THE DEEP BLUE SEA
"Glad to see you! Glad to see you! Come right on board!" cried a hearty voice, as the Bobbsey twins and their father and mother walked down the long dock which ran out into the harbor of St. Augustine.
"That"s Captain Crane, with whom I was talking last night," said Mr.
Bobbsey to his wife in a low voice.
"And is that the boat we are to take the trip in?" she asked, for the seaman was standing on the deck of a fine motor craft, dark red in color, and with shiny bra.s.s rails. A cabin, with white curtains at the portholes, or windows, seemed to offer a good resting place.
"Yes, that"s the _Swallow_, as Captain Crane calls his boat," Mr.
Bobbsey said.
"She"s a beaut!" exclaimed Bert.
"Come on board! Come on board! Glad to see you!" called the old captain again, as he waved his hand to the Bobbseys.
"Oh, I like him, don"t you?" whispered Nan to Bert.
"Yes," he replied. "He"s fine; and that"s a dandy boat!"
Indeed the _Swallow_ was a beautiful craft. She was about eighty feet long, and wide enough to give plenty of room on board, and also to be safe in a storm. There was a big cabin "forward," as the seamen say, or in the front part of the boat, and another "aft," or at the stern, or back part. This was for the men who looked after the gasolene motor and ran the boat, while the captain and the pa.s.sengers would live in the front cabin, out of which opened several little staterooms, or places where bunks were built for sleeping.
The _Swallow_ was close to the dock, so one could step right on board without any trouble, and the children were soon standing on the deck, looking about them.
"Oh, I like this!" cried Freddie. "It"s a nicer boat than the _Sea Queen_!" This was the name of the big steamer on which they had come from New York. "Have you got a fire engine here, Captain?" asked the little Bobbsey twin.
"Oh, yes, we"ve a pump to use in case of fire, but I hope we won"t have any," the seaman said. "I don"t s"pose you"d call it a fire engine, though, but we couldn"t have that on a motor boat."
"No, I guess not," Freddie agreed, after thinking it over a bit. "I"ve a little fire engine at home," he went on, "and it squirts real water."
"And he squirted some on me," put in Flossie. "On me and my doll."
"But I didn"t mean to--an" it was only play," Freddie explained.
"Yes, it was only in fun, and I didn"t mind very much," went on the little girl. "My rubber doll--she likes water," she added, holding out the doll in question for Captain Crane to see.
"That"s good!" he said with a smile. "When we get out on the ocean you can tie a string around her waist, and let her have a swim in the waves."
"Won"t a shark get her?" Flossie demanded.
"No, I guess sharks don"t like to chew on rubber dolls," laughed Captain Crane. "Anyhow we"ll try to keep out of their way. But make yourselves at home, folks. I hope you"ll be with me for quite a while, and you may as well get used to the boat. Mr. Dent has sailed in her many times, and he likes the _Swallow_ first rate."
"Can she go fast?" asked Bert.
"Yes, she can fairly skim over the waves, and that"s why I call her the _Swallow_," replied the seaman. "As soon as Mr. Dent heard I was on sh.o.r.e, waiting for some one to hire my boat, he told me not to sail again until you folks came, as you and he were going on a voyage together. I hope you are going?" and he looked at Mr. Bobbsey.
"Yes, we have made up our minds to go," said the children"s father. "We are going to look for a boy who may be all alone on one of the islands off the Florida coast. We hope we can rescue him."
"I hope so, too," said Captain Crane. "I was shipwrecked on one of those islands myself, once, as your Cousin Jasper was. And it was dreadful there, and I got terribly lonesome before I was taken off."
"Did you have a goat?" asked Flossie.
"No, my little girl, I didn"t have a goat," answered Mr. Crane. "Why do you ask that?"
"Because Robinson Crusoe was on an island like that and he had a goat,"
Flossie went on.
"When you were shipwrecked did you have to eat your shoes?" Freddie queried.
"Oh, ho! No, I guess not!" laughed Captain Crane. "I see what you mean.
You must have had read to you stories of sailors that got so hungry, after being shipwrecked, that they had to boil their leather shoes to make soup. Well, I wasn"t quite so bad off as that. I found some oysters on my island, and I had a little food with me. And that, with a spring of water I found, kept me alive until a ship came and took me off."
"Well, I hope the poor boy on the island where Cousin Jasper was is still alive, or else that he has been rescued," said Mrs. Bobbsey.
"I hope so, too," said the captain. "Now come and I"ll show you about my boat."
He was very proud of his craft, which was a beautiful one, and also strong enough to stand quite a hard storm. There was plenty of room on board for the whole Bobbsey family, as well as for Mr. Dent, besides a crew of three men and the captain. There were cute little bedrooms for the children, a larger room for Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey, one for the captain and there was even a bathroom.
There was also a kitchen, called a cook"s galley, and another room that could be used in turn for a parlor, a sitting-room or a dining-room.
This was the main cabin, and as you know there is not room enough on a motor boat to have a lot of rooms, one has to be used for different things.
"What do you call this room?" questioned Flossie, as she looked around at the tiny compartment.
"Well, you can call this most anything," laughed the captain. "When you use it for company, it"s a parlor; and when you use it for just sitting around in, it"s a sitting-room; and when you use it to eat in, why, then what would you call it?"
"Why, then you"d call it a dining-room," answered the little girl promptly.
"And if I got my hair cut in it, then it would be a barber shop, wouldn"t it?" cried Freddie.
"Why, Freddie Bobbsey!" gasped his twin. "I"m sure I wouldn"t want my dining-room to be a barber shop," she added disdainfully.
"Well, some places have got to be barber shops," defended the little boy staunchly.
"I don"t think they have barber shops on motor boats, do they, Daddy?"
"They might have if the boat was big enough," answered Mr. Bobbsey.
"However, I don"t believe we"ll have a barber shop on this craft."
"When are we going to start?" asked Bert, when they had gone all over the _Swallow_, even to the place where the crew slept and where the motors were.
"We will start as soon as Cousin Jasper is ready," said Mr. Bobbsey. "It may be a week yet, I hope no longer."
"So do I, for the sake of that poor boy on the island," said Mrs.
Bobbsey. "Tell me, has nothing been heard of him since he was shipwrecked there with Mr. Dent?" she asked Captain Crane. "Has no other vessel stopped there but the one that took off Cousin Jasper?"
"I guess not," answered Captain Crane. "According to Mr. Dent"s tell, this island isn"t much known, being one of the smallest. It was only because the men on the ship that took him off saw his flag that they stood in and got him."
"And then they didn"t find the boy," said Mr. Bobbsey.