The End of the Voyage
Rumple found himself immediately popular,
because of his prompt and spirited action in doing
what he could to save the old lady. But, like
a good many other people upon whom greatness descends,
he had to pay a rather heavy price for his popularity,
and when it came to being kissed by the old lady and
her daughter every time they appeared on deck, he
began to ask himself savagely if it were quite worth
while to be regarded as a hero of the first class.
Two or three days of kissing and hugging
were enough for him, and then he took to subterfuge,
and whenever the old lady or her very angular but
kindly daughter hove in sight, Rumple bolted like a
frightened rabbit, taking to any sort of cover which
came handy.
The stewards, entering into the joke
of the thing, co-operated with great heartiness, and
for the remainder of the voyage there was no more
elusive person on board than Rumple Plumstead; so the
old lady and her daughter were forced to lavish on
the rest of the family the tenderness they felt solely
for the boy, who loathed their indiscreet petting.
“Rupert, where is Rumple?”
asked Nealie, coming on deck one afternoon a day or
two before they expected to reach Fremantle.
“I haven’t an idea.
Come to think of it, I have not seen him since breakfast.
Where can the young rascal have got to?” exclaimed
Rupert, starting up in dismay. He had been so
engrossed in a book all the morning that he had taken
very little notice of what was going on around him.
He had certainly had to intervene once in a spirited
encounter between Don and Billykins, who had taken
to what they called wrestling, but which in reality
amounted to a lively round of punching each other
black and blue. Both small boys were considerably
upset at being stopped in this entirely novel diversion,
and declared that Rupert was neither public-spirited
nor sporting to put a veto upon it; but he was firm,
and threatened to send one of them to bed if they
did not desist, and so they had been forced to find
some other occupation.
But where was Rumple?
Enquiry elicited the alarming fact
that he had not been seen at lunch, and for a healthy
boy, especially one with a Plumstead appetite, to be
absent from a meal meant that something must be very
wrong indeed.
An active search through the vessel
was at once organized; but when, after half an hour
of brisk hunting, no trace of Rumple could be found,
Nealie grew seriously alarmed, a horrible dread coming
into her heart that he had in some way tumbled overboard.
She was running along the lower deck
in search of one of the officers, to whom she might
tell her fear, when she almost tumbled into the arms
of the jolly fat purser, who had been so kind to all
the children during the weeks of voyaging.
“Oh, Mr. Bent, we have lost
my brother Rumple; he has not been seen since breakfast,
and I am most dreadfully afraid that he must have
fallen overboard!” she cried, the sharp distress
in her tone showing how keen was her anxiety.
“Tut, tut, Missy, he could not
have done that in broad daylight without someone seeing
him,” replied the purser, who always treated
Nealie as if she were no older than Rumple or Sylvia.
“Are you quite sure?” she asked anxiously.
“Quite! A big ship like
this is all eyes in the daytime, you know, and to-day
there have been men at work on the railings ever since
breakfast, so there is no danger at all that anything
of that sort can have happened. But I wonder
where the young rascal can be? I seem to remember
having seen him nipping round somewhere this morning.
Let me see; what could I have been doing?” and
the purser screwed up his face until there was nothing
of his eyes visible.
“Oh, please try to think where
it was that you saw him, and then we may be able to
find him!” cried Nealie, clasping her hands in
entreaty.
“Let me see.” The
purser opened his eyes and glared about him, as if
he expected to find the record of the morning’s
doings chalked in big letters somewhere on the clean
deck. “First thing after breakfast there
was that affair of the linen having been miscounted.
It is funny how some folks are born without any sense
of number. Then there were the cook’s lists
to be gone through. I remember seeing the boy
then, for he lent me a pencil when mine broke.
Now, what was I doing after that?”
“Oh, make haste, Mr. Bent!
Please make haste to remember!” pleaded Nealie,
feeling as if she would really have to take hold of
this slow-witted man, and shake the information out
of him if he did not hurry up a little.
“I’ve got it!” ejaculated
Mr. Bent, slapping his sides with resounding whacks.
“The next thing I did was to go down to the cold
storage with the second officer. We must have
been there for nearly an hour, for I know I was chilled
through and through by the time we came up again,
and I have not seen your brother since.”
“Then I am quite sure that Rumple
must be down in the cold-storage place, and he will
be frozen stiff by this time. Oh, fly, Mr. Bent,
and let him out, for think how awful his sufferings
must be!” cried Nealie, seizing the purser by
the arm to drag him along. She had been down in
the cold storage herself, and shivered at the recollection
of the Arctic chill of the place, although she had
been hugely interested at seeing the stacks of frozen
provisions which were there to be preserved for daily
use on the voyage.
There was no need to tell Mr. Bent
to hurry, as he strode away to his own particular
den to get the keys, and then, with Nealie running
close behind him, made his way down, down, down, until
the storeroom corridor was reached.
The cold-storage rooms were at the
far end, and when he thrust the key into the lock,
Nealie could have screamed with the anguish of her
keen apprehension.
Mr. Bent thrust open the door, and
then both of them cried out in amazement, for the
place was brilliant with electric light, and Rumple,
covered from head to foot in hoar frost, as if he had
just stepped out of the Arctic regions, was lifting
boxes of butter from the shelves, and then lifting
them back again, as hard as he could work.
“I’m about tired of this,”
he managed to drawl out in a would-be casual tone,
and then he suddenly collapsed in a limp heap in Nealie’s
arms.
Quickly they lifted him out into the
warmth of the corridor, and then Nealie started chafing
his cold hands and face, while Mr. Bent replaced the
butter boxes on the shelves, then, turning off the
electric light, came out and locked the door behind
him.
“Now I should like to know what
monkey trick you were up to when you went and got
yourself locked in a place like that?” he said
in an angry tone as he bent over poor Rumple, unwinding
a lot of sacking from the boy’s shoulders, and
slapping him vigorously to quicken circulation.
“Oh, you will hurt him dreadfully
if you beat him like that, and I am quite sure that
he did not mean to do wrong!” burst out Nealie
in red-hot indignation, as she pushed away those vigorously
slapping hands, and gathered Rumple’s cold,
limp figure into a warm embrace.
“Bless you, Missy, I was not
doing it to hurt him, only to make his blood flow
quicker, and save him a bit of misery later on.
If he has been in mischief, he has had to pay quite
dearly enough for it, without any more punishment.
It is lucky for him that the freezing plant is out
of order to-day, and we have only been able to keep
the place just down to freezing-point. If it
had been as cold as it is sometimes, it might have
been too late to save him, poor fellow,” said
Mr. Bent, pushing Nealie gently aside, and starting
on his slapping with more vigour than before.
“I wasn’t in mischief;
I only bolted in there because the door was open,
and I wanted to get clear of Miss Clarke, who was being
shown round the storerooms by one of the officers,”
said Rumple feebly. “She always will kiss
me, don’t you know, and I just can’t stand
it. I was crouching behind a case of things at
the farther end, when to my horror the light went
out, and a minute later, before I could yell, the door
slammed. I did yell then for all that I was worth,
but I could not make anyone hear, and it was so long
before I could grope my way to the door, for I was
at the farther end, you see, and I turned silly with
funk at the first.”
“I don’t wonder at that,
poor darling!” murmured Nealie, lavishing endearments
on him, which he accepted all in good part, although
he had been so hotly resentful of Miss Clarke’s
openly expressed affection. She was the daughter
of the fat old lady, and he disliked the pair of them
so heartily that his one desire was to put as much
distance as possible between them and himself at all
times and in all places.
“Well, laddie, it is a good
thing for you that you were born with your share of
common sense, for you seem to have gone the right way
to work to keep from being frozen,” said Mr.
Bent, as he rolled the sacking into a bundle and tossed
it into a corner; then, slipping his arm round Rumple,
lifted the boy to a standing posture.
But he would have promptly fallen
again if they had not supported him on either side,
for his feet were thoroughly chilled, and he was so
tired that he seemed to have no strength at all.
“I was a long time finding the
electric light, but when I did come upon it, and pressed
the button, I felt ever so much better,” said
Rumple, as his rescuers helped him to climb the stairs.
“And I knew that I must not stand still; but
there was so little room to walk about that I had to
lift cases from the shelves and put them back again.
I found that great piece of sacking, and when I had
wrapped it round my shoulders I felt a little warmer;
but it was more than a little nippy, I can tell you,
and it made me think of the January mornings at Beechleigh,
when the old pump used to freeze up and we undertook
to thaw it out for Mrs. Puffin before breakfast,”
said Rumple wearily.
At this moment the others, headed
by Sylvia, came rushing down upon them, and Rumple
was at once overwhelmed with enquiries and congratulations.
But Nealie was so concerned at his desperate weariness
that she insisted on his going to bed at once.
“You must have some hot soup,
too, and then you will get warm quickly and go to
sleep,” she said in the careful, elder-sisterly
manner which always came uppermost when any of them
were in any sort of difficulty.
“I don’t want any soup
or mucks of that kind, but I should be glad if I could
have a piece of dry bread or some hard biscuits, for
I do not mind admitting that I ate half a pound of
butter to keep out the cold, and I feel rather greasy
inside,” said Rumple, puckering his face into
a grimace as Rupert hustled him off to their cabin
to put him to bed.
“What made you do that?”
demanded Rupert sternly, for this partook of the nature
of thieving, and the juniors had to be reproved for
any lapse from strict morality.
“The Esquimaux eat blubber to
keep out the cold, and as I had no blubber, and did
not like to break open one of the lard pails, I just
took the butter. Do you expect that Mr. Bent will
mind?” asked Rumple anxiously. “I
have got enough money to pay for it if he gets waxy,
but of course I have had no lunch, and, seeing that
the shipping company have got to keep me, I do not
see that it matters much whether I eat half a pound
of butter for my meal or whether I have two goes of
meat and three of pudding. Hullo, who is that?”
The exclamation was caused by someone
pounding on the door for admittance, and when Rumple
found that the someone was the ship’s doctor,
great was his wrath at the coddling which Nealie had
supposed to be necessary for him. But the doctor
roared with laughter when he heard about the butter,
and Rumple was so far mollified by his mirth as to
be beguiled into laughing also, after which he was
rolled in blankets and promptly went to sleep, not
rousing again until the following morning, when he
appeared to be none the worse for his adventure among
the ice.
But someone must have dropped a hint
to the indiscreet Miss Clarke and her mother, because
from that time onward they left Rumple in peace, so
far as kissing was concerned, although they seemed
to be just as fond of him as ever.
The seven were all getting just a
little bit weary of voyaging when at length the boat
entered the fine harbour of Sydney, and berthed among
the other vessels at the Circular Quay.
Then, indeed, things became exciting,
and although they knew that their father had not had
the first letter which had been sent to him, there
was still the probability that he had received a later
letter from Mr. Runciman, and that he might be among
the crowd who were waiting to board the liner when
she came to her berth, beside the big vessel from
Hong-Kong.
They were gathered in a group forward,
and were eagerly scanning all that could be seen of
the shore, when one of the stewards came hurrying
up to say that a gentleman had come on board for Miss
Plumstead, and was at that moment waiting to see her
in the dining saloon.
“Oh, it must be dear Father;
I am quite sure of it!” cried Nealie, and, seizing
Ducky by the hand, she hurried away down to the big
dining saloon, followed by the other five.
Very different the big room looked
to-day from the time when they had seen it first.
Then the tables were spread for a meal, and decorated
with flowers and fruit; now everything was in confusion,
the tables were bare, or heaped with the hand baggage
of departing passengers, and there was an air of desolation
over all, such as is seen in a house from which a
family are flitting.
But Nealie had no eyes for details
of this sort at such a moment, as she clattered down
the steps, holding Ducky fast by the hand. When
she reached the bend, from whence she had a full view
of the room, she saw a tall, grey-haired man, very
sprucely dressed, standing at the end of the third
table.
“Oh, it is Father!” she
cried, half-turning her head to let the others know;
and then, taking the last three steps at a bound, and
dropping her hold of Ducky’s hand, she rushed
with tumultuous haste along the end of the room, and
flinging herself upon the man, who had turned at her
approach, she cried joyfully: “Oh, my dear,
dear father, how glad we are to see you!”
But even as her arms closed around
his neck a chill doubt seized her, and the next moment
the astonished gentleman had drawn himself away from
her grasp, saying hurriedly:
“My dear young lady, I am not your father.”