Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from images made available by the HathiTrust
Digital Library.)
[Illustration: THE BOBBSEYS AND OTHERS WERE ROWED TO THE SHORE.]
THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON THE DEEP BLUE SEA
BY
LAURA LEE HOPE
AUTHOR OF "THE BOBBSEY TWINS," "THE BUNNY BROWN SERIES," "THE OUTDOOR
GIRLS SERIES," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
Copyright, 1918, by Grosset & Dunlap
CONTENTS:
CHAPTER I--ON THE RAFT
CHAPTER II--TO THE RESCUE
CHAPTER III--STRANGE NEWS
CHAPTER IV--GETTING READY
CHAPTER V--OFF FOR FLORIDA
CHAPTER VI--IN A PIPE
CHAPTER VII--THE SHARK
CHAPTER VIII--THE FIGHT IN THE BOAT
CHAPTER IX--IN ST. AUGUSTINE
CHAPTER X--COUSIN JASPER'S STORY
CHAPTER XI--THE MOTOR BOAT
CHAPTER XII--THE DEEP BLUE SEA
CHAPTER XIII--FLOSSIE'S DOLL
CHAPTER XIV--FREDDIE'S FISH
CHAPTER XV--"LAND HO!"
CHAPTER XVI--UNDER THE PALMS
CHAPTER XVII--A QUEER NEST
CHAPTER XVIII--THE "SWALLOW" IS GONE
CHAPTER XIX--AWAY AGAIN
CHAPTER XX--ORANGE ISLAND
CHAPTER XXI--LOOKING FOR JACK
CHAPTER XXII--FOUND AT LAST
CHAPTER I
ON THE RAFT
"Flossie! Flossie! Look at me! I'm having a steamboat ride! Oh, look!"
"I am looking, Freddie Bobbsey!"
"No, you're not! You're playing with your doll! Look at me splash,
Flossie!"
A little boy with blue eyes and light, curling hair was standing on a
raft in the middle of a shallow pond of water left in a green meadow
after a heavy rain. In his hand he held a long pole with which he was
beating the water, making a shower of drops that sparkled in the sun.
On the shore of the pond, not far away, and sitting under an apple tree,
was a little girl with the same sort of light hair and blue eyes as
those which made the little boy such a pretty picture. Both children
were fat and chubby, and you would have needed but one look to tell that
they were twins.
"Now I'm going to sail away across the ocean!" cried Freddie Bobbsey,
the little boy on the raft, which he and his sister Flossie had made
that morning by piling a lot of old boards and fence rails together.
"Don't you want to sail across the ocean, Flossie?"
"I'm afraid I'll fall off!" answered Flossie, who was holding her doll
off at arm's length to see how pretty her new blue dress looked. "I
might fall in the water and get my feet wet."
"Take off your shoes and stockings like I did, Flossie," said the little
boy.
"Is it very deep?" Flossie wanted to know, as she laid aside her doll.
After all she could play with her doll any day, but it was not always
that she could have a ride on a raft with Freddie.
"No," answered the little blue-eyed boy. "It isn't deep at all. That is,
I don't guess it is, but I didn't fall in yet."
"I don't want to fall in," said Flossie.
"Well, I won't let you," promised her brother, though how he was going
to manage that he did not say. "I'll come back and get you on the
steamboat," he went on, "and then I'll give you a ride all across the
ocean," and he began pushing the raft, which he pretended was a
steamboat, back toward the shore where his sister sat.
Flossie was now taking off her shoes and stockings, which Freddie had
done before he got on the raft; and it was a good thing, too, for the
water splashed up over it as far as his ankles, and his shoes would
surely have been wet had he kept them on.
"Whoa, there! Stop!" cried Flossie, as she came down to the edge of the
pond, after having placed her doll, in its new blue dress, safely in the
shade under a big burdock plant. "Whoa, there, steamboat! Whoa!"
"You mustn't say 'whoa' to a boat!" objected Freddie, as he pushed the
raft close to the bank, so his sister could get on. "You only say 'whoa'
to a horse or a pony."
"Can't you say it to a goat?" demanded Flossie.
"Yes, maybe you could say it to a goat," Freddie agreed, after thinking
about it for a little while. "But you can't say it to a boat."
"Well, I wanted you to stop, so you wouldn't bump into the shore," said
the little girl. "That's why I said 'whoa.'"
"But you mustn't say it to a boat, and this raft is the same as a boat,"
insisted Freddie.
"What must I say, then, when I want it to stop?"
Freddie thought about this for a moment or two while he paddled his bare
foot in the water. Then he said:
"Well, you could say 'Halt!' maybe."
"Pooh! 'Halt' is what you say to soldiers," declared Flossie. "We said
that when we had a snow fort, and played have a snowball fight in the
winter. 'Halt' is only for soldiers."
"Oh, well, come on and have a ride," went on Freddie. "I forget what you
say when you want a boat to stop."
"Oh, I know!" cried Flossie, clapping her hands.
"What?"
"You just blow a whistle. You don't say anything. You just go 'Toot!
Toot!' and the boat stops."
"All right," agreed Freddie, glad that this part was settled. "When you
want this boat to stop, you just whistle."
"I will," said Flossie. Then she stepped on the edge of the raft nearest
the shore. The boards and rails tilted to one side. "Oh! Oh!" screamed
the little girl. "It's sinking!"
"No it isn't," Freddie said. "It always does that when you first get on.
Come on out in the middle and it will be all right."
"But it feels so--so funny on my toes!" said Flossie, with a little
shiver. "It's tickly like."
"That's the way it was with me at first," Freddie answered. "But I like
it now."
Flossie wiggled her little pink toes in the water that washed up over
the top of the raft, and then she said:
"Well, I--I guess I like it too, now. But it felt sort of--sort
of--squiggily at first."
"Squiggily" was a word Flossie and Freddie sometimes used when they
didn't know else to say.
The little girl moved over to the middle of the raft and Freddie began
to push it out from shore. The rain-water pond was quite a large one,
and was deep in places, but the children did not know this. When they
were both in the center of the raft the water came only a little way
over their feet. Indeed there were so many boards, planks and rails in
the make-believe steamboat that it would easily have held more than the
two smaller Bobbsey twins. For there was a double set of twins, as I
shall very soon tell you.
"Isn't this nice?" asked Freddie, as he pushed the pretend boat farther
out toward the middle of the pond.
"Awful nice--I like it," said Flossie. "I'm glad I helped you make this
raft."
"It's a steamboat," said Freddie. "It isn't a raft."
"Well, steamboat, then," agreed Flossie. Then she suddenly went:
"Toot! Toot!"
"Here! what you blowin' the whistle now for?" asked Freddie. "We don't
want to stop here, right in the middle of the ocean."
"I--I was only just trying my whistle to see if it would toot,"
explained the little girl. "I don't want to stop now."
Flossie walked around the middle of the raft, making the water splash
with her bare feet, and Freddie kept on pushing it farther and farther
from shore. Yet Flossie was not afraid. Perhaps she felt that Freddie
would take care of her.
The little Bobbsey twins were having lots of fun, pretending they were
on a steamboat, when they heard some one shouting to them from the
shore.
"Hi there! Come and get us!" someone was calling to them.
"Who is it?" asked Freddie.
"It's Bert; and Nan is with him," answered Flossie, as she saw a larger
boy and girl standing on the bank, near the tree under which she had
left her doll. "I guess they want a ride. Is the raft big enough for
them too, Freddie?"
"Yes, I guess so," he answered. "You stop the steamboat, Flossie--and
stop calling it a raft--and I'll go back and get them. We'll pretend
they're passengers. Stop the boat!"
"How can I stop the boat?" the little girl demanded.
"Toot the whistle! Toot the whistle!" answered her brother. "Don't you
'member, Flossie Bobbsey?"
"Oh," said Flossie. Then she went on:
"Toot! Toot!"
"Toot! Toot!" answered Freddie. He began pushing the other way on the
pole and the raft started back toward the shore they had left.
"What are you doing?" asked Bert Bobbsey, as the mass of boards and
rails came closer to him. "What are you two playing?"
"Steamboat," Freddie answered. "If you want us to stop for you, why,
you've got to toot."
"Toot what?" asked Bert.
"Toot your whistle," Freddie replied. "This is a regular steamboat. Toot
if you want me to stop."
He kept on pushing with the pole until Bert, with a laugh, made the
tooting sound as Flossie had done. Then Freddie let the raft stop near
his older brother and sister.
"Oh, Bert!" exclaimed Nan Bobbsey, "are you going to get on?"
"Sure I am," he answered, as he began taking off his shoes and
stockings. "It's big enough for the four of us. Where'd you get it,
Freddie?"
"It was partly made--I guess some of the boys from town must have
started it. Flossie and I put more boards and rails on it, and we're
having a ride."
"I should say you were!" laughed Nan.
"Come on," said Bert to his older sister, as he tossed his shoes over to
where Flossie's and Freddie's were set on a flat stone. "I'll help you
push, Freddie."
Nan, who, like Bert, had dark hair and brown eyes, began to take off her
shoes and stockings, and soon all four of them were on the raft--or
steamboat, as Freddie called it.
Now you have met the two sets of the Bobbsey twins--two pairs of them as
it were. Flossie and Freddie, the light-haired and blue-eyed ones, were
the younger set, and Bert and Nan, whose hair was a dark brown, matching
their eyes, were the older.
"This is a dandy raft--I mean steamboat," said Bert, quickly changing
the word as he saw Freddie looking at him. "It holds the four of us
easy."
Indeed the mass of boards, planks and rails from the fence did not sink
very deep in the water even with all the Bobbsey twins on it. Of course,
if they had worn shoes and stockings they would have been wet, for now
the water came up over the ankles of all of them. But it was a warm
summer day, and going barefoot especially while wading in the pond, was
fun.
Bert and Freddie pushed the raft about with long poles, and Flossie and
Nan stood together in the middle watching the boys and making believe
they were passengers taking a voyage across the ocean.
Back and forth across the pond went the raft-steamboat when, all of a
sudden, it stopped with a jerk in the middle of the stretch of water.
"Oh!" cried Flossie, catching hold of Nan to keep herself from falling.
"Oh, what's the matter?"
"Are we sinking?" asked Nan.
"No, we're only stuck in the mud," Bert answered. "You just stay there,
Flossie and Nan, and you, too, Freddie, and I'll jump off and push the
boat out of the mud. It's just stuck, that's all."
"Oh, don't jump in--it's deep!" cried Nan.
But she was too late. Bert, quickly rolling his trousers up as far as
they would go, had leaped off the raft, making a big splash of water.