Other good byes had been said; the huge ocean steamer had drawn out of
her pier and, with Mollie and Whistlebinkie on board, together with
Flaxilocks and the rest of the family, made her way down the bay,
through the Narrows, past Sandy Hook and out to sea. The long low lying
shores of New Jersey, with their white sands and endless lines of villas
and summer hotels had gradually sunk below the horizon and the little
maid was for the first time in her life out of sight of land.
"Isn't it glorious!" cried Mollie, as she breathed in the crisp fresh
air, and tasted just a tiny bit of the salt spray of the ocean on her
lip.
"I guesso," whistled Whistlebinkie, with a little shiver.
"Think-ide-like-it-better-'fwe-had-alittle-land-in-sight."
"O no, Whistlebinkie," returned Mollie, "it's a great deal safer this
way. There are rocks near the shore but outside here the water is ever
so deep--more'n six feet I guess. I'd be perfectly happy if the
Unwiseman was only with us."
Just then up through one of the big yawning ventilators, that look so
like sea-serpents with their big flaming mouths stretched wide open as
if to swallow the passengers on deck, came a cracked little voice
singing the following song to a tune that seemed to be made up as it
went along:
"Yo-ho!
Yo-ho--
O a sailor's life for me!
I love to nail
The blithering gale,
As I sail the bounding sea.
For I'm a glorious stowaway,
I've thrown my rake and hoe away,
On the briny deep to go away,
Yeave-ho--Yeave-ho--Yo-hee!"
"Where have I heard that voice before!" cried Mollie clutching
Whistlebinkie by the hand so hard that he squeaked.
"It's-sizz!" whistled Whistlebinkie excitedly.
"It's what?" cried Mollie.
"It's-his!" repeated Whistlebinkie more correctly.
"Whose--the Unwiseman's?" Mollie whispered with delight.
"Thass-swat-I-think," said Whistlebinkie.
And then the song began again drawing nearer each moment.
"Yeave-ho,
Yo-ho,
O I love the life so brave.
I love to swish
Like the porpoise fish
Over the foamy wave.
So let the salt wind blow-away,
All care and trouble throw-away,
And lead the life of a Stowaway
Yeave-ho--Yeave-ho--Yo-hee!"
"It is he as sure as you're born, Whistlebinkie!" cried Mollie in an
ecstacy of delight. "I wonder how he came to come."
"I 'dno," said Whistlebinkie. "I guess he's just went and gone."
As Whistlebinkie spoke sure enough, the Unwiseman himself clambered out
of the ventilator and leaped lightly on the deck alongside of them still
singing:
"Yeave-ho,
Yo-ho,
I love the At-lan-tic.
The water's wet
And you can bet
The motion makes me sick.
But let the wavelets flow away
You cannot drive the glow away
From the heart of the happy Stowaway.
Yeave-ho--Yeave-ho--Yo-hee!"
Dear me, what a strange looking figure he was as he jumped down and
greeted Mollie and Whistlebinkie! In place of his old beaver hat he wore
a broad and shiny tarpaulin. His trousers which were of white duck
stiffly starched were neatly creased down the sides, ironed as flat as
they could be got, nearly two feet wide and as spick and span as a
snow-flake. On his feet he wore a huge pair of goloshes, and thrown
jauntily around his left shoulder and thence down over his right arm to
his waist was what appeared to be a great round life preserver, filled
with air, and heavy enough to support ten persons of his size.
"Shiver my timbers if it ain't Mollie!" he roared as he caught sight of
her. "And Whistlebinkie too--Ahoy there, Fizzledinkie. What's the good
word?"
"Where on earth did you come from?" asked Mollie overjoyed.
"I weighed anchor in the home port at seven bells last night; set me
course nor-E by sou-sou-west, made for the deep channel running past the
red, white and blue buoy on the starboard tack, reefed my galyards in
the teeth o' the blithering gale and sneaked aboard while Captain Binks
of the good ship _Nancy B._ was trollin' for oysters off the fishin'
banks after windin' up the Port watch," replied the Unwiseman. "It's a
great life, ain't it," he added gazing admiringly about him at the
wonderful ship and then over the rail at the still more wonderful ocean.
"But how did you come to come?" asked Mollie.
"Well--ye see after you'd said good-bye to me the other day, I was sort
of upset and for the first time in my life I got my newspaper right side
up and began to read it that way," the old gentleman explained. "And I
fell on a story of the briny deep in which a young gentleman named Billy
The Rover Bold sailed from the Spanish main to Kennebunkport in a dory,
capturing seventeen brigs, fourteen galleons and a pirate band on the
way. It didn't say fourteen galleons of what, but thinkin' it might be
soda water, it made my mouth water to think of it, so I decided to rent
my house and come along. About when do you think we'll capture any
Brigs?"
"You rented your house?" asked Mollie in amazement.
"Yes--to a Burgular," said the Unwiseman. "I thought that was the best
way out of it. If the burgular has your house, thinks I, he won't break
into it, spoiling your locks, or smashing your windows and doors. What
he's got likewise moreover he won't steal, so the best thing to do is to
turn everything over to him right in the beginning and so save your
property. So I advertised. Here it is, see?" And the Unwiseman produced
the following copy of his advertisement.
FOR TO BE LET
ONE FIRST CLASS PREMISSES
ALL MODDERN INCONVENIENCES
HOT AND COAL GAS
SIXTEEN MILES FROM POLICE STATION
POSESSION RIGHT AWAY OFF
ONLY BURGULARS NEED APPLY.
Address, The Unwiseman, At Home.
"One of 'em called the next night and he's taken the house for six
months," the Unwiseman went on. "He's promised to keep the house clean,
to smoke my pipe, look after my Qs and commas, eat my meals regularly,
and exercise the umbrella on wet days. It was a very good arrangement
all around. He was a very nice polite burgular and as it happened had a
lot of business he wanted to attend to right in our neighborhood. He
said he'd keep an eye on your house too, and I told him about how to get
in the back way where the cellar window won't lock. He promised for sure
he'd look into it."
"Very kind of him I'm sure," said Mollie dubiously.
"You'd have liked him very much--nicest burgular I ever met. Had real
taking ways," said the Unwiseman.
"Howd-ulike-being-outer-sighter-land?" asked Whistlebinkie.
"Who, me?" asked the Unwiseman. "I wouldn't like it at all. I took
precious good care that I shouldn't be neither."
"Nonsense," said Mollie. "How can you help yourself?"
"This way," said the Unwiseman with a proud smile of superiority, taking
a bottle from his pocket. "See that?" he added.
"Yes," said Mollie. "What is it?"
"It's land, of course," replied the Unwiseman, holding the bottle up in
the light. "Real land off my place at home. Just before I left the house
it occurred to me that it would be pleasant to have some along and I
took a shovel and went out and got a bottle full of it. It makes me feel
safer to have the land in sight all the way over and then it will keep
me from being homesick when I'm chasing those Alps down in Swazoozalum."
"Swizz-izzerland!" corrected Whistlebinkie.
"Swit-zer-land!" said Mollie for the instruction of both. "It's not
Swazoozalum, or Swizziz-zerland, but Switzerland."
"O I see--rhymes with Hits-yer-land--when the Alp he hits your land,
then you think of Switzerland--that it?" asked the Unwiseman.
"Well that's near enough," laughed Mollie. "But how does that bottle
keep you from being homesick?"
"Why--when I begin to pine for my native land, all I've got to do is to
open the bottle and take out a spoonful of it. 'This is my own, my
native land,' the Poet said, and when I look at this bottle so say I.
Right out of my own yard, too," said the Unwiseman, hugging the bottle
tightly to his breast. "It's queer isn't it how I should find out how to
travel so comfortably without having to ask anybody."
"I guess you're a genius," suggested Whistlebinkie.
"Maybe I am," agreed the Unwiseman, "but anyhow you know I just knew
what to do as soon as I made up my mind to come along."
Mollie looked at him admiringly.
"Take these goloshes for instance. I'm the only person on board this
boat that's got goloshes on," continued the old gentleman, "and yet if
the boat went down, how on earth could they keep their feet dry? It's
all so simple. Same way with this life preserver--it's nothing but an
old bicycle tire I found in your barn, but just think what it would mean
to me if I should fall overboard some day."
"Smitey-fine!" whistled Whistlebinkie.
"It is that. All I'll have to do is to sit inside of it and float till
they lower a boat after me," said the Unwiseman.
"What have you done about getting sea-sick?" asked Mollie.
"Ah--that's the thing that bothered me as much as anything," ejaculated
the Unwiseman, "but all of a sudden it came to me like a flash. I was
getting my fishing tackle ready for the trip and when I came to the
sinkers, there was the idea as plain as the nose on your face. Six days
out, says I, means thirty-seven meals."
"Thirty-seven?" asked Mollie.
"Yes--three meals a day for six days is--," began the Unwiseman.
"Only eighteen," said Mollie, who for a child of her size was very quick
at multiplication.
"So it is," said the Unwiseman, his face growing very red. "So it is. I
must have forgotten to set down five and carry three."
"Looks that way," said Whistlebinkie, with a mirthful squeak through the
top of his hat. "What you did was to set down three and carry seven."
"That's it," said the Unwiseman. "Three and seven make
thirty-seven--don't it?"
"Looked at sideways," said Mollie, with a chuckle.
"I know I got it somehow," observed the Unwiseman, his smile returning.
"So I prepared myself for thirty-seven meals. I brought a lead sinker
along for each one of them. I'm going to tie one sinker to each meal to
keep it down, and of course I won't be sea-sick at all. There was only
one other way out of it that I could think of; that was to eat
pound-cake all the time, but I was afraid maybe they wouldn't have any
on board, so I brought the sinkers instead."
"It sounds like a pretty good plan," said Whistlebinkie. "Where's your
State-room?"
"I haven't got one," said the Unwiseman. "I really don't need it,
because I don't think I'll go to bed all the way across. I want to sit
up and see the scenery. When you've only got a short time on the water
and aren't likely to make a habit of crossing the ocean it's too bad to
miss any of it, so I didn't take a room."
"I don't think there's much scenery to be seen on the ocean," suggested
Mollie. "It's just plain water all the way over."
"O I don't think so," replied the Unwiseman. "I imagine from that story
about Billy the Rover there's a lot of it. There's the Spanish main for
instance. I want to keep a sharp look out for that and see how it
differs from Bangor, Maine. Then once in a while you run across a
latitude and a longitude. I've never seen either of those and I'm sort
of interested to see what they look like. All I know about 'em is that
one of 'em goes up and down and the other goes over and back--I don't
exactly know how, but that's the way it is and I'm here to learn. I
should feel very badly if we happened to pass either of 'em while I was
asleep."
"Naturally," said Mollie.
"Then somewhere out here they've got a thing they call a horrizon, or a
horizon, or something like that," continued the Unwiseman. "I've asked
one of the sailors to point it out to me when we come to it, and he said
he would. Funny thing about it though--he said he'd sailed the ocean for
forty-seven years and had never got close enough to it to touch it.
'Must be quite a sight close to,' I said, and he said that all the
horrizons he ever saw was from ten to forty miles off. There's a place
out here too where the waves are ninety feet high; and then there's the
Fishin' Banks--do you know I never knew banks ever went fishin', did
you? Must be a funny sight to see a lot o' banks out fishin'. What
State-room are you in, Mollie?"
"We've got sixty-nine," said Mollie.
"Sixty-nine," demanded the Unwiseman. "What's that mean?"
"Why it's the number of my room," explained Mollie.
"O," said the Unwiseman scratching his head in a puzzled sort of way.
"Then you haven't got a State-room?"
"Yes," said Mollie. "It's a State-room."
"I don't quite see," said the Unwiseman, gazing up into the air. "If
it's a State-room why don't they call it New Jersey, or Kansas, or
Mitchigan, or some other State? Seems to me a State-room ought to be a
State-room."
"I guess maybe there's more rooms on board than there are States,"
suggested Whistlebinkie. "There ain't more than sixty States, are there,
Mollie?"
"There's only forty-six," said Mollie.
"Ah--then that accounts for number sixty-nine," observed the Unwiseman.
"They're just keeping a lot of rooms numbered until there's enough
States to go around."
"I hope we get over all right," put in Whistlebinkie, who wasn't very
brave.
"O I guess we will," said the Unwiseman, cheerfully. "I was speaking to
that sailor on that very point this morning, and he said the chances
were that we'd go through all right unless we lost one of the screws."
"Screws?" inquired Whistlebinkie.
"Yes--it don't sound possible, but this ship is pushed through the water
by a couple of screws fastened in back there at the stern. It's the
screws sterning that makes the boat go," the Unwiseman remarked with all
the pride of one who really knows what he is talking about. "Of course
if one of 'em came unfastened and fell off we wouldn't go so fast and if
both of 'em fell off we wouldn't go at all, until we got the sails up
and the wind came along and blew us into port."
"Well I never!" said Whistlebinkie.
"O I knew that before I came aboard," said the Unwiseman, sagely. "So I
brought a half dozen screws along with me. There they are."
And the old gentleman plunged his hand into his pocket and produced six
bright new shining screws.
"You see I'm ready for anything," he observed. "I think every passenger
who takes one of these screwpeller boats--that's what they call 'em,
screwpellers--ought to come prepared to furnish any number of screws in
case anything happens. I'm not going to tell anybody I've got 'em
though. I'm just holding these back until the Captain tells us the
screws are gone, and then I'll offer mine."
"And suppose yours are lost too, and there ain't any wind for the
sails?" demanded Whistlebinkie.
"I've got a pair o' bellows down in my box," said the Unwiseman
gleefully. "We can sit right behind the sails and blow the whole
business right in the teeth of a dead clam."
"Dead what?" roared Mollie.
"A dead clam," said the Unwiseman. "I haven't found out why they call it
a dead clam--unless it's because it's so still--but that's the way we
sailors refer to a time at sea when there isn't a handful o' wind in
sight and the ocean is so smooth that even the billows are afraid to
roll in it for fear they'd roll off."
"We sailors!" ejaculated Whistlebinkie, scornfully under his breath.
"Hoh!"
"Well you certainly are pretty well prepared for whatever happens,
aren't you, Mr. Unwiseman," said Mollie admiringly.
"I like to think so," said the old gentleman. "There's only one thing
I've overlooked," he added.
"Wass-that?" asked Whistlebinkie.
"I have most unaccountably forgotten to bring my skates along, and I'm
sure I don't know what would happen to me without 'em if by some
mischance we ran into an iceberg and I was left aboard of it when the
steamer backed away," the Unwiseman remarked.
Here the deck steward came along with a trayful of steaming cups of
chicken broth.
"Broth, ma'am," he said politely to Mollie.
"Thank you," said Mollie. "I think I will."
Whistlebinkie and the Unwiseman also helped themselves, and a few
minutes later the Unwiseman disappeared bearing his cup in his hand. It
was three hours after this that Mollie again encountered him, sitting
down near the stern of the vessel, a doleful look upon his face, and the
cup of chicken broth untasted and cold in his hands.
"What's the matter, dearie?" the little girl asked.
"O--nothing," he said, "only I--I've been trying for the past three
hours to find out how to tie a sinker to this soup and it regularly
stumps me. I can tie it to the cup, but whether it's the motion of the
ship or something else, I don't know what, I can't think of swallowing
_that_ without feeling queer here."
And the poor old gentleman rubbed his stomach and looked forlornly out
to sea.