He rushed back. “Collect your things. We’ve been discovered. I doubt they’ll do anything until the morning. We’ll hide out in one of the lifeboats under the tarpaulins,” he told the others. “What boats?” asked Nutts.
“Didn’t you see them. On both sides of the liner. They’re there in case we had to abandon the ship, like when it hits an ice berg and the passengers are taken to safety in the smaller boats,” Smiley explained. The tarpaulins of the first two boats they climbed up to were so tightly roped they could not climb inside the boat. But the third was loose and the four men easily hid inside.
Following the spots of wine, in the early morning the First Mate and several stewards went right to the cabin the thieves had used. Opening the door, they found it empty but for piles of trays without a scrap of food on them. There was the platter with the small hole in it. On it lay empty dishes, empty wine bottles and even the elegant empty caviar dish. The First Mate stared at the dish. He had ordered a steward to fill the platter with partially eaten food fit for a rich passenger. Had he included a dish of caviar? “I think I know what has happened,” he announced, “our trick was a bit overdone.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN:
A Very Long Story
“WE ARE CHECKING every unused state room twice a day and once a night,” said the Captain, “and all stewards will wear an employee name tag on the front of their coats for the two days left of this voyage.” He hoped that this would limit any activities of the thieves, wherever they might be hiding. Had he known how worried the four men actually were, his extra precautions could have been dismissed.
As it was, the four remained under the tarpaulin without food or water as silent as the smooth and silken sea half an hour before sunset.
To cheer Emily up, her stewards asked her if she had ever seen the green flash. “Green flash,” she asked, “what is that?” “As the sun sets to the West on a calm sea such as this one, just as the sun goes down beyond the horizon you can see a green flash - just for a split second,” they explained. To get the very best look, the stewards got permission for Emily to visit the Captain’s control room on the top deck.
Several men were busy at wheels and levers and behind them was a square table with rulers and pins placed on several maps. The Captain was studying one such map as Emily entered. “Here to see the green flash, I believe,” he said. Emily smiled as he lifted her up onto a high chair that overlooked an expanse of ocean to the West. She felt silly. She could easily have climbed into that seat herself. Watch carefully now,” he went on, “the flash will be here any second.” “There it is!”
Emily saw no green flash. Did she miss it or were these officers just kidding her. “Did you see it?” they asked. “See it, why if we were heading East, it would have covered Ireland,” she answered, thinking “this must be what Professor Witherspoon calls a ‘white lie’.” In any case, the answer seemed to satisfy the crew.
The morning the Ile de France arrived in New York, a tug boat greeted them at the end of the ‘narrows’, a stretch of the Hudson River that flows into the Atlantic Ocean. It was called a pilot boat, because the captain of the ferry boat was responsible to pilot the massive ocean liner up the narrows into the piers on the West side of the Island of Manhattan.
“He and the Captain work together to insure that the liner follows a true path to its docking. It is a very precise operation. For example when the Captain turns the liner in any direction, including stopping, he gives his orders minutes before the ship actually turns or stops,” the purser explained to Emily.
When the great ship stopped, small lines were thrown ashore to be caught by deckhands on the pier. They took the lines which held huge ropes the thickness of an arm and tied the ropes around giant winches, circular iron poles with cranks to turn the ropes around them. Finally the ship was secured to the pier and gangways, ladders fifty feet or more in length, were rolled down from the deck to the pier.
As Emily disembarked with Madam Bibi and the professor, the Captain gave her a small package, saying “merci”, thanks, for her ingenuity in attempting to catch the thieves. Awaiting the steamer trunks, Emily opened the package. In it was a dark blue sailor’s cap with a red and white ribbon of the French Line. She placed it on her head. A perfect fit.
“We have another surprise for you,” said the professor. “I hope you don’t mind that we did this without your permission or attendance. Last night the Captain, with the legal rights he has to do such things, married Madam Bibi and I. May I be the first to introduce you to Mrs. Wither spoon.” “And from now on, mon chere, you shall just call me Aunt Bibi!” Mrs. Witherspoon added.
“But I have no present to give you,” blurted Emily. “Newly married couples always are given presents.” “My dearest,” said the professor, “you are a present enough for twenty couples. But if you must give us one, I have a suggestion. That you always call us Uncle Ernest and Aunt Bibi. Although we really are not your blood relatives, we feel we are even closer than that.” Emily ran over and hugged both new relatives with tears of joy streaming down all their faces.
Awaiting them past the customs office, where their passports were checked and stamped, were Emily’s mother and father. Her mother held her so tight and so long and longer still, Emily felt she might faint. “Sarah,” said her father, “let go and give someone else a chance to say hello.” “Hush,” said her mother, “I may never let go.” But she did as Emily’s father picked her up, held her at arms length and stared at her in what looked like a most serious study. “Sarah, I’m not sure this is our Emily, what do you think?” And then he winked and hugged her harder if not longer than her mother had.
In the stern, the rear, of the liner, Smiley Wiley and his henchmen crawled out of the boat in which they were hiding and crept towards the side against the pier. They spotted one of the thick ropes that secured the ship to the shore and, hand over hand, they slid down the rope and onto the pier. Then they quietly held on to the pier and jumped into the water. They swam away from the pier with the building housing the customs office and found another docking place unattended. Wet and cold, they crawled up a rope ladder onto its walkway and slipped away.
“Daddy,” Emily said in the most stern voice she could muster without giggling, “Professor Witherspoon has been…” and then with a French accent she went on, “a naughty boy. He has married Madam Bibi.”
“Congratulations to both of you,” said her father. “No, no, William, we congratulate the husband and offer good wishes to his wife,” her mother corrected. “Why,” asked Emily. “Because you congratulate the man on his good fortune in getting this lovely lady to be his wife and you offer good wishes to the lady that her choice will be as fortunate,” her mother answered. Emily’s puzzled look was interrupted by the new Mrs. Witherspoon, “Mon chere, the fortune is both ours together with our brand new relative, our only niece, Emily.”
Over dinner at her father’s university club, Ernest and Bibi and Emily began to tell her parents what would become a very long story.
Further adventures of Emily to be published.
Emily
in
Khara-Koto
CHAPTER ONE:
A Chinese dinner it will be
THE MONTHS OF school rushed by. Emily found her favorite subjects were geography and English. Geography because it talked of far away lands and English because the better she read the more books she could enjoy about places like Machu Picchu in Peru and Ulan Bator in Mongolia.
“I’m afraid she’ll never be satisfied with the simple life of New England,” said her mother, Sarah. “All she talks about are the mountains of Peru or the deserts of Mongolia.”
“You don’t think Mount Desert, Maine will suffice?” responded her father.
“Well, it’s really all your fault, you and your father and Professor Witherspoon,” her mother went on. “That adventure in Arabia makes a map in schoo
l look like an artifact from the bronze age.”
It was true. The blackboard and the maps that hung from several walls, the desks and ink wells with a small slot to put away books and papers were hardly the stuff of uncovering an ancient city like Urgup. Her teacher, Miss Osgood, was always enthusiastic. She gave her heart and soul to her classroom. Emily memorized poems and psalms from the Bible. She recited the names of the capital of the forty-eight states, even Helena, Montana and Albany, New York. But she dreamed of more exotic places where people lived very different lives. On her report card, to her marks Miss Osgood added: “at times it appears as if Emily is somewhere else, far, far away.”
As April passed and the summer months were approaching, Emily’s mother looked over brochures for summer camps. Lakes and mountains, fresh air, swimming, canoeing, hiking, sailing, arts and crafts were spelled out in glowing terms. “William, if we are serious about Emily going to camp for eight weeks this summer, we need to get on the ball right now.” Her father, who was usually overly organized, seemed to be dawdling about Emily’s summer plans. “We’ve got plenty of time, Sarah,” he answered.
“Plenty of time. It will be May next week and just ten weeks until these camps open up,”her mother reminded him.
Emily looked at the brochures. All the photos showed happy girls in their smocks or woolen swimsuits, enjoying a camp’s facilities. “Under the Pines,” “Above the Waterfall,” “Ghost Stories at the Campfire.” read captions under the pictures. Tame stuff compared to climbing down a well in Egypt, or driving through the sands of a desert in a new Rolls Royce.
“William,” said her mother a week later, “no more procrastinating. Let’s both of us and Emily choose a camp and be done with it.” Her father looked sheepish. “I may have an alternative,” he said. “Alternative?” her mother replied. “Well, not exactly a camp alternative. More of an adventure alternative. A trip to China.”
If Emily’s eyes opened any wider they would have popped out right there on the spot.
“China,” her mother said in desperation, why don’t you and I discuss this privately, away from our daughter,” she added as she stacked the camp brochures in a pile on a table nearby. “Let’s take a stroll outside.” Emily watched her mother and father walk down the street and followed them at a safe distance. She couldn't hear what they were saying but watched their body movements for answers. At first her mother waved her arms, stopped once and seemed just to glare at her father. Then they ambled on, talking more calmly. When her father put his arm around her mother and her mother leaned more closely to him, Emily smiled. Maybe China will be my summer’s vacation, she mused.
She sped back home undetected and pretended to be reading a book as he parents opened the screen door and entered the house. “I am willing to wait for the professor’s letter,” she heard her mother say, “but only for one week.”
One week. Either a camp in New Hampshire or a trip to China. It was too much to bear. Emily went to the library, where he mother was the librarian, to look in the section of books on China. There were so many. History, culture, politics, trade, religion, education, medicine. Where would she start. She looked at a map. China was vast, too big to study all of it. Where did the professor plan to travel in China. She left without any books, more confused than ever. She would have to await the professor’s letter.
She asked Miss Osgood about China. “As a matter of fact,” said her teacher, “you’ve come to the right place. My brother is an anthropologist and his special interest happens to be the Far East.” “What part of China interests you, Emily,” she added. “Something ancient,” was all Emily could think of.
“That’s not very specific, young lady. China is a very ancient country with a history that goes back more than five thousand years. Did you know that the Chinese invented gun powder? Maybe you should just start with a dinner at Chin Chow’s downtown and ask the Chows,” she joked.
Emily’s parents rarely ate out. How could she get them to the Chows, she pondered.
“Well, pumpkin,” her father asked that evening. “ what did you learn in school today?”
“We discussed foods from around the world,” Emily made up. “Do they sound better than home cooking?” added her mother as she entered the room. “I don’t know, I’ve never tasted foreign food, answered Emily.
“Well, we can change that,” said her father. “Why don’t we all go to dinner tomorrow night at Chin Chow’s downtown, I’ve heard that children like Chinese food as much as adults,” he went on.’’
“It is time for Seth to improve his table manners,” her mother added. Her younger brother was notorious for his sloppy table habits, like not unfolding his napkin or eating his vegetables and spilling his milk.
“That’s settled, a Chinese dinner it all be,” announced her father.
Emily and the Lost City of Urgup Page 8
