“Is it always rough like this when you go past Cape Hatteras?” asked Bert of his father.
“Very frequently, yes. You see Cape Hatteras is a point of land of North Carolina, sticking out into the ocean. In the ocean are currents of water, and when one rushes one way and one the other, and they come together, it makes a rough sea, especially when there is a strong wind, as there is now. We are in this rough part of the ocean, and in the midst of a storm, too. But we will soon be out of it.”
However, the steamer could not go so fast in the rough water as she could have traveled had it been smooth, and the wind, blowing against her, also held her back. So it was not until late on the second day that the storm passed away, or rather, until the ship got beyond it.
Then the rain stopped, the sun came out from behind the clouds just before it was time to set, and the hard time was over. The sea was rough, and would be for another day, the sailors said.
“And can we go on deck in the morning?” asked Bert, who did not like being shut up in the stateroom.
“I guess so,” his father answered.
The next morning all was calm and peaceful, though the waves were larger than when the Bobbsey twins had left New York.
Every one was glad that the storm had passed, and that nothing had happened to the steamer, except the loss of the one small boat.
“Were those fishermen who fought the sharks out in all that blow in their small motor boat, Dad?” asked Bert.
“Oh, no,” his father told him. “They only go out from shore, take up their nets or lobster pots, and go quickly back again. Their boats are not made for staying out in all night. Though perhaps sometimes, in a fog, when they can’t see to get back, they may be out a long time. But I don’t believe they were out in this storm.”
It was peaceful traveling now, on the deep blue sea, which was a pretty color again, and the Bobbsey twins, leaning over the rail and looking at it, thought they had never come on such a fine voyage.
“It’s getting warmer,” said Bert when they had eaten dinner and were once more on deck.
“Yes, we are getting farther south, nearer to the equator, and it is always warm there,” said Mr. Bobbsey.
“Are we near Florida?” asked Nan.
“Yes, we will be there this evening,” her father told her.
It was late in the afternoon when the steamer reached Jacksonville. As the arrival of the steamship had been delayed by the storm, the Bobbsey’s were left no time to look about Jacksonville, but hurried at once to the railroad station, and there took the train that carried them to St. Augustine. It was about an hour before sunset when they got out of the train at this quaint, pretty old town.
“Oh, what funny little streets!” cried Bert, as they started for their hotel where they were to stay until they could go to the hospital and see Cousin Jasper. “What little streets!”
“Aren’t they darling?” exclaimed Nan.
“Yes, this is a very old city,” said Mr. Bobbsey, “and some of the streets are no wider than they were made when they were laid out here over three hundred years ago.”
“Oh, is this city as old as that—three hundred years?” asked Nan, while Flossie and Freddie peered about at the strange sights.
“Yes, and older,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States. It was settled in 1565 by the Spaniards, and I suppose they built it like some of the Spanish cities they knew. That is why the streets are so narrow.”
And indeed the streets were very narrow. The one called St. George is only seventeen feet wide, and it is the principal street in St. Augustine. Just think of a street not much wider than a very big room. And Treasury street is even narrower, being so small that two people can stand and shake hands across it. Really, one might call it only an alley, and not a street.
The Bobbseys saw many negroes about the streets, some driving little donkey carts, and others carrying fruit and other things in baskets on their heads.
“Don’t they ever fall off?” asked Freddie, as he watched one big, fat colored woman on whose head, covered with a bright, red handkerchief, or “bandanna,” there was a large basket of fruit. “Don’t they ever fall off?”
“What do you mean fall off—their heads?” asked Bert with a smile.
“No, I mean the things they carry,” said Freddie.
“Well, I guess they start in carrying things that way from the time they are children,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, “and they learn to balance things on their heads as well as you children learn to balance yourselves on roller skates. I dare say the colored people here would find it as hard to roller skate as you would to carry a heavy load on your head.”
“Well, here we are at our hotel,” said Mr. Bobbsey, as the automobile in which they had ridden up from the station came to a stop in front of a fine building. “Now we will get out and see what they have for supper.”
“And then will we go to Cousin Jasper and find out what his strange story is?”
“I guess so,” her father answered.
“Say, this is a fine hotel!” exclaimed Bert as he and the others saw the beautiful palm and flower gardens, with fountains between them, in the courtyard of the place where they were to stop.
“Oh, yes, St. Augustine has wonderful hotels,” said his father. “This is a place where many rich people come to spend the winter that would be too cold for them in New York. Now come inside.”
Into the beautiful hotel they went, and when Mr. Bobbsey was asking about their rooms, and seeing that the baggage was brought in, Mrs. Bobbsey glanced around to make sure the four twins were with her, for sometimes Flossie or Freddie strayed off.
And that is what had happened this time. Freddie was not in sight.
“Oh, where is that boy?” cried his mother. “I hope he hasn’t crawled down another ventilator pipe!”
“No’m,” answered one of the hotel men. “He hasn’t done that. I saw your little boy run back out of the front door a moment ago. But he’ll be all right. Nothing can happen to him in St. Augustine.”
“Oh, but I must find him!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. “Dick, Freddie is gone again!” she said to her husband. “We must find him at once!” and she hurried from the hotel.
CHAPTER X
Cousin Jasper’s Story
Mr. Bobbsey, who had been talking to the clerk of the hotel at the desk, looked toward Mrs. Bobbsey, who was hurrying out the front door.
“Wait a minute!” he called after her. “I’ll come with you!”
“No, you stay with the other children,” she answered. “I’ll find Freddie.”
“But you don’t know your way about St. Augustine,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “You’ve never been here before.”
“Neither have you,” returned his wife with a laugh, for she was not very much alarmed about Freddie—he had slipped away too often before.
“I can find my way about as well as you can, Dick,” went on Mrs. Bobbsey. “You stay here and I’ll get our little fat fireman.”
“Maybe he has gone to see a fire engine,” suggested Nan.
“I don’t believe so,” answered her father. “I didn’t hear any alarm, but perhaps they don’t sound one here as we do back in Lakeport.”
“I guess he’s just gone out to look at the things in the streets here,” said Bert. “They’re a lot different from at home.”
“Indeed they are!” exclaimed Mr. Bobbsey. “Well, I’ll stay here,” he said to his wife, “and you go and look for Freddie. But if you don’t soon find him come back and I’ll go out.”
“I’ll find him,” she said, and one of the porters from the hotel offered to go with her to show Mrs. Bobbsey her way about the strange streets of St. Augustine—the little, narrow streets that had not been changed much in three hundred years.
“Oh, what a lovely place this is,” said Nan to Bert, while their father was talking with the hotel clerk. “It’s like a palace.”
“It looks like some of the places you see in
a moving picture,” said Bert.
And indeed the beautiful hotel, with the palms and flowers set all about, did look like some moving picture play. Only it was real, and the Bobbsey twins were to stay there until they had seen Cousin Jasper, and found out what his strange story was about.
Soon after Mr. Bobbsey had finished signing his name and those of the members of his family in the hotel register book, Mrs. Bobbsey came back, leading Freddie by the hand.
The little boy seemed to be all right, and he was smiling, while in one hand he held a ripe banana.
“Where’ve you been, Freddie?” asked Flossie. “I was afraid you had gone back home.”
“Nope,” Freddie answered, as he started to peel the banana. “I was seeing how they did it.”
“How who did what?” asked his father.
“Carried the big baskets on their heads,” Freddie answered, and by this time he had part of the skin off the yellow fruit, and was breaking off a piece for Flossie. Freddie always shared his good things with his little sister, and with Bert and Nan if there was enough.
“What does he mean?” asked Bert of his mother. “Was he trying to carry something on his head?”
“No,” answered Mrs. Bobbsey with a laugh, “but he was following a big colored woman who had a basket of fruit on her head. I caught him halfway down the street in front of another hotel. He was walking after this woman, and he didn’t hear me coming. I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was waiting to see it fall off.”
“What fall off?” asked Nan, coming up just then.
“I thought maybe the basket would fall off her head,” Freddie answered for himself. “It was an awful big basket, and it wibbled and wobbled like anything. I thought maybe it would fall, but it didn’t,” he added with a sigh, as though he had been cheated out of a lot of fun.
“If it did had fallen,” he went on, “I was going to pick up her bananas and oranges for her. That’s why I kept walking after her.”
“Did she drop that banana?” asked Mr. Bobbsey, while several smiling persons gathered about the Bobbsey twins in the hotel lobby.
“No, I bought this with a penny,” Freddie answered. “The colored lady didn’t drop any. But if her basket did had fallen from off her head I could have picked up the things, and then maybe she’d have given me a banana or an orange.”
“And when that didn’t happen you had to go buy one yourself; did you?” asked Mr. Bobbsey with a laugh. “Well, that’s too bad. But, after this, Freddie, don’t go away by yourself. It’s all right, at home, to run off and play in the fields or woods, for you know your way about. But here you are in a strange city, so you must stay with us.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Freddie, like a good little boy.
“I will, too,” promised Flossie.
The Bobbsey family was together once again, and when Flossie and Freddie had eaten the banana, and porters had taken charge of their baggage, they all went up to the rooms where they were to stay.
“We don’t know just how long we’ll be here,” said Mr. Bobbsey, as they were getting ready to go down to supper, as the children called it, or “dinner,” as the more fashionable name has it.
“Are we going out on the ocean again?” asked Nan.
“Did you like it?” her father wanted to know.
“Oh, lots!” she answered.
“It was great!” declared Bert.
“I want to see ’em catch some more sharks,” Freddie said.
“I like to see the blue water,” added Flossie, who had got out a clean dress for her rubber doll.
“Yes, the blue water is very pretty,” remarked Mr. Bobbsey. “Well, we shall, very likely, sail on it again. I don’t know just what Cousin Jasper wants to tell me, or what he wants me to do. But I think he is planning an ocean trip himself. I’ll go to see him this evening, after we have eaten, and then I can tell you all about it.”
“May I come with you?” asked Bert.
“Well, I think not this first trip,” answered Mr. Bobbsey slowly. “I am going to the hospital where Cousin Jasper is ill, and he may not be able to see both of us. I’ll take you later.”
“We can stay and watch the colored people carry things on their heads,” put in Freddie. “That’s lots of fun, and maybe some of ’em will drop off, and we can help pick ’em up, and they might give us an orange.”
“I guess I’d rather buy my oranges, and then I’ll be sure to have what I want,” said Bert with a laugh.
“There are plenty of things you can look at while I’m at the hospital,” said Mr. Bobbsey, and after the meal he inquired the way to the place where Cousin Jasper was getting well, while Mrs. Bobbsey took the children down to the docks, where they could see many motor boats, and fishing and oyster craft, tied up for the night.
It was a beautiful evening, and the soft, balmy air of St. Augustine was warm, so that only the lightest clothing needed to be worn.
“It’s just like being at the seashore in the summer,” said Nan.
“Well, this is summer, and we are at the seashore, though it is not like Ocean Cliff,” said Mrs. Bobbsey with a smile. She was glad the children liked it, and she hoped they would have more good times if they were again to go sailing on the deep, blue sea.
When they got back to the hotel Mr. Bobbsey had not yet returned from the hospital, but he came before Flossie and Freddie were ready for bed, for they had been allowed to stay up a little later than usual.
“Well, how is Cousin Jasper?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.
“Much better, I am glad to say,” answered her husband. “He will be able to leave the hospital in a few days, and then he wants us to start on a trip with him.”
“Start on a trip so soon!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. “Where does he want to go, and will he be well enough to travel?”
“He says he will. And as to where he wants to go, that is a strange story.”
“Oh, tell us about it!” begged Bert.
“We’re going to hear Cousin Jasper’s secret at last!” cried Nan.
“Is it a real story, with ‘once upon a time’ in it?” Freddie questioned. “And has it got a fire engine in it?” he added.
“Well, no, not exactly a fire engine, though it has a boat engine in the story. And I can make it start with ‘once upon a time,’ if you want me to.”
“Please do,” begged Flossie. “And has it got any fairies in it?”
“No, not exactly any fairies,” her father said; “though we may find some when we get to the island.”
“Oh, are we going on an island?” exclaimed Bert.
“There!” cried his father, “I’ve started at the wrong end. I had better begin at the beginning. And that will be to tell you how I found Cousin Jasper.
“He has been quite ill, and is better now. Part of the time he was out of his head with fever, even after he wrote to me, and for a time the doctor feared he would not get well. But now he is all right, except for being weak, and he told me an odd story.
“Once upon a time,” went on Mr. Bobbsey, telling the tale as his littler children liked to hear it, “Cousin Jasper and a young friend of his, a boy about fifteen years old, set out to take a long trip in a motor boat. That is it had an engine in it that ran by gasolene as does an automobile. Cousin Jasper is very fond of sailing the deep, blue sea, and he took this boy along with him to help. They were to sail about for a week, visiting the different islands off the coast of Florida.
“Well, everything went all right the first few days. In their big motor boat Cousin Jasper and this boy, who was named Jack Nelson, sailed about, living on their boat, cooking their meals, and now and then landing at the little islands, or keys, as they are called.
“They were having a good time when one day a big storm came up. They could not manage their boat and they were blown a long way out to sea and then cast up on the shore of a small island.
“Cousin Jasper was hurt and so was the boy, but they managed to get out of the water and up on lan
d. They found a sort of cave in which they could get out of the storm, and they stayed on the island for some time.”
“For years?” asked Bert, who, with the other Bobbsey twins, was much interested in Cousin Jasper’s strange story. “That was just like Robinson Crusoe!” Bert went on. “Why didn’t they stay there always?”
“They did not have enough to eat,” said Mr. Bobbsey, “and it was too lonesome for them there. They were the only people on the island, as far as they knew. So they made a smudge of smoke, and on a pole they put up some pieces of canvas that had washed ashore from their motor boat. They hoped these signals would be seen by some ship or small boat that might come to take them off.”
“Did they get rescued?” asked Bert.
Mr. Bobbsey was about to answer when the telephone, which was in the room, gave a loud ring.
“Some one for us!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey.
CHAPTER XI
The Motor Boat
Mr. Bobbsey arose to answer the telephone, which big hotels put in the rooms of their guests nowadays instead of sending a bellboy to knock and say that the traveler is wanted.
“I wonder who wants us?” murmured Mr. Bobbsey.
The children looked disappointed that the telling of the story had to be stopped.
“Hello!” said their father into the telephone.
Then he listened, and seemed quite surprised at what he heard.
“Yes, I’ll be down in a little while,” he went on. “Tell him to wait.”
“What is it?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey. “Was that Cousin Jasper?”
“Oh, no indeed!” her husband answered. “Though he is much better he is not quite well enough to leave the hospital yet and come to see us. This was an old sea captain talking from the main office of the hotel downstairs.”
“Is he going to take us for a trip on the ocean?” asked Bert eagerly.
“Well, that’s what he wants to do, or, rather, he wants me to see about a big motor boat in which to take a trip. Cousin Jasper sent him to me. But let me finish what I was saying about the island, and then I’ll tell you about the sea captain.”
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