SUE IN THE CELLAR
“Yes,” laughed Bunny Brown, as he steadied himself against his
father’s legs and gazed off over the tumbling waves, “I guess this is
the rolling ocean.”
“Do you like it?” asked Mr. Brown.
“Sure, I like it,” was the answer.
“Does it make you feel sick?” went on Bunny’s father.
“Sick? No,” answered the little boy.
“Well, don’t be afraid if you feel a little ill,” went on Mr. Brown.
“Sometimes the rolling ocean makes people sick, but they soon get
over it.”
“I’m not going to be sick,” declared Bunny.
“Maybe I am,” announced Sue hopefully. She had just come up on deck
with her mother. “I feel sort of dizzy like.”
“I can’t say that I exactly like this rolling ocean,” remarked Mrs.
Brown.
“Then you had better go below and lie down,” advised her husband.
“Supper will soon be ready.”
“I don’t believe I’m going to care for any,” said Mrs. Brown in a low
voice.
That night Sue’s mother was made a trifle ill by the heaving, rocking
motion of the _Beacon_ as the ship got farther and farther out on the
rolling ocean. She did not want to eat anything, and the next day she
was still sick.
Bunny and Sue, however, did not seem to mind the strange motion,
and they braved it out with their father, who was not subject to
seasickness. Toward the end of the day Mrs. Brown was feeling better.
That is a way seasickness has. At first it makes you very ill indeed,
and you think you are never going to get better. But it passes and
you feel fine again.
“Well, Mr. Brown,” said Captain Ward, as he came into the dining
cabin for the evening meal and saw the family at one of the tables,
“have your folks found their sea legs yet?”
“Just about getting them on,” laughed Mr. Brown.
“That’s good. Well, things are going to be better from now on, I
think. And we’ll soon be in very pleasant waters.”
“What does he mean about finding our sea legs?” whispered Sue to her
mother. “I have the same legs I had, haven’t I?”
“Captain Ward means that you are over being seasick,” explained Mr.
Brown. “The sailors say, when that happens, that a person has found
his ‘sea legs’—that is, he can go about the heaving decks without
feeling ill.”
“I feel fine!” cried Bunny Brown. “I’m going to fish to-morrow.”
“Well, don’t catch any more of my sailors’ hats!” laughed Captain
Ward as he took his place at the table.
Bunny wondered for a moment how the captain knew about the accident
with the string and the bent pin, but then he guessed that one of the
crew told the others and so the story got around.
“You’ll be careful, will you, Bunny?” asked the captain, playfully
shaking his finger at the little boy.
“Oh, yes, sir, I’ll be careful,” he promised.
Bunny asked his father for a real hook to fasten on the piece of
cord, but Mr. Brown told the little fellow that it would be hard to
catch fish on the simple cord.
“To get fish from a fast-moving steamer, Bunny,” said Mr. Brown,
“you must have a very long line that will go away out beyond the
propeller, and such a line must be very strong. Then, too, since it
is pulled through the water very fast, there is not much chance for a
fish to take the bait. Better wait until we anchor, and then it will
be easier to fish.”
So Bunny, knowing his father’s advice was good, gave up the idea of
trying to catch fish for the family dinner and found something else
with which to amuse himself on the ship. There was plenty to do, and
more to see, so he and Sue were not lonesome, though they could not
run around as much nor roam as far as they could in the woods and
fields at home.
“If Mr. Pott was here with us,” said Sue to Bunny that afternoon when
they had finished playing a game of tag, “maybe he could find his
ship with his son Harry on it and the treasure.”
“No, he couldn’t find it,” decided Bunny, after thinking it over.
“Why not?” Sue asked.
“Because the _Mary Bell_ was sunk,” said Bunny. “It went down in the
ocean. So how could Mr. Pott find it, even if he was here—and he
isn’t here?”
“I know he isn’t here,” said Sue. “But he could be here if they would
let him out of the hospital. Maybe there’s a little piece of his ship
that didn’t sink, and he could find that.”
“Maybe,” admitted Bunny. “But even if there was a little piece of his
schooner left, it wouldn’t be big enough for his son to be on it, nor
the treasure.”
“Maybe not,” agreed Sue. “I wonder if anybody will take Mr. Pott some
more flowers and apples, Bunny?”
“I guess maybe they will,” he said.
A little while after that, as Bunny was watching one of the sailors
splice, or mend, a rope on deck, Sue thought she would go to the
stateroom and get her doll.
“I guess my doll needs some sea air,” said the little girl to herself.
Mrs. Brown was lying down in the stateroom, half asleep, when Sue
entered softly to get the doll.
“What are you going to do, my dear?” asked Mrs. Brown drowsily.
“I’m going up on deck with my doll,” answered the little girl.
“Is Bunny with you?”
“Yes, Mother, he’s up on deck. So is daddy.”
“All right. Be careful going up and down the stairs.”
“I will,” promised Sue.
Sue meant to be careful, but instead of going upstairs, or up one
of the companionways, as stairs are usually called on a vessel, Sue
started down.
Perhaps she was thinking too much about the sea air her doll was
going to breathe, or perhaps she was thinking too much about poor Mr.
Pott. At any rate, Sue went down instead of up. She went down and
down and at last she found herself in a dim part of the ship where
only a little electric light here and there gave an uncertain glow.
Then Sue realized that she had gone wrong. She looked about her,
clutched her doll tightly under her arm, and exclaimed:
“Oh, I guess I’m down cellar!”
In a way, she was in the “cellar,” or hold, of the ship.
As Sue looked about her in the dimness she heard a noise. Then in the
glow of one electric light she saw a black man coming toward her.
The man was very big, bigger, Sue thought, than anybody she had ever
seen.