CHAPTER XVA HAPPY ENDING
Thecheerful chug-chug of Captain Franklin’s motor-boat, on its way to find Sunny Boy, was something of a comfort to Sunny’s anxious mother.
“He can hear it while we’re afar off,” she said to Mr. Horton, “and perhaps he will stand up and wave. How dreadful it must be, Harry, for sailors to be adrift on this great ocean for days at a time.”
“Yes indeed,” nodded Mr. Horton, “but Sunny Boy, you know, isn’t going to be adrift even one day. What’s the matter?”
The noise of the engine stopped and theRocketbegan to drift.
“Engine trouble,” explained the captainbriefly. “I’ll have to ask you to move a bit while I get those tools under the seat.”
Poor Mrs. Horton looked as if she would like to cry. It was hard, when she felt that every minute they were delayed Sunny’s boat might be going farther and farther out to sea.
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” said the kind captain, who knew perfectly well that she was uneasy and fretting. “I know what the trouble is, and I’ll have her going in a minute. If I were you, I’d eat a bite, or take a drink of milk. I’ve a fresh bottle in that locker there. You don’t want to get played out before we come up with the little chap.”
Mrs. Horton drank a glass of milk, but she could not eat. And presently “chug-chug, chug-chug!” sounded merrily again.
“Now we’ll make up lost seconds,” said Captain Franklin sturdily.
“There’s a boat!” cried Mrs. Horton suddenly.
“It’s one of the fishing fleet,” replied the captain, who knew practically every boat in the harbor. “One of the men has likely rowed out with bait for a party that wants to stay out all night. But I’ll hail him.”
He stood up, and, putting his hands to his mouth, roared, not “Ship Ahoy!” as they do in books, and as Mrs. Horton secretly expected him to, but “Hey, you!”
Tired and anxious as she was, Sunny’s mother had to laugh.
“Seen anything of a stray rowboat this afternoon?” the captain was calling. “White boat, broad green stripe—one of Jo Grimes’. Haven’t passed it, have you?”
The solitary man in the other boat stood up and bellowed something in reply that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Horton could understand.
“He says he hasn’t seen any boat since dinner time,” said the captain, dropping back into his place by the engine. “I washoping he hadn’t. Ned Butterworth is so slow, he’d never think of stopping the boat if it ran smack into him.”
Meanwhile, Sunny Boy had wakened and found he was still thirsty. He remembered something Harriet had once told him when he was a very little boy and had teased for a drink when they were somewhere where she did not find it easy to get one for him.
“Take your mind off your troubles,” had been Harriet’s counsel. “Think about something else, and you’ll forget you are thirsty. Count the red roses on this wallpaper. I’ll help you.”
And Sunny Boy, with the help of his baby fingers, had gone to counting red wallpaper roses and forgotten his thirst, just as Harriet said.
“But I’m thirstier now,” said poor Sunny Boy to himself. “What’ll I count? Clouds?”
He began to count the gray-white cloudsscudding swiftly across the sky. He counted six, ten, eleven.
“Big ones should count more,” he murmured sleepily.
His yellow head was beginning to nod again.
“Thirteen. What comes after thirteen?” he puzzled.
His eyes shut tight.
When he woke he did not know where he was at first. He lay quietly in the bottom of the boat, thinking, and then when he saw the oars, he remembered. He sat up.
The hot sun had gone under a cloud, and the ocean was no longer blue, but gray. It was hot and still.
Now when Sunny Boy sat up to look about him, something happened.
“Chug-chug, chug-chug!” said the motor-boat, carrying Mr. and Mrs. Horton and Captain Franklin.
“That looks like a rowboat,” whisperedthe captain to Mr. Horton, putting down his field glasses. “Don’t tell Mrs. Horton—it’s empty.”
But Mrs. Horton had heard, and she took the glasses before any one could stop her. Just as she put them to her eyes Sunny Boy sat up in the boat.
“He’s in it!” cried Mrs. Horton joyfully. “See, Harry, that little black dot must be his head. Oh, hurry, Captain, hurry!”
“Chug-chug, chug-chug!” gurgled the swift little motor-boat, fairly leaping through the water. “I’ll do my best. Chug-chug.”
And it wasn’t very long before Sunny Boy heard the noise of the engine and he stood up to look. There was a boat coming straight toward him.
“Sit still!” called Mr. Horton. “Don’t jump about, Sunny Boy. We’ll be right there.”
The motor-boat scraped alongside, andSunny was lifted over and placed on his mother’s lap.
“My precious!” she whispered, kissing him. “Oh, my dear little boy, to think I have you in my arms!”
“Don’t cry,” implored Sunny Boy, surprised to see tears running down her face. “I’m all right, Mother. But I didn’t catch up with my boat.”
Captain Franklin was fastening the rowboat Sunny Boy had been in to his own boat, because, as he explained to Mrs. Horton who wanted him to leave it and hurry them back to the Cove, some one might find it and think the rower had drowned.
“Besides, Jo Grimes, whose boat ’tis,” said the kind captain, “might like to use her again. All right, Bub, aren’t you?”
“Could I have a drink?” asked Sunny Boy wistfully.
“All ready and waiting for you,” responded the captain promptly. “Guessyou’re hungry, too. We brought a biscuit or so along—got them in here somewhere.”
While Sunny Boy drank the cool, fresh water—and you probably have no idea how good it tasted, because you have never been as thirsty as he was—and ate his crackers, Mrs. Horton gently rubbed his sunburned little face and hands with the cold cream.
“Going to be a storm,” announced the captain, watching the gray sky. “Plenty of wind, most likely. Lucky we found the little fellow, or he might have been blown pretty far out.”
The wind began to blow as the captain spoke, and the spray dashed high over theRocket. Mrs. Horton went into the tiny cabin, but Sunny Boy and his father stayed with the captain. They were wrapped in oilskin coats he lent them, and it was very exciting to watch theRocketcut through the waves.
“Wouldn’t the wind blow her ashore’thout any engine?” Sunny asked, after studying the clouds for a moment.
They were thick, dark clouds, and the wind was blowing them in toward the shore.
“It might,” admitted the captain, his blue eyes twinkling. “But the wind’s a tricky friend. You never know just where you’re going to land, once you give right up to him. I’d rather pin my faith to this little comrade here,” patting the tarpaulin that covered the noisy little engine and kept it dry.
When the rain came it fell in big splashy drops, and the wind began to moan. Sunny Boy was glad to see the land ahead, and he thought the way Captain Franklin steered theRocketin alongside the little rickety wharf nothing short of wonderful.
“Here we are!” announced the captain cheerfully. “And I guess you’ve had enough sea-voyaging for one afternoon, heh?”
Sunny Boy agreed with him. Mr. Hortonstayed to thank the good captain and to pay him for taking them out in the motor-boat, and Sunny Boy and his mother picked their way along the beach, intending to cross to the road where the sand was firmer. The rain had settled down into a steady drizzle.
“I hope the little boy who finds my boat will take good care of it,” said Sunny Boy. He couldn’t stop thinking about the beautifulBillowhe had lost. “I was just as sure I could catch it, Mother.”
“Oh, darling, don’t talk any more about it!” exclaimed his mother, stopping to hug him. “When I think of you out on that great ocean, all alone in that flimsy boat—well, I don’t see how I can ever love the sea again.”
“Why, it was a very nice sea,” insisted Sunny Boy. “Only it’s too salty to drink. What’s that in the sand, Mother—paper from sandwiches?”
He ran a little forward to look.
“Mother!” he shouted, kneeling in the wet sand and beginning to dig frantically. “Mother! I’ve foundThe Billow!”
Sure enough, he had. The gallant sailboat was half buried in the sand, the beautiful white sails all draggled and wet. The wind had evidently driven her ashore and up on the beach.
“That’s what happens to real boats when they are shipwrecked,” said Mr. Horton, who caught up to them as they were examining the ship. “You’re lucky, Sunny Boy; Mother can make you a new set of sails and your boat will be all right and as good as ever. Ever so many ships are hopelessly wrecked by being driven on the beach.”
Sunny Boy hugged his recovered treasure happily. He was puzzled to know howThe Billowcould have sailed ashore while he was hunting it, for he thought he had looked very carefully. He finally decided in his own mind that his boat had passed the motor-boatin the storm and that the high waves had kept him from seeing it. Even yet Sunny Boy did not realize how wide and how vast the ocean is, or understand that many, many ships may pass daily on the sea so many miles apart that they can not see each other.
“Here’s Sunny!” shrieked Ellen, running out as the Hortons passed the Gray bungalow. “You didn’t get drowned, did you? And look, Ralph, he caught up withThe Billow, and—”
Sunny Boy would have stayed to explain to Ellen, but Daddy and Mother hurried him along to get into dry clothes. And when he reached the house Aunt Bessie and Miss Martinson and Harriet had to stop him and hug him and hear all about his experience. You should have seen the dinner Harriet had ready for him when he was dressed in clean, dry clothes. She had even sent over to town for chocolate ice-cream.
“Olive,” said Mr. Horton to his wife thenext morning, “Sunny Boy and his sailing expedition made me forget to speak to you about a letter that came by special delivery yesterday morning. It’s from Wright, and he says that deal will drag along for several months unless I come on to New York.”
Sunny Boy was watching his mother cutting out new sails forThe Billowand he knew he must not interrupt Daddy when he was talking business. He wanted dreadfully to ask Daddy not to go away.
“I was thinking that you and Sunny Boy and I might go to New York for three or four weeks,” went on Mr. Horton, just as he might say: “Suppose we go home to-morrow.”
Sunny’s mother put down her shears.
“Go to New York!” she echoed. “Why, think of the expense. And what should I do with Sunny Boy in a hotel?”
“Have a good time,” smiled Mr. Horton. “I’m in earnest, Olive. The girls will goback to school next week, Betty will, that is, and Bessie wants to get her fall schedule started. Let ’em go, and keep Harriet till we get back. You’d like to see New York, wouldn’t you, Sunny Boy?”
Sunny Boy nodded. He was too amazed to speak.
“But you’ll have a great deal on your mind,” argued Mrs. Horton. “Sha’n’t we be in the way? And I wanted to send Sunny Boy to the kindergarten this fall.”
“Plenty of time after we get back,” announced Mr. Horton, tousling Sunny’s hair playfully. “I think I’ll need my wife and son to help me put through this big contract. I’ll find some time to play around with you, too. But mostly I’m afraid you will have to keep each other company.”
Sunny Boy took his boat under his arm without waiting for the new sails, and went out to find Ellen and Ralph.
“When are you going?” demanded Ralph,as soon as he heard that Sunny Boy was going to New York. “My cousin lives there.”
“Going week after next,” said Sunny Boy. “I wish you were going too.”
“Goodness, we have to go to school,” declared Ellen importantly. “My mother says education just mustn’t be ne-ne-glected.”
Sunny Boy was troubled.
“I’m going to kindergarten when we come back,” he explained hesitatingly.
“Oh, traveling’s good for you,” admitted Ellen, who was a fair little person in spite of her condescending ways at times. “My mother says you can learn a lot by traveling in different places.”
So Sunny Boy felt better, for of course he didn’t want to go through life without education. No one does.
Ellen and Ralph and Sunny Boy had only a few more days to play together at Nestle Cove. Then they separated, Ellen andRalph to go home to the small town where they lived and go to school, and Sunny Boy and his mother and father to get ready for the trip to New York.
THE END