"Now don"t cry any more," Flossie"s mother told her, giving the little girl a handkerchief on which to dry her tears. "We"ll get your doll back, and I"ll have to scold Freddie a little, I think."
"Maybe you can"t find him," said Flossie.
"Oh, yes I can," her mother declared.
"You can"t find him if he is hiding away."
"I don"t think he will dare hide if he hears me calling him."
"Maybe he will if he"s got my doll," pouted Flossie.
"Now, Flossie, you mustn"t talk that way. I don"t believe Freddie meant to be naughty. He was only heedless."
"Well, I want my doll!"
It was no easy matter for little Flossie to get down into the engine room of the motor boat. The little iron stairway was very steep, and the steps seemed to be very far apart.
"Let me help you, Flossie," said her mother. "I don"t want you to fall and get yourself dirty."
"Oh, Mother, it isn"t a bit dirty down here!" the little girl returned.
"Why, it"s just as clean as it can be!"
"Still, there may be some oil around."
"I"ll be very careful. But please let me go down all by myself,"
answered the little girl.
She was getting at that age now when she liked to do a great many things for herself. Often when there was a muddy place to cross in the street, instead of taking hold of somebody"s hand Flossie would make a leap across the muddy place by herself.
Knowing how much her little girl was disturbed over the loss of her doll, Mrs. Bobbsey, at this time, allowed her to have her own way. And slowly and carefully the stout little girl lowered herself from one step of the iron ladder to the next until she stood on the floor of the engine room.
"Now, I got down all right, didn"t I?" she remarked triumphantly.
"Yes, my dear, you came down very nicely," the mother answered.
Down in the engine room a man was oiling the machinery. He looked up as Mrs. Bobbsey and Flossie came down the stairs.
"Have you seen my little boy?" asked Freddie"s mother. "My little girl says he came down here."
"So he did," answered the engineer. "I asked him if he was coming to help me run the boat, and he said he would a little later. He had something else to do now, it seems."
"What?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey.
"Well, he said he wanted to go fishing. And as I knew you wouldn"t want him leaning over the rail I showed him where he could fish out of one of the portholes of the storeroom. A porthole is one of the round windows,"
the engineer said, so Flossie would know what he was talking about. "I opened one of the ports for him, and said he could drop his line out of that. Then he couldn"t come to any harm."
"Did he have a line?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey.
"Yes, a good, strong one. I guess he must have got it off Captain Crane.
He"s a fisherman himself, the captain is, and he has lots of hooks and lines on board."
"Oh, I hope Freddie didn"t have a hook!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey.
"No"m," answered the engineer. "I didn"t see any, and I don"t think he did have any. He just had a long string, and I thought all he was going to do was to dangle it out of the porthole in the storeroom. He couldn"t come to any harm there, I knew, and I could keep my eye on him once in a while."
"Did he have my rubber doll?" asked Flossie.
"I didn"t see any doll," answered the engineer. "But he"s in there now,"
he went on. "You can ask him yourself."
Looking out of the engine room, Freddie could be seen farther back in the motor boat, in a place where boxes and barrels of food, and things for the boat, were kept. One of the side ports was open, and Freddie"s head was stuck out of this, so he could not see his mother and Flossie and the engineer looking at him.
"Well, I"m glad he"s all right," said Mrs. Bobbsey with a sigh of relief. "Thank you for looking after him."
"Oh, I like children," said the man with a smile. "I have some little ones of my own at home."
Mrs. Bobbsey and Flossie went into the storeroom. Freddie did not hear them, for his head was still out of the round window. There was no danger of his falling out, for he could not have got his shoulders through, so Mrs. Bobbsey was not frightened, even though the little boy was leaning right over deep water, through which the _Swallow_ was gliding.
"Oh, where is my doll?" asked Flossie, looking about and not seeing it.
"I want my rubber doll!"
"I"ll ask Freddie," said Mrs. Bobbsey, and then, in a louder voice, she called:
"Freddie! Freddie! Where is Flossie"s doll? You mustn"t take it away from her. I shall have to punish you for this!"
For a moment it seemed as if the little boy had not heard what his mother had said. Then, when she called him again, he pulled his head in from the porthole and whispered:
"Please don"t make a noise, Mother! I"m fishing, and a noise always scares the fish away!"
"But, Freddie, fishing or not, you mustn"t take Flossie"s playthings,"
his mother went on.
Freddie did not answer for a moment. He had wound around his hand part of a heavy cord, which Mrs. Bobbsey knew was a line used to catch big fish. Freddie was really trying to catch something, it seemed.
"Is there a hook on that line?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey, fearing, after all, that her little boy might have found one.
"Oh, no, Mother, there"s no hook," Freddie answered. "I just tied on----" And then a queer look came over his face. His hand, with the line wound around it, was jerked toward the open porthole and the little boy cried:
"Oh, I got a fish! I got a fish! I got a big fish!"
CHAPTER XV
"LAND HO!"