LOST ON THE OCEAN
“Perhaps he has sent you some fresh eggs from the farm,” teased Aunt
Bessie.
“Or a pound of fresh, sweet butter,” suggested Miss Martinson, coming
out on her way to the bathhouse.
“Open it, precious, and see,” urged Mrs. Horton.
So Sunny Boy sat down and carefully untied the red cord and took off
the wrapping paper. There was a pasteboard box tied with more string to
be opened then.
“Why—why—” Sunny Boy, peeping down under the tissue paper that packed
this box, uttered a shriek of delight.
“Look, Mother!” he shouted. “It’s a boat!”
It was a boat, sure enough—a beautiful boat with three sails and two
decks and a large American flag in her bow. Her name was painted on her
sides in bright blue letters—_The Billow_.
Sunny Boy was delighted.
“Did Grandpa send it?” he asked, his eyes big with surprise.
“I hardly think so,” smiled Mrs. Horton. “See, dear, here is a card
that dropped out. Shall I read it to you? ‘To Sunny Boy, with love from
Mrs. Raymond and Bon-Bon.’ Mrs. Raymond sent it to you, precious.”
Sunny Boy, of course, wanted to sail his boat immediately. Ellen and
Ralph—Stephen had gone home—who came over presently thought it was the
finest boat they had ever seen. Ralph had one or two boats, but none as
large as _The Billow_.
“You can sail her sometimes,” offered Sunny Boy. “You get your _Frolic_
now and let’s go down to the beach and play with ’em. I’ve got my
bathing suit on.”
“If you chickens are going to sail boats, you’ll have to keep away from
the bathing beach,” announced Aunt Bessie decidedly. “You can’t sail
boats in a surf, anyway. Go over on the other side of the Cove where it
is shallow and smoother.”
So the three children, the two boys carrying their boats, marched over
to the side of the Cove where a small fleet of rowboats were kept at
anchor and where the only house in sight was a small shanty where an
old fisherman lived who made his living by selling tackle and bait.
“Guess Mr. Grimes has taken out a fishing party to-day,” said Ralph,
noticing that the shanty door was closed. “His boat’s gone, too. Come
on now, Sunny, let’s see _The Billow_ race the _Frolic_.”
_The Billow_ rested lightly on the water, and as there was hardly a
breath of wind, Sunny Boy had to tow her instead of letting her sails
carry her. But towing your boat on a warm summer’s day when you have
your bathing suit on and are not afraid of getting wet, is great fun.
“If there was any wind, I guess your boat could beat mine,” conceded
Ralph generously. “But if we can’t sail ’em, let’s play taking fishing
parties out.”
“How?” asked Sunny Boy practically.
“Well, we have to have some people—make-believe, of course,” answered
Ralph. “An’ then we ought to have something to eat.”
“Ellen’s paper dolls would do for people,” said Sunny Boy. “We’ll ask
her if she’ll go an’ get ’em. And I’ll go and ask Harriet for something
to eat.”
“All right,” agreed Ralph. “I’ll hold the boats till you come back. Hi,
Ellen!” he called to his little sister. “Want to give your paper dolls
a sail?”
Ellen was willing, when she understood what the boys wanted, and she
trotted up the beach with Sunny Boy to fetch the paper doll family.
At the corner they parted, Sunny Boy to ask Harriet for a “piece of
picnic,” as he said.
“Something to eat?” repeated Harriet in pretended surprise. “Why, Sunny
Boy! Weren’t you here for breakfast? Well, I suppose if you are going
to take a sailing party out, you’ll have to see that they are fed. How
will three of these sandwiches I’m making for supper to-night do? And
three chocolate cup cakes? All right, here you are—and mind you bring
home a fish.”
Ellen came flying down the street with her paper dolls as Sunny Boy
started with his food, and though she eyed the delicious little cakes
hungrily, she waited politely till they had joined Ralph on the beach.
“Oh, my!” said Ellen’s brother, when he saw what Sunny Boy had brought.
“Gee, I’m hungry! Let’s eat before we take our sailing parties out,
Sunny.”
This suited Sunny Boy, and as Ellen made no objection, the three
children sat down comfortably in the sand and ate every crumb of
Harriet’s goodies.
“And now,” announced Ellen, rising and shaking the short skirt of her
bathing suit free of sand, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the seven Smith
children want to go fishing for whitebait.”
This large Smith family were Ellen’s best paper dolls, cut from the
colored fashion plates, and though, as Sunny Boy sensibly said, they
were not exactly dressed for a fishing trip, still they did look as
though they were pleased at such a prospect. Mrs. Smith wore a red
velvet suit and a feathered hat, and her husband was in full evening
dress; three of the girls had silver and gold dresses, two of them
wore skating costumes, and the one boy was wearing his bathrobe. Ralph
said he probably had his bathing suit on underneath, and we’ll hope he
had.
“Let the younger children go on Ralph’s boat,” suggested Ellen, “and
Mr. and Mrs. Smith and their son can go with Sunny Boy.”
She arranged them all neatly, weighted them down with shells so they
would not blow away, and the two boys set off, towing the boats.
But when they came back from the first trip, there was trouble at once.
“Where’s Mr. Smith?” demanded Ellen, counting her dolls as soon as the
ships were steadied in the sand.
“Mr. Smith?” echoed Sunny Boy helplessly. “Why—why—isn’t he there?”
“He isn’t here,” said Ellen coldly. “And the shell that held him down
isn’t here. And, Ralph, where is Lucile?”
Lucile was one of the paper dolls who wore a silver frock.
“Gee! I suppose they’re washed away,” admitted Ralph. “I’m awfully
sorry, honest, Ellen. Sunny and I were watching a boat ’way out, and we
didn’t look back at our ships. I’ll ask Mother to let you have the new
fashion magazine to-night.”
“Well, Mr. Smith was torn in one place,” said Ellen kindly. “And I
never did care so much for Lucile. Daddy always called her cross-eyed.
So you needn’t care, Ralph.”
“What’ll we do now?” asked Ralph, tired of the responsibility of taking
paper dolls sailing. A fellow couldn’t be expected to keep the silly
things from blowing away. “What’ll we do now, Sunny?”
“Yes, what’ll we do, Sunny?” chimed in Ellen.
Sunny Boy could usually be counted on to think of some game. He played
alone so much, and, having no sister or brother, often had to depend
upon himself for amusement.
“We’ll play dry-dock,” he suggested now. “Put our ships up for repairs,
you know. Come on, Ellen, you can help build the dry-dock.”
Sunny Boy had seen pictures of the great dry-docks where ships were
sent to be repaired and painted, and he really had a very clear idea of
how they were used. Naturally, he wasn’t so sure how they were built,
but together he and Ralph and Ellen made an arrangement of sticks that
looked very imposing, and into which they fitted the _Frolic_ and _The
Billow_ with some difficulty.
“I think we’ll take ’em out for another sail,” said Sunny Boy, after
the dry-dock was pronounced finished. “And perhaps we’ll have a wreck.
You stay on shore and signal to us, Ellen.”
“Then we’ll come in and go into dry-dock for repairs! That will be
fun,” agreed Ralph. “Come on, let’s have a big wreck.”
But before they could have a wreck, Ellen called them.
“Look what I’ve found!” she cried.
The boys waded back and tied their ships to a cable that held a
half-sunken scow. Ellen had captured a butterfly, yellow with black
spots, and they watched it flutter its beautiful wings in her hands. It
didn’t seem to want to fly away.
“Perhaps he is a tame butterfly,” suggested Sunny Boy. “Let’s give him
a sail on _The Billow_.”
He straightened up and looked out to where he had left his boat, gently
rocking on the water. Only Ralph’s _Frolic_ was still tied, and _The
Billow_ was drifting out to sea.
“Ralph!” gasped Sunny Boy. “Look! My boat’s untied!”
He waded into the water, but Ralph, splashing after him, caught him by
his shirt.
“It’s deep out there—the beach goes down,” Ralph explained. “You can’t
catch it, Sunny Boy.”
“Daddy’s coming down to-day and I wanted to show it to him,” Sunny Boy
almost sobbed. “I just have to get it, Ralph. I know! I’ll row after
it. Come on, we’ll take this boat.”
Sunny Boy began to untie the rope that fastened one of the rowboats.
“Don’t you go, Ralph,” ordered his little sister. “You know Mother
wouldn’t like it. Sunny Boy, you won’t catch your boat, an’ maybe
you’ll be drowned.”
“Won’t neither,” retorted Sunny Boy ungraciously, working at the stiff
rope. “Nobody gets drowned in rowboats—so there!”
The rope untied, he scrambled into the boat.
Ralph would probably have gone with him, but Ellen began to cry and
repeated that she knew their mother wouldn’t like it, and so he stayed
with her.
To his relief, Sunny Boy found that he would not need the oars which
were in the bottom of the boat, for the tide was carrying his boat just
as it had carried out _The Billow_. The oars were so heavy that Sunny
Boy never could have handled them.
“I’ll catch it in a minute,” Sunny Boy told himself, as his boat
drifted gently along, “then Ellen will be sorry she was such a
cry-baby.”
But he didn’t catch _The Billow_ in a minute. That dancing little boat
sailed on out of sight and Sunny Boy’s boat moved evenly along till
presently he couldn’t see any land at all. He began to wonder how he
was going to get back
* * * * *
“Where’s Sunny Boy?” asked Mrs. Horton when lunch time came. “Won’t he
be surprised to find you here, Daddy?”
“Where’s Sunny Boy?” asked Mr. Horton, who had come down on an earlier
train than usual.
Half an hour passed, an hour. Still no Sunny Boy.
“I’m worried!” Mrs. Horton paced up and down the porch nervously. “I
know he hasn’t run away again. Oh, Daddy, where can he be?”
“There are the Gray children,” said Aunt Bessie. “Sunny Boy was sailing
boats with them this morning. Call them over and ask them.”
“Sunny Boy?” repeated Ellen when Mrs. Horton asked her. “Oh, his boat
got untied, and Sunny took a big boat and went after it. An’ he didn’t
ask the man who owned it or nothin’. I wouldn’t let Ralph go, ’cause my
mother says rowboats are dangerous.”
Mrs. Horton turned very white.
“There, there, Olive,” said her husband. “It is a beautiful calm day,
and he will be all right. We’ll get Captain Franklin to take us in his
motor-boat, and we ought to pick him up without much trouble. He can’t
have drifted very far.”
“Why didn’t you come and tell us?” asked Mrs. Horton, catching up a
sweater and running down the steps after her husband. “Ellen dear, what
could you have been thinking of not to let us know?”
“I thought Sunny Boy would be back,” said Ellen. “He said it wouldn’t
take him but just a minute.”
Captain Franklin was an old sea captain with a wrinkled kind brown face
and keen blue eyes.
“Sure we’ll find him, ma’am,” he assured Mrs. Horton, when he had heard
the story of the lost Sunny Boy. “Just let me put some fresh water on
board and see if the cracker box is full, an’ we’ll start right out.
Never go out, if it’s only across the bay, without fresh water. You
never know when you’ll need it. And the little feller will be mighty
thirsty when we do find him.”
“Better get a tube of cold cream,” Mr. Horton advised his wife. “The
glare on the water will bum Sunny Boy even if he is tanned. You can get
some in that little shop there.”
Mrs. Horton bought some cold cream in the little shop where fishing
supplies were sold, and as soon as Captain Franklin had filled his
water kegs they set out.
“Chug-chug-chug!” sang the motor-boat engine cheerily. “We’re going to
find Sunny Boy. Chug-chug-chug!”
* * * * *
And what was Sunny Boy doing all this time, alone in his boat and so
far out on the big ocean?
When he found that he couldn’t see the land and that _The Billow_ had
disappeared, Sunny Boy was puzzled.
“Where did it go?” he asked. “I was looking right at it, an’ now it’s
gone. Maybe I’d better turn my boat around.”
But he could not turn the boat around. Indeed, it seemed that that
rowboat intended to do exactly as it pleased. And it wanted to go right
on, sailing out to sea.
“Maybe we’ll come to China,” thought Sunny Boy, not knowing very
clearly where China was. “Only I would rather have another some one
with me. I wish Ralph had come.”
The sun began to burn him and he wished for some shade.
“The ocean’s awfully sunny,” sighed poor Sunny Boy. “I feel queer
inside.”
He was hungry, but he didn’t know it. The queer feeling grew worse and
worse.
“My mother wouldn’t like me to be sick,” he said aloud. “I wish I had a
drink of water.”
He was really very thirsty, having had no water since breakfast. It
was now two or three o’clock in the afternoon, though there was nothing
to tell Sunny Boy the time. He had never gone without a meal in his
life, and whenever he had wanted a drink of water it had always been
easy to get. Sunny Boy, if he had only known it, was experiencing some
of the worst troubles of shipwrecked sailors.
“I’m lonesome—but I won’t cry,” he said stoutly.
His voice sounded so little on the wide stretch of blue water that he
knew, deep down in his heart, no one could hear him. But he stood up in
the boat—luckily it was a flat-bottomed rowboat or it might have tipped
and spilled him out and that would have been a serious matter—and
shouted as loud as he could. He shouted until he was tired, and then,
realizing that he was a very little boy alone on a very big ocean,
brave little Sunny Boy did give up and cried. And some grown men, in
his place, would have cried, too.
Curled down in the bottom of the boat, he rested his head on one of the
seats and tried to shut out the hot sunlight.
“I wish,” he murmured drowsily, “I had a drink of water. I wish Mother
was here. I wish I had my boat to show Daddy.”
Then, still making more wishes, Sunny Boy fell asleep.