobbsey said.
“We can camp out here until she does come back,” observed Nan. “We have lots left to eat.”
“There won’t be much after supper,” Bert said. “But we can catch some turtles, or find some more eggs, and get fish, and live that way.”
“I’ll catch a fish,” promised Freddie.
“I don’t understand this,” said Captain Crane, with another shake of his head. “I must go out and have a look around.”
“How are you going?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.
“In the small boat. I’ll row out into the bay for a little way,” said the seaman. “It may be that the Swallow is around some point of the island, just out of sight. I’ll have a look before we get ready to camp here all night.”
“I’ll come with you,” offered Cousin Jasper.
“All right, and we’ll leave Mr. Bobbsey here with his family,” the captain said. “Don’t be afraid,” he added to the children and Mrs. Bobbsey. “Even if the worst has happened, and the Swallow, by some mistake, has gone away without us, we can stay here for a while. And many ships pass this island, so we shall be taken off pretty soon.”
“We can be like Robinson Crusoe, really,” Bert said.
“That isn’t as much fun as it seems when you’re reading the book,” put in his mother. “But we will make the best of it.”
“I think it’d be fun,” murmured Freddie.
Captain Crane and Cousin Jasper got in the small boat and rowed out into the bay. Anxiously the others watched them, hoping they would soon come back with word that the Swallow had been blown just around “the corner,” as Nan said, meaning around a sort of rocky point of the island, beyond which they could not look.
“I do hope we shall not have to camp out here all night,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, with a little shiver, as she looked around.
“Are you afraid of the mud turkles?” asked Flossie.
“No, dear. But I don’t want to sleep on the beach without a bed or any covers for you children.”
“Perhaps we shall not have to,” said Mr. Bobbsey.
They waited a while longer, watching the small boat in which were Captain Crane and Cousin Jasper, until it was rowed out of sight. Bert did not seem to mind much the prospect of having to stay all night on Palm Island.
Nan, however, like her mother and her father, was a bit worried. But Flossie and Freddie were having a good time digging in the sand with clam shells for shovels. The little twins did not worry about much of anything at any time, unless it was getting something to eat or having a good time.
“I know what I’m going to build!” cried Freddie.
“What?” demanded his twin quickly.
“I’m going to build a great big sand castle.”
“You can’t do it, Freddie Bobbsey. The sand won’t stick together into a castle.”
“I’m going to use wet sand,” asserted Freddie. “That will stick together.”
“You look out, Freddie Bobbsey, or you’ll fall in!” cried his sister, when Freddie had gone further down near the water where the sand was wet.
“Freddie! Freddie! keep away from that water!” cried Mrs. Bobbsey. “I don’t want you to get all wet and dirty.”
“But I want to build a sand castle.”
“Well, you come up here where the sand is dry and build it,” continued Mrs. Bobbsey.
“All right. In a minute,” answered Freddie.
Mr. Bobbsey was straining his eyes, looking out toward the point of rock, around which the rowboat had gone, and his wife was standing beside him, gazing in the same direction, when Bert, who looked the other way, cried:
“There she comes now! There’s the Swallow!”
And, surely enough, there she came back, as if nothing had happened.
Mr. Bobbsey waved his hat and some one on the motor boat blew a whistle. And then, as if knowing that something was wrong, the boat was steered closer to shore than it had come before, and Mr. Chase cried:
“What’s the matter? Did anything happen?”
“We thought something had happened to you!” shouted Mr. Bobbsey. “Captain Crane and Mr. Dent have gone off in the small boat to look for you.”
“That’s too bad,” said Mr. Chase. “While you were away, on the other side of the island, we finished work on the engine. We wanted to try it, so we pulled up anchor and started off. We thought we would go around to the side of the island where you were, but something went wrong, after we were out a little while, and we had to anchor in another bay, out of sight. But as soon as we could we came back, and when I saw you waving your hat I feared something might have happened.”
“No, nothing happened. And we are all right,” said Mr. Bobbsey, “except that we were afraid we’d have to stay on the island all night. And Captain Crane has gone to look for you.”
“I’m sorry about that,” returned the engineer. “It would have been all right, except that the motor didn’t work as I wanted it to. But everything is fine now, and we can start for the other island as soon as we like. I’ll blow the whistle and Captain Crane will know that we are back at our old place.”
Several loud toots of the air whistle were given, and, a little later, from around the point came the small boat with the captain and Cousin Jasper in it. They had rowed for some distance, but had not seen the Swallow, and they were beginning to get more worried, wondering what had become of her.
“However, everything is all right now,” said Captain Crane, when they were all once more on board the motor boat, it having been decided to have supper there instead of on Palm Island.
“Aren’t we coming back here any more?” asked Freddie.
“Not right away,” his father told him. “We stopped here only because we had to. Now we are going on again and try to find Jack Nelson.”
“We have been longer getting there than I hoped we’d be,” said Cousin Jasper, “but it could not be helped. I guess Jack will be glad to see us when we do arrive.”
The things they had taken to Palm Island, when they had their meals under the trees, had been brought back on the Swallow. The motor boat was now ready to set forth again, and soon it was chug-chugging out of the quiet bay.
“And we won’t stop again until we get to where Jack is,” said Mr. Dent.
“Not unless we have to,” said Captain Crane.
The Swallow appeared to go a little faster, now that the engine was fixed. The boat slipped through the blue sea, and, as the sun sank down, a golden ball of fire it seemed, the cook got the supper ready.
The Bobbseys had thought they might get to eat on the beach, but they were just as glad to be moving along again.
“And I hope nothing more happens,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “Freddie, don’t try to catch any more fish, or anything like that. There is no telling what might come of it.”
“I won’t,” promised the little fellow. “But if I had my fire engine here Flossie and I could have some fun.”
On and on sailed the Swallow. Every one was safely in bed, except one man who was steering and another who looked after the motor, when Mrs. Bobbsey, who was not a heavy sleeper, awakened her husband. It was about midnight.
“Dick!” she exclaimed in a loud whisper, “I smell smoke! Do you?”
Mr. Bobbsey sniffed the air. Then he jumped out of his berth.
“Yes, I smell smoke!” he cried. “And I see a blaze! Wake up, everybody!” he cried, “The boat is on fire!”
Perhaps Freddie Bobbsey had been dreaming about a fire. At any rate he must have been thinking about it, for, no sooner did Mr. Bobbsey call, after his wife spoke to him, than Freddie, hardly awake, cried:
“Where’s my fire engine? Where’s my fire engine? I can put out the fire!”
Mr. Bobbsey hurried to the berths where the children were sleeping.
That is, they had been sleeping, but the call of their father, and the shouting of Freddie, awakened them. Flossie, Nan and Bert sat up, rubbing their eyes, though hardly understanding what it was all about.
“What’s the matter?” cried Bert.
“The boat is on fire!” his mother answered. “Slip on a few clothes, take your life preserver, end get out on deck.”
When the Bobbseys first came aboard the Swallow they were shown how to put on a life preserver, which is a jacket of canvas filled with cork. Cork is light, much lighter than wood, and it will not only float well in water, but, if a piece is large enough, as in life preservers, it will keep a person who wears it, or who clings to it, up out of the sea so they will not drown.
“Get your life preservers!” cried Mr. Bobbsey; then, when he saw that his wife had one, and that the children were reaching under their berths for theirs, he took his.
The smoke was getting thicker in the staterooms, and the yells and shouts of Captain Crane, Cousin Jasper and the crew could be heard.
Up on deck rushed the Bobbseys. There they found the electric lights glowing, and they saw more smoke. Cousin Jasper and Captain Crane had a hose and were pointing it toward what seemed to be a hole in the back part of the boat.
“Oh, see!” shouted Flossie.
“Is the fire engine working?” Freddie demanded, as he saw them. “Can I help put the fire out?”
“No, little fireman!” said Captain Crane with a laugh, and when Mrs. Bobbsey heard this she felt better, for she thought that there was not much danger, or the captain would not have been so jolly. “We have the fire almost out now,” the captain went on. “Don’t be worried, and don’t any of you jump overboard,” he said as he saw Mrs. Bobbsey, with the twins, standing rather close to the rail.
“No, we won’t do that,” she said. “But I was getting ready to jump into a boat.”
“I guess you won’t have to do that,” said Cousin Jasper.
“Is the Swallow on fire?” asked Mr. Bobbsey.
“It was,” his cousin answered. “But we have put it out now. There is a good pump on board, and we pumped water on the blaze as soon as we saw it.”
From the hold, which was a place where canned food and other things could be stored, smoke was still pouring, and now and then little tongues of fire shot up. It was this fire which Mr. Bobbsey had seen through the open door of his stateroom.
“Oh, maybe it’s going to be an awful big fire!” said Freddie. “Maybe it’ll burn the whole boat up!”
“Freddie, Freddie! Don’t say such dreadful things!” broke in his mother. “We don’t want this boat to burn up.”
“I see where it is,” said Flossie. “It’s down in that great big cellar-like place where they keep all those things to eat—those boxes of corn and beans and salmon and sardines and tomatoes, and all the things like that.”
“Yes. And the ’densed milk!” put in Freddie. “And ’spargus. And the jam! And all those nice sweet things, too!” he added mournfully.
“What shall we do if all our food is burnt up?” went on Flossie.
“We can’t live on the boat if we haven’t anything to eat,” asserted Freddie. “We’ll have to go on shore and get something.”
“You might catch another big fish,” suggested his twin.
“Would you let me have your doll?”
“No, I wouldn’t!” was the prompt response. “You can get lots of other things for bait, and you know it, Freddie Bobbsey!”
“How did the fire happen?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey of the captain, when she got the chance.
“One of the electric light wires broke and set fire to some oily rags,” answered Captain Crane. "Then some empty wooden boxes began to blaze. There was nothing in them—all the food having been taken out—but the wood made quite a fire and a lot of smoke.
“Mr. Chase, who was on deck steering, smelled the smoke and saw the little blaze down in a storeroom. He called me and I called Mr. Dent. We hoped we could get the fire out before you folks knew about it. But I guess we didn’t,” said the captain.
“I smelled smoke, and it woke me up,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “Then I called my husband and we all came on deck.”
“That was the right thing to do,” Captain Crane said. “And it was also good to put on the life preservers,” for even Flossie and Freddie had done this. “Always get ready for the worst,” the captain went on, “and then if you don’t have to take to the small boats so much the better. But the fire will soon be out.”
“Can I see the fire engine?” asked Freddie. “I haven’t seen a fire engine for a long while.” At his home he was always interested in this, but, luckily, Lakeport had few fires.
“It isn’t exactly a fire engine,” said Cousin Jasper to the little fellow. “It’s just a big pump that forms part of one of the motors. I guess you can see how it works, for the fire is so nearly out now that we won’t need much more water on it.”
So the Bobbseys took off their life preservers, which are not very comfortable things to wear, and stayed on deck, watching the flames die out and the smoke drift away. The Swallow had been slowed down while the captain and the others were fighting the fire.
“Everything is all right now,” said Cousin Jasper, and he took Freddie to the motor room to show him the pump, while Captain Crane still played the hose on the last dying embers.
The fire only burned up the oil-soaked rags and some empty boxes, not doing any damage to the motor boat, except a little scorching. The smoke made part of the Swallow black, but this could be painted over.
“And very lucky for us it was no worse,” said Mr. Bobbsey, when they were ready to go back to their staterooms.
Freddie stayed and watched the pump as long as they would let him. It could be fastened to one of the motors and it pumped water from the ocean itself on the blaze.
“It’s better than having a regular fire engine on land,” said Freddie, telling Flossie about it afterward, “’cause in the ocean you can take all the water you like and nobody minds it. When I grow up I’m going to be a fireman on the ocean, and have lots of water.”
“You’ll have to have a boat so you can go on the ocean,” said the little girl.
“Well, I like a boat, too,” went on Freddie. “You can run the boat, Flossie, and I’ll run the pump fire engine.”
“All right,” agreed little Flossie. “That’s what we’ll do.”
After making sure that the last spark was out, Captain Crane shut off the water. The Bobbseys went back to bed, but neither the father nor the mother of the twins slept well the rest of the night. They were too busy thinking what might have happened if the fire had not been seen in time and plenty of water sprayed on it to put it out.
“Though there would not have been much danger,” Captain Crane said at the breakfast table, where they all gathered the next morning. “We could all have gotten off in the two boats, and we could have rowed to some island. The sea was smooth.”
“Where would we get anything to eat?” asked Nan.
“Oh, we’d put that in the boats before we left the ship,” said the captain. “And we’d take water, too. But still I’m glad we didn’t have to do that.”
And the Bobbseys were glad, too.
Part of the day was spent in getting out of the storeroom the burned pieces of boxes. These were thrown overboard. Then one of the crew painted over the scorched places, and, by night, except for the smell of smoke and paint, one would hardly have known where the fire had been.
The weather was bright and sunny after leaving Palm Island, and the twins sat about the deck and looked across the deep, blue sea for a sight of the other island, where, it was hoped, the boy Jack would be found.
“I wonder what he’s doing now,” remarked Bert, as he and Nan were talking about the lost one, while Flossie and Freddie were listening to a story their mother was telling.
“Maybe he’s walking up and down the beach looking for us to come,” suggested Nan.
“How could he look for us when he doesn’t know we’re coming?” asked Bert.
“Well, maybe he hopes some boat will come for him,” went on Nan. “And he must know that Cousin Jasper wouldn’t go away and leave him all alone.”
“Yes, I guess that’s so,” agreed Bert. “It must be pretty lonesome, all by himself on an island.”
“But maybe somebody else is with him, or maybe he’s been taken away,” went on Nan. “Anyhow we’ll soon know.”
“How shall we?” asked Bert.
“’Cause Captain Crane said we’d be at the island to-morrow if we didn’t have a storm, or if nothing happened.”
On and on went the Swallow. When dinner time came there was served some of the turtle soup from the big crawler that had pulled on Flossie’s dress. There was also fish, but Freddie did not catch any more.
Cousin Jasper and Mr. Bobbsey fished off the side of the motor boat and caught some large ones, which the cook cleaned and got ready for the table.
“Going to sea is very nice,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “You don’t have to send to the store for anything to eat, and when you are hungry all you have to do is to drop your hook overboard and catch a fish.”
It was about noon of the next day when Bert, who was standing in the bow, or front part of the vessel, said to his father:
“I see something like a black speck out there,” and he pointed. “Maybe it’s another boat.”
Mr. Bobbsey looked and said:
“I think more likely that is an island. Perhaps it is the very one we are sailing for—the one where Cousin Jasper left Jack.”
He called to Captain Crane, who brought a powerful telescope, and through that the men looked at the speck Bert had first seen.
“It’s land all right,” said Captain Crane. In about an hour they were so near the island that its shape could easily be made out, even without a glass. Then Cousin Jasper said:
“That’s it all right. Now to go ashore and find that poor boy!”
On raced the Swallow, and soon she dropped anchor in a little bay like the one at Palm Island. In a small boat the Bobbseys and others were rowed to the shore.
“Oh, look at the orange trees!” cried Nan, as she saw some in a grove near the beach.
“Are they real oranges, Captain?” asked the younger girl twin.
“Yes. And it looks as though some one had an orange grove here at one time, not so very long ago, though it hasn’t been kept up.”
“Is this Orange Island?” asked Bert.
“Well, we can call it that,” said Cousin Jasper. “In fact it never had a name, as far as I know. We’ll call it Orange Island now.”
“That’s a good name for it, I think,” remarked Nan.
“And now to see if we can find Jack!” went on Nan’s twin.
“Let’s all holler!” suddenly said Freddie. “Let’s all holler as loud as we can!”
“What for?” asked Cousin Jasper, smiling at the little boy. “Why do you want to halloo, Freddie?”
“So maybe Jack can hear us, and he’ll know we’re here. Whenever me or Flossie gets lost we always holler; don’t we?” he asked his little sister.
“Yes,” she answered.
“And when Bert or Nan, or our father or mother is looking for us, even if we don’t know we’re lost, they always holler; don’t you, Bert?”
“Yes, and sometimes I have to ‘holler’ a lot before you answer,” said Nan’s brother.
“Well, perhaps it would be a good thing to call now,” agreed Mr. Bobbsey. “Shall we, Cousin Jasper?”
“Yes,” he answered. So the men, with the children to help them, began to shout.
“Jack! Jack! Where are you, Jack?”
The woods and the orange trees echoed the sound, but that was all.
Was the missing boy still on the island?