THEY WALKED UP THE GANGPLANK.Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on the Rolling Ocean.Page78
THEY WALKED UP THE GANGPLANK.Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on the Rolling Ocean.Page78
THEY WALKED UP THE GANGPLANK.Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on the Rolling Ocean.Page78
THEY WALKED UP THE GANGPLANK.
Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on the Rolling Ocean.Page78
He dropped his bent-pin hook and button-weighted line over the rail of the ship from the upper deck, on which he and Sue had been looking at the shores of the river on either side. The string unwound from the ball in Bunny’s hand.
Suddenly a queer look came over the little boy’s face. The string tightened in his hand and when he tried gently to pull the hook and button up the cord did not move.
“What’s the matter?” asked Sue.
“I—I guess I got a bite!” cried Bunny. “I didn’t think I could catch a fish here with a bent pin, and I didn’t put any bait on, but I guess I caught something!”
“Pull up!” cried Sue.
“I will,” said Bunny, and he did.
But no sooner had he begun to haul in on his line than a man’s voice shouted from the deck below him:
“Hi there! What you doing? Who’s playing tricks?”
Sue leaned over the rail and looked down.
“Oh, Bunny Brown,” she cried, with a laugh, “you’ve caught a man’s hat!”
“What?” shouted Bunny.
“You caught a man’s hat!” repeated his sister.
Bunny ceased to pull in on his cord and also leaned over the rail. Caught on his pin was a sailor’s white hat with its turned-up brim. And reaching up, trying to get back his hat which was being lifted away from him, was a sailor.
“Oh! Oh!” gasped Bunny when he saw what had happened. “I—I didn’t mean to do that.”
“All right! I’ll excuse you!” laughed the sailor. “Lower away now, my lad!”
Bunny did not know exactly what this meant, but he guessed the sailor wanted him to let the cord unwind again so the hat would go down, and this Bunny did. Looking over the rail, he and Sue saw the sailor unhook his hat from the bent pin, put the hat on his head, and then, still laughing, go about his work.
The dangling hooked pin, weighted by the button, had caught under the brim of the sailor’shat as he leaned over near the rail on the deck below, and Bunny had really made a catch, though it was not a fish.
“You’d better not try to catch anything more,” advised Sue.
“I guess I hadn’t,” agreed Bunny, as he took the pin off the string, wound the latter back into a ball and put it in his pocket. He also put the button in his pocket, intending to ask his mother to sew it on later. The bent pin he threw away.
Bunny and Sue continued to play about the deck while theBeaconsteamed her way down the Delaware River, toward Delaware Bay, whence she would get into the Atlantic Ocean. After a while the children decided to play hide-and-seek, and Bunny said he would hide first.
Sue covered her eyes and began to count so as to give her brother a chance to find a good hiding place. And at last, having waited as long as she thought was proper, Sue called:
“Ready or not, I’m coming.”
Opening her eyes, she began to search forBunny. There were many places where he might hide, new and strange places on the deck of the steamer.
Sue looked in many of these without finding Bunny. She was going to “give up” when, as she was standing near a big coil of rope, she heard what sounded like a sneeze half held back.
“Oh!” cried Sue. Standing on her tiptoes she looked over and down into the coil of rope, which was hollow and shaped like a small barrel. There, crouched down inside the coil of rope, was Bunny!
“Tit-tat, Bunny!” cried Sue, running to touch “home,” which was a deck ventilator.
“Ho! you wouldn’t have found me if I hadn’t sneezed,” said Bunny as he climbed out of the pile of rope.
“No, I guess I wouldn’t,” agreed Sue. “It was a good place to hide. Now it’s my turn.”
When Bunny “blinded” Sue crept softly away and then, circling back, she hid behind the very ventilator where Bunny was standing. The ventilator was like a big pipe, and it completely hid little Sue. So when Bunnywalked away, thinking his sister was perhaps hiding in the same coil of rope where he had been, Sue darted out, touched “home,” and cried:
“In free! In free!”
She had beaten Bunny at his own game.
The children played hide-and-seek until it was time for lunch, and after lunch they had more fun. Then their mother, knowing they must be tired, having arisen early to start traveling, said:
“I think you had better go to your bunks and lie down for a nap, you two.”
“Oh, I don’t want to go to bed in the daytime!” objected Bunny.
“I don’t either, but maybe my doll does,” said Sue.
“Well, Sue, you lie down with your doll,” suggested Mrs. Brown. And when Sue had done this she soon fell asleep. A little later Bunny, having no one with whom to play, went to the stateroom he shared with his father, and soon he was asleep.
When Bunny and Sue awakened some hours later they noticed a peculiar motion to theship. No longer did she sail along calmly and steadily, but swayed up and down, rolling from side to side.
“Where are we? What’s happened?” Bunny asked his father, who was in the stateroom.
“Come up on deck and see,” was the answer.
It was getting dark when Bunny and his father reached the deck, but it was light enough to see that they were no longer in the river. They were out on big, wide, open water.
“Is this the ocean?” cried Bunny.
“Yes, this is the rolling ocean,” his father said.
Just then the ship gave such a roll that Bunny would have fallen had not his father caught hold of him.