WHAT TROUBLE FOUND
Mrs. Martin almost dropped the egg she had in her hand, and Uncle Ben
let fall to the floor a pan he was going to put on the stove in which
to boil some potatoes. Luckily, he had not yet put the water in it.
Daddy Martin came hurrying in from where he was getting ready to run
the automobile under a shed. He stooped down and looked closely at
Janet.
“What did you say?” he asked. “Are you playing some game, Jan?”
“Oh, no, it isn’t a game!” exclaimed the little Curlytop girl. “The
wind blew, and it just blew Teddy away. He’s out in the middle of the
lake now, I guess!”
“The lake! The wind! I see what she means!” cried Uncle Ben.
Out of the door, and out on the bungalow porch ran Uncle Ben, followed
by Mr. and Mrs. Martin. Jan, still holding Trouble by the hand,
followed more slowly.
“There he is!” cried Mr. Martin, pointing toward Silver Lake, which,
just then, was glowing red from the setting sun. “Ted is out in a
boat.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean,” added Janet. “Teddy got in a boat. He
wanted me to come, and Trouble, too, but I wouldn’t. But Teddy got in
a boat, and the wind did blow him away, it did!”
“That’s what I thought the minute she spoke about the wind!” cried
Uncle Ben.
“Oh, Teddy!” cried Mrs. Martin. “Is it deep out there?” she asked her
husband.
“No, not very,” he answered. “The little tyke! I thought I told him
not to get into a boat alone,” he went on.
“Never mind about that, now!” cried Mrs. Martin. “How are we going to
get him back?”
“Oh, I’ll do that easily,” said Uncle Ben. “I’ll row out and get him.
I didn’t know he knew enough to hoist the sail on a boat,” he added.
“You can’t get him that way,” said Mr. Martin. “The wind is blowing
harder now, and the boat is sailing faster, even if Ted doesn’t know
enough to fasten the sail in the right way. You can’t get him by
rowing out to him, Uncle Ben.”
“Then how can we reach him?” asked Mrs. Martin.
“In a motor boat,” her husband answered. “There’s one over at the next
pier. We can row over there, start the motor boat, and soon bring back
Teddy and the sailboat.”
Uncle Ben and Daddy Martin hurried down to where the rowboats were
tied. Getting into one, they quickly sent it skimming over the water
to the next pier. They could row over much more quickly than they
could have walked around the shore.
Mrs. Martin, with Jan and Trouble standing beside her, eagerly
watched, now and then looking out to where the sailboat was drifting
slowly down the lake.
Pretty soon she heard the sound:
“Chug! Chug! Chuggity-chug-chug!”
“They’ve started!” she exclaimed.
Janet, too, knew what that sound meant. It was the noise made by the
engine of the motor boat. Soon the boat, which ran something like an
automobile, and did not have to be rowed nor need a sail blown by the
wind, moved away from the dock, and, with Daddy Martin steering it,
went out to bring Teddy back to shore.
A sailboat can go very fast in a swift breeze when the sail is rightly
hoisted, but even a fast sailboat is not as fast as a motor boat, and
soon Daddy Martin and Uncle Ben, in their craft, were coming closer
and closer to the tiny ship in which Teddy was riding.
The little fellow had not meant to go sailing all alone in this way,
and he was as much surprised as any one when the boat moved away from
the dock. But he was a wise little chap, and when he found himself
going out, away from the dock and the shore, he very properly sat down
on the bottom of the boat, out of the way of the swinging boom, and
kept still. It was the best thing he could have done.
But when he saw the motor boat coming up behind him, and noticed his
father and Uncle Ben in it, Teddy could keep still no longer.
“Daddy! Daddy!” he cried. “Take me out! Take me home!”
“Yes! Yes! We’re coming! We’ll take you home all right,” said his
father.
“Sit down! Sit down!” shouted Uncle Ben. “Sit down, Ted, or the boom
will knock you overboard.”
Teddy did not know exactly what the “boom” was, but afterward he
learned that it was the big stick on the bottom of the sail that swung
from side to side. And if Ted had sat up too straight this stick was
likely to hit him. Teddy knew that to fall “overboard” meant to fall
out of the boat. He had fallen “overboard” off the raft that day he
played with Tom, and he had not forgotten.
So when Teddy heard Uncle Ben shouting to him to sit down the little
Curlytop boy did this at once. And it is a good thing he did, too, for
a moment later the wind swung around the lower part of the sail, with
the big, heavy wooden boom, and Teddy would have been knocked into the
lake by it if he had not been on the bottom of the boat.
“That’s the boy!” cried Uncle Ben, as he saw that Teddy had minded.
“Now stay that way until we get you out.”
On chugged the motor boat, and soon it was alongside the sailboat.
Uncle Ben gave a jump from the motor boat into the sailing craft, and,
in an instant, had loosed the ropes that held up the sail. Down it
came, and, as the wind no longer had anything to blow on, the sailboat
moved more slowly. But, no matter how fast it moved, the motor boat
was beside it now, and Mr. Martin tied both craft together with a
rope.
“Why, Teddy! what made you go sailing all alone?” his father asked the
little boy, as he took him into the motor boat. “Didn’t I tell you not
to get into a boat unless your mother, Uncle Ben, or I were with you?”
“Yes, Daddy. But I—I—forgot!” confessed Teddy. “I won’t do it again!”
“That’s right!” exclaimed Mr. Martin. “And now how did you come to
haul up the sail? I’m sure there wasn’t any sail on this boat when we
arrived at Silver Lake. How did you get the sail up, Teddy? You aren’t
strong enough to hoist it yourself.”
“No, I didn’t do it,” admitted Teddy. “A man did it for me.”
“A man? What man?” Mr. Martin asked, and he looked in surprise at
Uncle Ben.
“I didn’t do it, that’s sure,” said Mr. Wilson. “And I didn’t see any
strange man around the dock.”
“Nor I,” said Mr. Martin. “Are you sure, Teddy, that a man hoisted the
sail for you?”
“Well, I didn’t ask him to,” went on the little boy. “I was playing
around with Jan and Trouble. You were up in the bungalow—you and Uncle
Ben and mother.”
“Yes, I know that part,” said Mr. Martin. “Go on. Tell me who put up
the sail for you. He shouldn’t have done it, whoever it was.”
“They didn’t do it for _me_, zactly,” went on Teddy. “I was playing,
and I said to Jan, ‘let’s get in a boat’ and she said, ‘no,’ and I
went down to get in and I saw a man then putting up the sail.”
“Did the man say anything?” asked Uncle Ben.
“He looked at me kind of funny,” replied Teddy. “An’ then he said:
‘What? You here? Then I’ve got to run!’”
“The man was surprised, was he, Ted?” asked his father.
“Yes, he was terrible s’prised, I guess,” answered the little chap.
“Did he run away?” asked Uncle Ben.
“Yes, he ran away as soon as he saw me. But he left the sail up on the
boat, and I thought maybe daddy sent him to put it up for me, and I
got into the boat, and the wind blew, and it did blow me away, it
did.”
“Yes, Janet told us that part!” said his father. “It’s lucky she saw
you before you were blown clear across the lake. I can’t understand
what man it was, though, who hoisted the sail,” said Mr. Martin.
“Have you any man working for you around the boats?” asked Uncle Ben.
“Not yet, though I’m going to hire a man and a boy to help you,”
answered the father of the Curlytops. “This man must have been a
stranger, though why he should hoist the sail on one of my boats and
then run at the sight of Teddy is more than I can make out.”
“Maybe he has been using the sailboat while you were at home in
Cresco,” suggested Uncle Ben. “He didn’t hear us come, and he came
down to the dock to take a ride as he had been used to doing. Then he
saw Teddy. He thought he might be caught, so he ran away.”
“I guess that’s how it was,” agreed Mr. Martin. “But I’d like to know
who the man was. What did he look like, Teddy, boy?”
“Oh, he—he was—he was just a—man!”
“I know,” replied his father. “But was he a man like Uncle Ben or like
me?”
Teddy looked first at his father, then at Uncle Ben.
“He was like both of you,” he said. “That’s the kind of man he was.”
“We can’t tell very much from that,” said Mr. Wilson, with a smile.
“No, but we must be on the watch,” said Mr. Martin. “I don’t want
strange men hoisting the sails on my boats. They might sail off in one
and not come back.”
“Maybe it was a burglar!” exclaimed Teddy. “I guess he looked like a
burglar—only I never saw one.”
“No, I presume you never did,” agreed his father. “But we must get
back to shore, or your mother will be worried more than she is now.
Though she can see that you are all right, I suppose. Anyhow I’ll make
sure.”
Mr. Martin stood up in the motor boat and held Teddy high in his arms,
so that Mrs. Martin, on shore, could see that the little boy was safe.
Teddy’s mother waved her handkerchief, to let her husband know that
she had seen and understood.
Then the motor boat was started again, and back to the dock it went,
towing the sailing craft.
“Oh, Teddy, what made you do it!” cried his mother as she clasped him
in her arms.
“He won’t do it again!” declared Mr. Martin, after he had explained
how it happened.
“But it was very curious!” said Mrs. Martin. “I don’t like it.”
“I wants to go in sailboat!” cried Trouble, as they all walked up from
the lake to the bungalow.
“Now let’s settle this once and for all,” said Mr. Martin solemnly.
“None of you children is to get into a boat unless one of us is with
you—don’t forget!”
He shook his finger at the two Curlytops and at Trouble. They knew
what this meant, and each one promised.
“Come to supper!” called Uncle Ben a little later, and they sat down
to the table which had been set under the tent in front of the
bungalow.
Never was there a jollier meal. Then came a delightful time of sitting
under the trees in the cool of the evening, until Mrs. Martin said in
a low voice:
“Well, Trouble has gone to by-low land in my arms, and I think it must
be time for Ted and Jan to see what they are going to dream about.
They’ve had a long day of it.”
“That’s right!” agreed Uncle Ben. “Come, Curlytops—tumble in! as we
used to say on shipboard when we went to bed.”
There were a number of beds in the bungalow, and soon the Curlytops,
as well as Trouble, were asleep.
Teddy was having a queer dream, about sailing in a boat with his dog
Skyrocket perched up on top of the mast, when suddenly the little
Curlytop lad was awakened by hearing Trouble calling to him. Ted
opened his eyes to see his little brother, in his baggy pyjamas,
standing beside the cot bed where Teddy slept. Trouble lifted up
something round and black and shiny and toppled it over into Ted’s
cot.
“’Ook what Trouble found!” cried the little fellow. “Trouble det him
down by de ’ake, and bringed him in. He’s nice, but he not as nice as
Skywocket! He don’t bark, but he stick out hims head an’ pull it in
a’den! ’Ook what Trouble found!”