TEN AND ONE
The next day the weather continued fine. The ship passed schools of
porpoises sporting in the sun and splashing the water like swimming
children at play.
Captain Bradstreet told Weezy that these porpoises were sometimes
called fish-hogs. They not only drive shoals of herrings and salmon and
mackerel before them, but they sometimes dive to the bottom of the sea
and root for eels and sea-worms, as pigs on land root for acorns buried
under leaves.
The second morning Paul descried a sporting whale to leeward, and an
hour later an ocean steamer. When the vessels were near each other, _La
Bretagne_ ran up several small flags.
“Those flags ask, ‘Have you seen any icebergs?’” said Captain
Bradstreet.
And when the other vessel signalled by flags that the passage was
clear, he seemed greatly pleased.
“I always dread to meet icebergs in a fog,” he remarked.
“But there isn’t a speck of fog to-day, Captain Bradstreet,” put in
Weezy.
“No, not yet, but we shall run into it off the Banks, little maiden.”
“What banks, Captain Bradstreet?” asked Weezy, taking a peep through
his spy-glass, which rested across the top of Molly’s chair. “I don’t
see anything around here but just water.”
“I mean the banks of Newfoundland, an island; but you needn’t look for
them, you can’t see them.”
“I can see something though,--something white. Look, look, Captain
Bradstreet! Don’t you believe it’s going to begin to fog?”
“Already? Is that so?” The captain raised the glass and peered through
it himself. “Yes, you’re right, Bright-Eyes. The fog _is_ ‘going to
begin’ to bear down upon us.”
And in a few moments the white fog had shrouded the vessel from stem to
stern. Then came at frequent intervals the dreary sound of the fog-horn.
“What a hoarse old thing!” exclaimed Weezy, stopping her ears in
disgust. “It brays just like Kirke’s burro, only awful worse.”
“As if it had a long sore throat,” laughed Molly, buttoning her
sister’s cape at the neck.
“They’re manning all the lookouts,” remarked the wise Pauline.
“They’re doing what, Pauline? And what are they doing it _to_?” asked
Molly playfully. “Won’t you please speak English?”
“Oh, you dear, stupid old land-sparrow! Don’t you see those wooden
cages high above the forecastle?”
“I don’t know what the forecastle is; but do you mean those little
platforms with fences round them?”
“Yes, those are the lookouts. There are five on this steamer,--I’ve
counted,--and the mate has sent a sailor to each one to watch and sing
out if there’s danger of our running into anything.”
“Ugh! I wouldn’t be in their places for a hundred dollars,” said Molly.
“But Kirke would like it, you may depend. I never heard of such a boy!
To think of the way he went down into that well to save Sing Wung!”
“Kirke is a noble little fellow,” returned Captain Bradstreet heartily,
to Molly’s intense satisfaction. “And here he is now, coming aft, and
Paul is behind him.”
Pauline flirted her handkerchief at the lads as her father spoke, and
they walked across the wet deck toward her, Paul slipping once on the
way and nearly falling.
“A miss is as good as a mile,” said his sister merrily, when he came up
to her.
“Some misses are as good as two miles, if not better,” said Kirke,
attempting to be witty and bowing with much gallantry first to Pauline
and next to Molly. “Oh, girls, I tell you we’ve been having fun!”
“With what, Kirke?” they both inquired. “With shuffle-board?”
“No, no, not with shuffle-board, but with--well, you might call it
‘shovel-aboard,’ if you want to,” said Kirke, “dropping into” wit
again; whereupon Paul chuckled and cried, “Pretty good, Kirke. You see
we’ve been watching the men shovel coal into the furnace.”
“Can’t we go down there, too?” asked Molly, taking a step forward.
“No, indeed, not you girls! You’d spoil your dresses. Why, the furnaces
are a deck below the boilers.”
“And halfway down the stairs give out and you have to go the rest of
the way on a ladder,” added Kirke.
“It’s a droll place, though, when you get there,” resumed Paul.
“Coal-bins all around,--they call ’em bunkers,--and stokers black as
soot wheeling the coal to the furnaces in barrows.”
“Stokers?” repeated Weezy. “Kirke, did I ever see a stoker? Is it a
donkey?”
“Not always, little Miss Quiz,” replied Kirke with a giggle; and they
all laughed, as if she had said something very foolish.
“Now, I know you’re making fun. I think you’re as unpolite as you can
be!”
Her head drooped; but before the tears could fall, Captain Bradstreet
soothed her wounded feelings by whispering in her ear that little girls
who had never been to sea couldn’t be expected to know about stokers.
He would tell her in confidence that stokers are the men who tend the
fires on a steamboat.
“The poor souls weren’t more than half dressed,” said Paul, when peace
had been restored. “But still they looked ready to melt. You never saw
such a fire as they keep up in those furnaces, girls.”
“Threw coal into the fire-boxes every minute or two,” interposed Kirke.
Molly suddenly fell to dusting her brother’s coat with her
handkerchief. “You’ve run against something white, Kirke. And so has
Paul. They don’t keep their flour-barrels down there, I should hope.”
“No; that’s a stoker’s mark. One of the stokers drew a chalk-line
around our waists and said we couldn’t go till we’d paid our fee.”
“A stupid joke, I should call it,” said Molly, for the chalk-mark was
hard to remove.
“A pretty old joke,” responded the captain. “They always try it on
visitors. I hope you took it in good part, boys?”
“Oh, yes, papa,” said Paul. “Each of us gave the man a dime.”
“And made money by it, too,” declared Kirke. “’Twas well worth a
quarter to be let out of that hot hole.”
“I’d like some of the heat up here,” said Molly, her teeth chattering.
“Miss Evans had to put away her writing and go below, her hands were so
stiff.”
“She’s writing a story, Kirke, and she’ll read it to me sometime. She
promised she would,” exclaimed Weezy, very proud of the notice she
received from her new friend.
“We just met her at the foot of the companion-way with her tablet in
her hand,” said Kirke.
“Yes,” added Paul, “and she was clutching that bag of hers, as usual. I
believe she’s carrying diamonds in it.”
“Then you must believe her to be a very silly young woman, my son. I
wonder you don’t tell her that passengers are expected to give their
valuables to the purser, to be locked in his safe,” observed the
captain jestingly. “For my part, I never should suspect that the poor
girl was rolling in gold.”
“I’m sure she isn’t rich. She dresses very plainly,” said Pauline. “By
the way, what makes rich people want to ‘roll,’ I wonder?”
“Especially in gold,” added Molly flippantly, as they entered the
dining-saloon. “I shouldn’t want to roll in gold, of all things. It’s
one of the hardest things in the world.”
“And the hardest to get,” broke in Paul, with a grin.
“What would you like to roll in, Molly? Soft money?” said Kirke, with a
grin of his own. “That shows your politics, miss. You’re a soft-money
girl.”
“A soft, mooney girl, Kirke Rowe? She’s no such thing. I deny it!”
cried Pauline, pretending to have misunderstood. “Now bring the
Alphabet Bewitched, there’s a good boy, and we’ll have a game of
letters.”
With the beginning of the game, the children’s lively banter ceased,
and Captain Bradstreet walked off to the further end of the saloon to
converse with Mr. and Mrs. Rowe.
That was the last quiet morning on board ship for three long days; for
in the night a rough gale swept over the sea, tossing the vessel to and
fro, and almost hurling passengers from their berths. Once Molly was
awakened by a loud crash, and cried out in terror to Pauline in the
upper berth.
“It’s only dishes breaking in the dining-saloon,” yawned Pauline,
turning over. “Why don’t you go to sleep?”
As her father proudly said, Pauline was a chip of the old block, a born
sailor. She liked the swell of the ocean. She was never timid, never
seasick. The same was true of Captain Bradstreet and of Kirke. They all
went to the dining-table three times a day, sometimes five, undisturbed
even though the plates might dance a jig, and the glasses in the rack
above them jingle and jump and threaten to come down upon their heads.
The rest of the party, more or less ill for a time, rallied after the
abatement of the storm--all of them but Weezy. When at last able to
be carried on deck, she was still pale and languid, and felt rather
forlorn.
The rest of the company made every effort to entertain her, but
in vain. There were only two people on whom the little maid would
condescend to smile. One of these was Miss Evans, who read aloud some
of the delightful tales she had written; the other was a young man
who never even spoke to the child; but you will hear of him in the
following chapter.