Mokie and Bik
Page 2
“I sank too,” said Mokie. “I didn’t like it. But I liked the starfish and sea urchins.”
Bik wished he’d seen the starfish and sea urchins. “I’m going to swim fast as a fisk too,” he said.
Erik the Viking tied a rope around Bik’s middle and another around Mokie’s. He grabbed Bik and swung him around, whirl whirr whizzing—splash!—overboard.
Bik sank, sank, sank—
past the wharf’s fat barnacled legs,
past the starfish and sea urchins,
past the surprised fisk—
till he could see the rocks on the bottom of the sea.
Bik kicked hard until his head popped out—splash smash thrash—and gulped in air. “Huhh!”
“Paddle like Laddie!” shouted Erik the Viking and tugged on the rope before Bik sank again.
So Bik kicked his legs—flick kick swick—paddled his arms—splash pad muddle—and he didn’t sink.
Erik swung Mokie around and around, whirl whirr whizzing—splash!—overboard.
Mokie sank, kicked, and popped up, and then flick kick swicked, splash pad muddled.
Mokie and Bik paddled out from the boat and back again, back to the boat and out again. Erik tugged on their ropes if they went too far.
Next Sunday, Erik tied the ropes around their middles again.
“I don’t need a rope!” said Mokie.
“I don’t need it more!” said Bik.
“Two Twins,” said Erik the Viking, “and one Erik … and one angry Ruby if Mokie floats away while I’m catching Bik.”
So Mokie and Bik filled their cheeks puff-full of air and scotch-hopped off the wharf.
Erik the Viking walked down the wharf with the ropes in his hand and a Twin at the end of each rope. They flick kick swicked, splash pad muddled, till their feet touched sand.
Mokie waded in to the beach.
Bik threw himself back into the water.
“I’m fast as a fisk!” shouted Bik.
Mokie ran back into the water and they both flick kick swicked, splash pad muddled, as fast as they could, with Erik the Viking running up the wharf behind them with their ropes in his hand.
Bik kicked so hard and paddled so fast, he went right past the end of the wharf and straight out to sea before Erik tugged him back.
Mokie stopped at the end of the wharf.
“I’m a faster fisk!” said Mokie.
“I’m a farther fisk!” said Bik.
“First fisk back to the beach is fastest,” said Erik.
So Mokie and Bik pushed off from the wharf and flick kick swicked, splash pad muddled, fast as fisk, till their feet touched the sand and they splashed out of the water at the very same moment.
They turned around and saw their ropes trailing behind them. Erik was talking to Ruby at the end of the wharf.
“Fisk don’t need ropes!” shouted Erik the Viking.
“Who was faster?” shouted Mokie and Bik.
“Fast as Fisk, both of you,” said Erik.
But they both knew they were faster.
The Enormous Fisk
Bik woke up so early one morning the world was still asleep and the sun was just climbing out of its bed in the sea.
Then he heard the seagulls yabber and Erik the Viking’s seagull boat chug-chug-chugging, and Bik had a wonderful stupendously blunderful idea. He monkeyed down from his bunk and up the ladder to the deck.
The seagull boat was chug-chug-chugging away from the wharf and Bullfrog was rollicking in its waves.
Bik waved. “Wait for me!”
But Erik waved back—“Good-bye!”—and chug-chug-chugged out to sea.
So Bik got his own fisk line and monkeyed down into Tadpole. Then he tied the line to a ring on Tadpole’s stern and rowboated away.
He rowboated for a long time because the sun was coming up for a wonderful stupendously blunderful day. Suddenly, behind Tadpole, a silver swish splash s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d the fisk line straight and tight.
“Fisk!” shouted Bik. “I’ve hooked a normous scormous eee-normous fisk!” Bik tugged at the line, but the enormous fisk tugged back harder.
Bik row-row-rowboated, and the fisk tug tug tugged. Sometimes Bik was winning and sometimes the fisk was. Tadpole went backward and forward in the middle of the harbor.
Then a ship brooop-brooo-oop-broooped, “GET OUT OF MY WAY NOW!”
The broop punched Bik’s ears and nearly pushed him off his seat, but he held on to the oars and row-row-rowboated even harder.
The fisk tugged harder too. Then that normous scormous eee-normous fisk swish splashed out of the water in a slithery curve and tugged Tadpole straight toward the wharf.
“Thank you, fisk!” shouted Bik. Over his shoulder he could see the wharf getting closer and the Bullfrog with Mokie on the deck.
“Didn’t you hear the broop?” Mokie called.
“A fisk hooked me!” shouted Bik.
Mokie saw the normous scormous eee-normous fisk swish splashing up to Bullfrog, with Bik and Tadpole a little way behind.
“Are you going to stop?” called Mokie.
“The fisk doesn’t want to stop!” shouted Bik.
Mokie grabbed the boathook and ran to Bullfrog’s stern. She leaned out to hook Bik but the fisk tugged too fast, and all she hooked was the line.
Mokie tugged as hard as she could. So did the fisk. The line shivered and snapped.
Mokie fell over—bump—on her stern with the boathook in her hand. Bik tipped over—thump—on his stern in the bottom of Tadpole.
Then the normous scormous eee-normous fisk swam out to sea.
“I think it was a whale,” said Bik.
“I think so too,” said Mokie.
Sailors and Waggles
One fuzzy foggy morning a ship passed so close to the wharf that Bullfrog rollicked and rolled, and Mokie and Bik tumbled—thump clunk overbunk—to the floor.
The ship brooo-ooped. Laddie barked, Ruby grumbled, their mother muttered, and Slow pulled his head under his shell.
“I remember that broop,” said Bik.
“No other ship comes that close,” said Mokie.
Mokie and Bik monkeyed back onto their bunks to stare out their portholes. They could hear the ship’s sails whooshing, but all they could see was the fuzzy fog.
“Let’s,” said Mokie.
“Yes!” said Bik.
Mokie and Bik tiptoed out of their cabin and monkeyed down into Tadpole. They sat side by side, picked up the oars, and followed the whooshing through the fuzzy fog.
“Can you remember?” asked Mokie.
“Not really,” said Bik.
“But it might be,” said Mokie.
“I think it is,” said Bik.
The whooshing stopped, and heavy ropes thumped.
“She’s at the dock,” said Bik.
They rowboated faster, and farther, until suddenly the sun chased away the fuzzy fog.
“Barnacle bells!” said Mokie and Bik, and they rowboated back a bit before they bumped.
The dock was so high and the ship so HUGE that Tadpole was like a flea beside Laddie. There were oil smells and tar smells, and parrots—
whistling whistles and running fast,
heaving ropes and groaning grunting,
climbing masts and furling sails,
yabbering and yammering.
Then the gangplank went bang and three parrots walked the plank to the dock.
“Is it?” asked Mokie.
“I think so,” said Bik.
The first parrot didn’t have a pirate on his shoulder, but he was carrying something that wiggled and wagged.
“A waggles!” said Bik.
The waggles wiggled out of the parrot’s arms, overboard the gangplank—splash!—into the harbor.
“BARNACLE BELLS!” shouted the parrot, and flung off his shoes.
Bik picked up the oars. The parrot threw off his hat. Mokie slid out of Tadpole. Bik row-row-rowboated and Mokie swam fast as a fisk.
> Mokie pushed, Bik pulled, and a soggy waggly scrabbly shaggy licky round black waggles tumbled into Tadpole. Bik tucked it inside his pajama jacket.
“Twin overboard!” laughed the parrot, and even though he was taller than they remembered, and his laugh was louder, and his eyes were bluer, now they knew for sure who he was.
Bik rowboated to the ladder at the dock with the waggles in his jacket, and Mokie swam over and monkeyed into Tadpole.
The parrot monkeyed down the ladder into Tadpole too. He didn’t have a treasure on his chest, but he hugged Mokie and Bik hard.
“I brought you a dog, a swimming rescuing Newfoundland dog,” he said. “But you rescued him!”
Mokie and Bik rowboated home to Bullfrog side by side, with the waggles in Bik’s jacket and the parrot in the stern.
Laddie barked, “You’re home! You’re home!”
Slow pulled his head under his shell. Their mother stopped pouring her cup of tea. Ruby stopped singing “Hi, ho, back again!”
“Twins!” they said. “What have you been doing?”
“We found a waggles,” said Bik.
“And a Dad,” said Mokie.
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Text copyright © 2007 by Wendy Orr
Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Jonathan Bean
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Orr, Wendy.
Mokie and Bik / Wendy Orr; illustrations by Jonathan Bean.—1st ed. p. cm.
Summary: For two rambunctious twins, living on a boat means always being underfoot or overboard.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-7979-1 / ISBN-10: 0-8050-7979-3
[1. Twins—Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 3. Boats and boating—Fiction. 4. Humorous stories.] I. Bean, Jonathan, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.O746Mok 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2006011150
eISBN: 978-1-4668-7147-2
First Edition—2007 / Designed by Amelia May Anderson
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.∞
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