CHAPTER VIIITHE ROLLING OCEAN
Bunny and Sue were excited when they heard what their mother said about the ship, and they, too, thought it ought not to be allowed to start so soon. Mr. Brown looked at the steward and the man smiled.
“The ship isn’t going yet—not for several hours,” the steward said. “You will have plenty of time to get your luggage on board.”
“It feels as if it were going,” remarked Bunny.
“It’s—now—jiggily like,” Sue said.
“They’re trying the engines,” explained the steward. “The ship is still fast in the dock, but the engineer wants to make sure everything is all right, so he has started the machinery.”
“Oh,” said Bunny Brown.
“Oh,” said sister Sue.
Then Bunny looked across the stateroom toward a round opening in the side and said:
“We aren’t moving. I can tell by looking out of the window.”
“Yes, that’s a good way to make sure—look from a porthole,” said the steward.
“What’s a porthole?” asked Sue.
“That, which Bunny called a window,” explained her father. “On a ship many things have different names from those on shore, though they may be the same.”
“Well, if we aren’t going off without our trunks it will be all right,” said Mrs. Brown, with a smile. “Now that we are here we might as well settle a little, I suppose. Are we going ashore again?” she asked her husband.
“I think not,” he answered. “How soon do we start?” he inquired from the steward.
“In about three hours, I think.”
“Then we won’t go ashore,” decided Mrs. Brown. “I’ll put some more suitable clothes on Bunny and Sue so they can romp around, as I know they want to.”
“I’m going down to see the engines!” criedBunny, as his mother opened a valise that contained his clothes.
“And I’m going to take my doll up and show her the fishes,” added Sue.
“Better wait a while,” said her father, with a laugh. “I don’t believe there are any fishes in this part of the Delaware River, so close to Philadelphia. As for you going to the engine room, Bunny, you must wait until I can go with you.”
“All right,” agreed the little boy and girl. There was plenty to see and do in other places on theBeacon, they thought.
Going up on deck after they had donned clothes more suitable for play than those they had worn on the journey, Bunny and Sue saw many busy scenes. Men were loading boxes and barrels into the holds of the ship. Other men were coming on board, hurrying off, and then coming back on again. Captain Ward was upon the bridge, as it is called, a high, narrow place near the front, or bow, of the ship, from which the vessel is steered.
There was so much going on that the time passed very quickly for Bunny and Sue, andin what seemed about half an hour since they had come on board they heard shouts of:
“All ashore that’s going ashore!”
“What does he mean?” asked Bunny of his father, pointing to a sailor who was thus calling.
“He means the ship is going to start soon,” explained Mr. Brown, “and that those who aren’t sailing on her will have to go on shore or they will be carried away.”
“Then, in a little while, we’ll be on the rolling ocean—the rolling ocean!” cried Bunny, and he walked about the deck with that funny, heaving motion of his shoulders. “That’s how it will be when we get on the rolling ocean,” he explained to his sister.
“Shall I have to walk like that?” she asked.
“Yes,” answered Bunny.
“Shall I, Daddy?” Sue appealed to her father.
“Of course not!” he answered, with a laugh. “Though, of course, when we get out where the waves are big the ship will not be as calm and steady as she is now at her dock.”
However, neither Bunny nor Sue thoughtlong about this, for there was so much else to take up their attention. They watched and saw the big hawsers, or ropes that moored the ship to the pier, cast off. Then theBeacontrembled and shook again as her big engines began to work, and, slowly at first, but growing faster and faster as she gathered speed, the vessel glided away from the wharf.
“Hurray! Now we’re going!” cried Bunny Brown.
“Now we’re going!” echoed his sister Sue.
Steaming down the Delaware River, with Philadelphia on one side and the New Jersey city of Camden on the other side, is not very exciting. True, there was plenty to look at, from the big buildings of Philadelphia on one hand to the many river boats on the other. So Bunny and Sue kept their eyes busy.
Mr. Brown found some members of the fish company, with whom he talked. Mrs. Brown met some of these men’s wives. One of the ladies had been in the West Indies before, and she told Mrs. Brown of the sights to be seen there.
Bunny and Sue, left to themselves, wanderedhere and there about the deck. Bunny grew a little impatient, for the ship, moving down the river, was as steady as a ferryboat and did not roll as he thought it ought.
In and out among other craft on the river theBeaconthreaded her course, now and then blowing her big whistle to warn other boats which way she was going to steer.
“Do you like it here, Sue?” asked Bunny.
“Lots! Don’t you?” replied the little girl.
“Yes. But when we get down on the big ocean the boat will roll more and I’m going to catch some fish.”
“How are you going to catch any fish? You haven’t any pole.”
“You don’t have to use a pole,” explained Bunny. “You just drop your line over the edge of the boat, like this.”
From his pocket he pulled a ball of cord which he unwound. Then from the edge of his blouse he took a pin, which he bent up until it looked like a fishhook. Bunny tied the string to the head of the pin, and then he fastened to the string near the pin a button which he pulled off his knickerbockers.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have pulled off that button!” gasped Sue. “Mother won’t like it!”
“It was almost off, anyhow,” explained Bunny. “It was just hanging by a thread, and it has to be sewed on, anyhow. I’ll give it to mother and let her fix it on again. I had to have something for a weight on my fishline.”
“You can’t catch any fish on a bent-pin hook,” declared Sue. “I tried it in the brook at home, and I never caught any fish—’cept maybe a little, teeny one.”
“I’m not going really to fish with this bent pin,” Bunny said. “I’m just showing you how I’m going to do it when we get on the rolling ocean. Daddy will give me a real hook when we get there. He didn’t want me to keep one in my pocket, for it might stick into me.”
“Fishhooks are terribly sticky,” agreed Sue. “I don’t like ’em much.”
“I do,” declared her brother.
“I guess fish don’t like ’em, either,” went on Sue.
“Fish have to be caught,” said Bunny. “I guess the hook doesn’t hurt ’em very much. But this is how I’m going to fish.”