_ CHAPTER VI. THE SEA-EAGLE
Mun Bun was not a very disobedient little boy; but as Daddy Bunker said, he had a better "forgetery" than he had memory. Mun Bun quite forgot that Mother Bunker had told him not to leave the bigger stateroom where she was setting things to rights in her usual careful way. For, as they were to be several days on the steamship, she must have a place for things and everything in its place, or she could not comfortably take care of Daddy and six children.
Then, Mun Bun was so quick! Just as Laddie said: one minute he was there, and the next minute he wasn't. He seemed to glide right out of sight. Cowboy Jack had called Mun Bun a blob of quicksilver; and you know you cannot put your finger on a blob of quicksilver, it runs so fast.
That is what Mun Bun had done. Mother Bunker's back was turned; Russ and Rose were on deck; the other three children, the twins and Margy, were busy prying into every corner of the stateroom to "see what it was meant for," when Mun Bun just stepped out.
How long he had been gone when their mother discovered the little boy's absence, of course she did not know. She sent Laddie and Vi flying for help--the one for Russ and Rose and the other for their father. She dared not leave the staterooms herself for fear Mun Bun would reappear and be frightened if he did not find her.
She called loudly for him, without getting any answer. Other passengers began to take an interest in the loss of the little boy. Stewards began to hurry about, looking for a lost boy in the most unlikely places. Some of these cubbyholes were so tiny that a canary bird could scarcely have hidden in them, while other places where the stewards looked would have hidden a giant.
When Mr. Bunker appeared in haste from the smoking cabin, having been found by Vi, Mrs. Bunker fairly cast herself into his arms.
"Oh, Charles!" she cried. "He's fallen overboard!"
"You would never think of such a thing, Amy," returned her husband, "if the ship wasn't entirely surrounded by water."
"How can you joke, Charles?" she cried.
"I don't joke. Do you know how high the bulwarks are? A little boy like Mun Bun could not have fallen overboard. He could not climb the bulwarks."
"I never thought of that," agreed Mother Bunker more cheerfully.
"He might have fallen into one of the holds; but I don't believe he has done even that. And there are so many officers and men going up and down the ladders that I believe he has not even gone off this deck. For somebody would be sure to see him."
"Of course he didn't go ashore again?" suggested Rose, who with the other children had returned to the staterooms.
"Oh, no. We had started--were well down the harbor in fact--before he disappeared."
"Mun Bun is a reg'lar riddle," said Laddie. "He runs away and we can't find him; and we hunt for him and there he ain't. Then he comes back by himself--sometimes."
"Is that a riddle?" asked his twin scornfully.
"We-ell, maybe it will be when I get it fixed right."
"I don't think much of it," declared Violet. "And I want to find Mun Bun."
"Don't you other children get lost on this big ship," said Mother Bunker. "Don't go off this floor."
"You mean deck, don't you, Mother?" asked Russ politely. "Floors are decks on board ship. Daddy said so."
"You'd better go and look for him, Russ; and you, too, Rose," the anxious woman said, as Daddy Bunker strode away. "But you other three stay right here by me. I thought that traveling on the train with you children was sometimes trying; but living on shipboard is going to be worse."
"Yes, Mother," said Rose gravely. "There are so many more places for Mun Bun to hide in aboard this ship. Come, Russ."
The two older Bunker children did not know where to look for their little brother. But Russ had an idea. He usually did have pretty bright ideas, and Rose admitted this fact.
"You know we got up early this morning," Russ said to his sister, "and we have been awful busy. And here it is noontime. Mun Bun doesn't usually have a nap until after lunch, but I guess he's gone somewhere and hidden away and gone to sleep. And when Mun Bun's asleep it is awful hard to wake him. You know that, Rose Bunker."
"Yes, I know it," admitted Rose. "But where could he have gone?"
Russ thought over that question pretty hard. Daddy Bunker would have said that the little lost boy's older brother was trying to put himself in Mun Bun's place and thinking Mun Bun's thoughts.
Now, if Mun Bun had been very sleepy and had crept away to take a nap, as he often did after lunch when they were at home, without saying anything to Mother Bunker about it, where would he have gone to take that nap on this steamboat?
Mun Bun was a bold little boy. He was seldom afraid of anything or anybody. Had he not instantly made friends with Sam, the strange colored boy, at Aunt Jo's house? So Russ knew he would not be afraid to run right out on the deck among the other passengers.
"But that would not be a nice place to go for a nap," said Russ aloud.
"What wouldn't?" asked Rose, quite surprised by her brother's sudden speech.
"Out here on the deck. No, he didn't come out here at all," said Russ, with confidence.
Russ was an ingenious boy, as we have seen. Once having got the right idea in his head he proceeded to think it out.
"Come on back, Rose," he said suddenly, seizing his sister's hand.
"What for?"
"To find Mun Bun."
"But he isn't with Mother!"
"I bet--No, I don't mean that word," said Russ. "I mean I _think_ he is with Mother, only she doesn't know it."
"Why, Russ Bunker, that sounds awfully silly!"
But she followed after him in much haste. They came running to the two staterooms which Daddy Bunker had engaged. Mother and the other children were the center of a group of sympathetic people in the corridor.
"Oh! did you find him?" Rose cried.
"Of course not," said Vi. "Where should we find him?"
"Here," announced Russ, pushing through the crowd.
"Of course he isn't here, Russ," said Vi. "Can't you count us? Mun Bun is not here."
"Well, let me see," said the boy, and he pushed into the bigger stateroom where his mother had been working when Mun Bun disappeared. Then he opened the door between that room and the other room. It was all quiet in there. He glanced into the two berths. There was nobody in either of them.
"You are mistaken, Russ," whispered Rose, looking in at the door he had left open. "He can't be here. Daddy has just come and says the captain has promised to have the ship searched."
But without making any reply Russ Bunker went down on his knees, looked under the lower berth, and then stretched an arm under and grabbed something with his hand.
A sleepy squeal came from under the berth. Russ, laughing, dragged at the chubby ankle his hand had grasped. Mun Bun's cross, sleepy voice was raised in protest:
"Don't you! Don't you! Let me be!"
Mother and Daddy Bunker came running.
"That blessed baby!" cried his mother.
"That pestiferous youngster!" exclaimed his father.
But he smiled happily, too, when Mun Bun was completely drawn out from under the berth by Russ and was in his mother's arms again. She sat down and rocked him to and fro while he "came awake" and looked around at the others.
"You have begun well," said Daddy Bunker gravely. "Stirring up the whole ship's company before we are out of sight of land! I must hurry and tell the captain to call off his sea-dogs. The lost is found."
"What are sea-dogs?" demanded Vi. "Do they have dogs at sea to hunt for lost children--dogs like Alexis?"
Nobody answered that question, but Rose and Russ, trotting along the deck beside their father, were more fortunate in getting their questions answered.
"Are we really going to sail out of sight of land, Daddy?" asked Rose.
"We certainly are," said Mr. Bunker.
"But there is a lot of land," said the girl, pointing. "We can't lose all that, can we?"
"That is just what we are going to do. You watch. By and by the land will be only a line on the horizon, and then it will fade out of sight entirely."
So Russ and Rose remained on deck to watch the land disappear. Rose expected it to go something like a "fade-out" on the moving picture screen. The disappearance of the land proved to be a very long matter, however, and the two children went below for lunch when the first call came.
The purser had arranged for the Bunker family at a side table where they could be as retired as though they were at home. There were not many other children aboard, and the purser liked children anyway. So between his good offices and that of the colored stewards, the Bunkers were well provided for.
Even the captain--a big, bold-looking man with a gray mustache and lots of glittering buttons on his blue coat--stopped at the Bunker table to ask about Mun Bun.
"So that is the fellow I was going to put about my ship for and go back to Boston to see if he had been left on the dock!" he said very gruffly, but smiling with his eyes at Mun Bun, who smiled back. "He looks like too big a boy to make such a disturbance on a man's ship."
"Oh, I don't think, Captain Briggs, he will do it again," said Mother Bunker.
"I dess wanted to sleep," murmured Mun Bun, holding up his spoon.
"Next time you want your watch below," said Captain Briggs, shaking his head, "you report to me first. Do you hear?"
"Yes, Ma'am," said Mun Bun, quite sure that he had said the right thing although they all laughed at him.
Mother Bunker kept the little fellow close to her thereafter; but Vi and Laddie followed the two older children out on deck. There was a comfortably filled passenger list on the _Kammerboy_; but the wind was rather heavy that afternoon and many of them remained in the cabins. But the four children had a great game of hide and seek all over the forward deck.
Finally Daddy Bunker appeared from aft to make sure that none of the quartette was lost. He took Laddie and Vi below with him after a time and the two older children were left alone. They found seats in the lee of what the ship's men called "the house" and sat down to rest and talk. But every now and then one of them jumped up to look astern to see if the land had disappeared, as Daddy Bunker said it would.
"It's a long time going," said Rose.
"Well, there is a lot of it to go. Don't you remember," said Russ, "how big the North American continent is in the geography?"
"Oh! Is that it?" cried Rose.
"Yes. We've got to lose the whole top part of North America," her confident brother declared.
There was some sort of officer (he had brass buttons and wore a cap, so Russ and Rose knew he must be an officer) pacing the deck, back and forth, not far from their chairs. Every time he came near he threw a pleasant word to the brother and sister. Russ and Rose began to ask him questions and sometimes trotted beside him as he paced his lookout watch. Violet would have delighted in this man, for he seemed to know almost everything about ships and the sea and was perfectly willing to answer questions.
Rose asked him if, after they had lost the land, they would find the Gulf Stream that Daddy Bunker had told them about.
"Pretty soon thereafter, little lady," said the man.
"And--and does it have banks?" pursued Rose.
"Does what have banks?" the man asked, in surprise. "The Gulf Stream?"
"Yes, sir."
"No," chuckled the sailor. "It's not like a river--not just like one."
"Then how do you know when you come to the Gulf Stream?" demanded Russ. "I should think you'd sail over it without knowing."
But the sailor told them that the stream, or current, was very broad, that the water was much warmer than the surrounding ocean, and that the Gulf Stream was even a different color from the colder ocean.
"Oh, we won't miss it," declared the man, shaking his head.
Just then Rose saw something out over the ocean, sailing low and making a great flapping of black wings. She pointed eagerly:
"There's a buzzard, Russ--like those we saw in Texas."
"Oh, no, little lady, that isn't a buzzard," said the sailor.
"It must be a gull. There were lots of them back in the harbor, you know, Rose," her brother rejoined.
"And it's not a gull," said the man, squinting his eyes to look at the distant bird. "It's too big. I declare! I think that's an eagle."
"Oh! An eagle like those on top of the flagstaffs?" cried Russ.
"And on the gold pieces?" added Rose, for she had a gold piece that had been given her on her last birthday.
"No, not that kind of eagle," said the man. "But he's related. Yes, sir; it's a sea-eagle; some call 'em, I guess rightly, ospreys. They're fishers, but they can't roost on the sea. That one's a long way off shore. Something is the matter with him."
"Do you suppose he's hungry?" asked Rose doubtfully.
"I shouldn't wonder if hunger drove him out here so far from land," said the sailor, smiling. "But he's been hurt. You can see how his left wing droops. Yes, something has happened to that bird."
The bird beat his way heavily toward the ship. First it rose a little way in the air, and then it slid down as though almost helpless, beating its good wing prodigiously to keep from falling into the water.
"He's making bad weather of it," said the sailor. "Poor chap. If he comes aboard----"
"Oh! we'll feed him and mend his wing," cried Rose. "He's just like--Why, Russ Bunker! that poor bird is just what Aunt Jo called poor Sam, a tramp. That is what he is."
"A sea-going tramp, I guess," said the sailor, laughing.
But he watched the coming sea bird quite as interestedly as did the two children. The creature seemed to have selected the steamship as its objective point, and it beat its good wing furiously so as to get into the course of the _Kammerboy_.
"Can we have the bird if it gets aboard, Mr. Officer?" asked Russ eagerly.
"If I can catch it without killing it--for they are very fierce birds--it shall be yours," promised the man.
At once, therefore, the eagerness and interest of Russ and Rose Bunker were vastly increased. They clung to the rail and watched the approaching bird with anxious eyes. It was coming head on toward the bow of the ship. Would the _Kammerboy_ get past so swiftly that the sea-eagle could not reach it?
The uncertainty of this, and the evident effort of the great bird to fly a little farther, greatly excited the two older of the six little Bunkers. _