THE SHIPWRECK
“Look after Trouble!” Mrs. Martin cried to the two girls the moment
Janet told this startling news to her mother. “I’ll get the boys out
of the lake!”
Down the path she ran, and so quickly had she gotten up that she
knocked Trouble down. He sat down on the porch, rather hard, and he
was just going to cry, not knowing what it was all about, when Janet
took him up in her arms.
“Don’t cry, Trouble! Don’t cry!” she said.
“Trouble fell down!” said the little fellow, in a voice that sounded
tearful. “Momsie make Trouble fall!”
“But she didn’t mean to,” said Lola, thinking to help Janet take care
of Baby William. “Momsie has gone to help get Ted and Tom out of the
lake.”
“Trouble want to go in ’ake!” exclaimed Janet’s brother.
“Oh, no, Trouble! Two in a lake at once is enough!” said Janet. “I
wonder if they’re out yet,” she added.
“Uncle Ben and Mr. Martin will have them out by this time,” replied
Lola. “We forgot to tell your mother that they were after them.”
And when the mother of the Curlytops reached the end of the path from
the bungalow, where she could look down to the lake and the dock her
husband owned, she saw that Uncle Ben and Mr. Martin were lifting from
the water two small, dripping boys.
“Oh, they’ve got them out!” gasped Mrs. Martin, and she did not run so
fast now, for she was quite out of breath. “Oh, I thought Ted and Tom
had fallen in when no one was near to help them!”
As she reached the pier she saw Ted and Tom placed on the end of
it—Tom by Uncle Ben and Ted by his father. Water gushed out from the
shoes of the small boys, and even seemed to splatter from their many
pockets, and both of them were gasping and trying to wipe the drops
from their eyes. Skyrocket was prancing about and barking as loudly as
he could bark. At the same time he was wagging his tail, and that was
a good sign, for it showed he knew Ted and Tom were all right.
“What happened?” gasped Mrs. Martin, as she hurried down to the dock.
“Are you hurt?”
“Not a bit!” answered Uncle Ben, with a laugh. “Only wet. And they’ll
soon dry in this wind.”
The wind was, indeed, blowing hard, and it was bringing a storm with
it. The lake was getting rough.
“What happened, Teddy?” asked his mother.
“Oh, it was just a little accident,” explained Mr. Martin, as he and
Uncle Ben got out of a boat from which they had reached over and
pulled Ted and Tom out of the water. “The boys were helping us make
everything snug from the storm that is coming, when Ted slipped off
the pier and went into the lake.”
“And Tom tried to grab me, and he fell in, too!” added Ted. “Then we
were both in, and we couldn’t swim very well with our clothes on.” Ted
and Tom could both swim a little, not so very well though even with
their clothes off.
“I could ’a’ caught you if I’d ’a’ seen you falling in,” declared Tom.
“But you went in so quick!”
“Yes, it didn’t take him long!” laughed Mr. Martin. “He seemed to jump
in as quickly as a frog jumps in off a log when he hears a boy with a
dog coming.”
“And then what happened?” asked Mrs. Martin, as she wiped some of the
water off Tom’s face with her handkerchief.
“Oh, well, Uncle Ben and I were right here. We jumped into a boat,”
said Mr. Martin, “and reached over and lifted the boys out. They were
trying to swim, but couldn’t very well. Did you swallow much water?”
he asked them.
“A little,” admitted Ted.
“And I ate some, too,” said Tom. “It’s better than the ocean water,
’cause it isn’t salty.”
“Go up to the house now and get on dry clothes,” advised Mr. Martin.
“Uncle Ben and I will finish making fast the boats.”
“Yes, come with me,” said Ted’s mother.
Ted and Tom went up the hill with Mrs. Martin, just as Janet and Lola,
leading Trouble by the band, were coming down to the dock.
“Oh, are they all right?” asked the two little girls.
“All right! We had a swim with our clothes on!” boasted Tom.
So the little accident was soon over, and no one was much the worse.
“Well, now it can blow as much as it likes,” said Daddy Martin after
supper that night, when they were all sitting on the bungalow porch.
“All our boats are snug, the candy house on the pier is shut up, and
we are ready for rain or snow.”
“Oh, not snow, Daddy!” exclaimed Mrs. Martin. “We aren’t ready for
snow. This bungalow would be too cold for the Curlytops to be snowed
in.”
“Oh, do you ’member how we got snowed in once?” asked Janet of her
brother.
“Sure I do,” he answered. “Say, we did have lots of fun then!”
And those of you who have read about what took place when the
Curlytops were snowed in will recall what happened to Ted, Janet and
the others.
“I think the storm is coming along fast,” said Uncle Ben, as he
listened to the sighing of the wind in the trees around the bungalow.
“It’s going to rain, but I don’t believe it will snow, though it may
hail, and hail stones are worse than snow.”
“Can we throw hail stones, Uncle Ben?” asked Ted, while he built up a
little house of dominoes for Trouble on the floor of the porch.
“Well, if they don’t melt too soon you might throw hail stones,”
answered the sailor.
So they sat on the porch and talked until it was time to go to bed.
Meanwhile the wind blew harder and harder.
Then, in the middle of the night it began to rain. But the Curlytops
and Trouble, and Tom and Lola did not know this, for they were asleep.
Skyrocket, the dog, who slept in a little box on the porch, was
awakened by the storm, and whined. He was lonesome, so Mrs. Martin let
him into the bungalow for the rest of the night.
In the morning, when the Curlytops and their friends awakened and
looked from the window, they saw how bad the storm was. It was raining
very hard, and the wind blew in great gusts that shook the trees, and
bent the smaller ones half way to the earth.
“Oh, look at the lake!” cried Ted, as he pressed his nose flat against
the window. “See the big waves!”
“I wouldn’t want to be out on it now,” added Janet.
“Pooh! I’d go out on it now, if I had a big boat; wouldn’t you, Ted?”
asked Tom.
“Sure I—well, maybe I would if daddy went with me,” was the answer.
“We’ll not try it,” said his father. “You had better stay around
here.”
“Can’t we go out at all?” asked Ted. “I have rubber boots and a rubber
coat.”
“Oh, you may go down on the pier after breakfast, if some one goes
with you,” said Mrs. Martin.
“Oh, can’t I go too?” cried Janet.
“Yes, I think so. You all have rubber cloaks or coats and rubber
boots,” said Mr. Martin.
It did not seem to rain quite so hard after breakfast, though the wind
was still very strong. So, when the four children were well wrapped
up, Uncle Ben and Daddy Martin took them down to the dock to look at
Silver Lake in a storm. Trouble wanted to go, also, but his mother
made him stay in with her.
At first Trouble cried, but Nora made him a little paddy-cake, with
sugar on it, when she was baking a pie, and this pleased Trouble
almost as much as if he had gone out.
“Look at the big waves on the lake!” cried Ted, as he and the others
walked out on the pier.
And indeed Silver Lake was very rough. The wind made quite high
waves—not as high as on the ocean, of course, but quite too high for a
small rowboat.
“Well, all our boats are safe,” said Daddy Martin to Uncle Ben, as
they stood on the pier near the children.
“Yes, I think so,” answered the sailor. “Hello!” he suddenly cried, as
he looked off across the white-capped waves. “There’s a boat that
isn’t all right, though.”
He pointed to a motor boat in the middle of the lake. It was being
tossed to and fro, and as Ted and the others looked they saw something
white waved from the boat.
“They’re in trouble!” said Daddy Martin. “I guess their motor has
stopped and they can’t move. Maybe their boat is leaking.”
“Is it a shipwreck?” asked Ted, who had heard stories from Uncle Ben
about great ships that were wrecked in big storms on the ocean.
“Well, yes, you might call it that,” said Uncle Ben. “Oh, look!” cried
the sailor. “They’re going to turn over!”
As he spoke a big wave seemed to sweep over the motor boat that was
out on the middle of the lake. Ted, Janet and the others, watching,
saw the craft swing about. Again they saw something white waved, and a
moment later the boat seemed to turn right over on its side and some
men were spilled out into the water.
“They’re shipwrecked now, all right!” cried Tom.
“Yes, indeed they are,” said Mr. Martin.
“We’ll have to go to their help,” cried Uncle Ben, above the roar of
the wind and the patter of the rain. “We’ll have to go to the rescue!”