“Not at all, not at all,” said Freddy. “It is a very slight return for your great kindness.”
“You are the very pattern of politeness,” replied Breckenridge, and for several minutes they continued to exchange compliments. It was probably one of the most polished exchanges which has ever taken place in a balloon. Indeed Freddy was so exceedingly courteous that he almost persuaded the eagle to eat up the rest of the provisions. At this point, luckily, Alice interposed. Perhaps, she suggested, they could make Breckenridge some return for his service which would be not quite as ordinary as just something to eat.
Freddy couldn’t think of any reward for any service which could be better than something to eat, but he saw the point. “I have it,” he said. “I will write another verse for him to my Ode to the Eagle.”
Breckenridge was delighted with the idea, and Freddy, who was always at his best as a poet after a good meal, began thinking. And in a few minutes had his verse.
“The fearless eagle cleaves the stormy air;
With mighty wings he sweeps the clouds asunder;
He screams defiance at the lightning’s glare,
And at the thunder’s crash he laughs like thunder.”
Breckenridge had Freddy repeat the verse several times before he would make any comment. Then he said: “My friend, aside from being one of the finest compliments ever paid our race, I do not believe that Shakespeare himself could have achieved a loftier flight of fancy. ‘Flight of fancy’—ha! Not bad, eh? ‘The fearless eagle tum te-tum te-tum—” What rhythm! What sweep! And that phrase: ‘at the thunder’s crash—’”
A distant low grumble interrupted his words. He turned sharply and peered up at the sky. Black clouds were piling up over the wooded hills, and a gust of wind sung through the ropes and set the basket swaying.
“Thunder!” muttered Breckenridge. “I—ah, h’m, dear me; I’m afraid I must be going. My little Waldemar—alone in his nest, you know. Mother away. Visiting her aunt this weekend. Well, see you later.” And he spread his wings and dropped from the edge of the basket. In a minute or two he had vanished in the northern sky.
“That’s funny,” said Freddy. “Fearless eagle, eh? And scared of thunderstorms. He was scared, you know.”
“And so am I, Freddy,” said Emma, as she watched fearfully the boiling cloud masses that crept over the sun.
“Well, I am too,” said Freddy. “But there’s nowhere to go. We’ll just have to ride it out. We’d better snug down as well as we can. I’ll call the Webbs.”
The spiders came up over the edge of the basket, and Freddy found them a cozy refuge from the storm in one of the oiled paper envelopes the sandwiches had been wrapped in. He put the envelope in the hamper, then he and the ducks covered themselves up with blankets and ponchos, and having tucked themselves in carefully, waited for the storm to break. Which it presently did with a blinding flash and a crash as if the whole sky had fallen in on them. The basket gave a lurch as the wind struck it; the rain pelted like hundreds of drums on the stretched rubber of the balloon; and then swaying and jerking crazily, balloon and basket, pig and ducks and spiders, went careering off through the lightning slashed darkness.
Chapter 6
It was a wild ride the animals had through that thunderstorm, and it lasted a long time. For of course they went along with it. When you’re on the ground, a storm will come up in one part of the sky and drive pouring and roaring above you, and then go grumbling off over the hills in another part of the sky. But when you are in a balloon, you drive along with it. It seemed to Freddy as if there were a dozen thunderstorms, and that the balloon would be carried like a football by one of them for a while, and then passed to another, and then another. It lurched and swung dizzily, with ominous creaks and crackings that could be heard plainly above the hiss and rattle of wind and rain. Freddy expected any minute to have the whole thing torn to pieces around them.
But at last the storm blew itself out. The thunder stopped rolling, the rain slackened, and the motion of the basket grew quieter. Fortunately the ponchos had kept them dry. Freddy crawled out to look around. But although the sky was clearing, the sun had set and it was too dark to see much. He got some sandwiches from the hamper and he and Alice ate their supper. Emma had a sick headache from the motion, and didn’t want any. Then he opened the oiled paper envelope to see if the Webbs were all right.
“My, my, what a trip!” said Mr. Webb. “Mother’s quite done up; I think perhaps now things have quieted down we’ll stay right here and try to get some sleep.”
“I think we all need sleep,” said Freddy. And as the ducks agreed with him, they curled up again under the blankets in the bottom of the basket.
Perhaps because of the buffeting it had taken from the storm, which might have knocked some of the gas out of it, the balloon was now much nearer the ground than it had been before, and the grapnel, which Freddy had forgotten to stow away after he had pulled up the hamper, barely missed by inches the tops of the taller trees over which they drifted. Indeed, once or twice during the night it caught for a second and then pulled free again, and at those times the sharp jerk of the basket woke Freddy up. But he was too sleepy to get up and investigate, and after waiting a minute to see if anything else happened, he dropped off again.
But a little before daylight a sharp jerk woke him again, and this time it was followed by a series of tugs that tipped the basket and sent him and the two ducks and the hamper and Mr. Golcher’s box of canned goods into a heap in one corner. At first when he got out he couldn’t see much, partly because the sun was not yet up, and partly because in the struggle of getting out of the blankets Alice had stepped in his eye. But it was getting lighter all the time, and pretty soon he made out that the grapnel had caught under the eaves of a house and was holding them anchored there, only a few feet above the roof.
There was something familiar about that house, and about the barn and the yard and the gate.
“Have either of you girls ever seen this place before?” he asked, as the ducks hopped up beside him. He always called them girls when he thought of it, because it both pleased and flustered them a little. It pleased them because it made them seem younger than they really were, and it flustered them because it didn’t seem quite dignified. Of course, they weren’t very old, but for ducks they were really grown up.
“Why no, Freddy,” said Alice. “We haven’t, have we, sister?”
“We’ve never been in the Adirondacks before,” said Emma.
“I think we’ve been blown out of the Adirondacks,” said Freddy, “though where we are now I don’t know. It just seemed to me I’d seen it all before.”
“Why, now you mention it,” Alice began, and then she stopped, for an upstairs window opened in the house, and a head came out and twisted around to look up at them, and then a mouth opened in the head, and yelled: “Hey, pa!”
“Down!” whispered Freddy. “Keep out of sight. Oh, I know where we are now, all right.”
“So do I,” said Alice, “and I don’t like it, Freddy.”
Indeed, there was a very good reason for them not to like it. On their famous trip to Florida, they had had some trouble, as you may remember, with a man with a black moustache and a dirty-faced boy. On the way back home, Charles and Henrietta had been captured by these two, and would have been eaten for Sunday dinner if the other animals hadn’t succeeded in rescuing them. And now, the face that was looking up at them …
“Are you sure that’s the same boy, sister?” Emma asked.
“I’m sure it’s the same dirt,” said Alice. “There’s the same black smudge on his left cheek. Why, he can’t have washed his face in five years!”
“Disgraceful!” said Emma.
The boy, followed by the man with the black moustache, who was his father, had come out into the yard and was staring up at the balloon.
“That must be the balloon you heard about last night over the radio, pa,” said the boy. “The one that pig went up in t
hat the police are hunting for.”
Freddy pricked up his ears.
“You get a rope, sonny,” said the man, “and climb up on the roof and hook it to that anchor thing, and then we’ll pull it down.”
“If that pig is the robber, and we get the reward the police are offering for him,” said the boy, “will you take me to see the circus over at South Pharisee, pa?”
“Maybe yes and maybe no,” said the man. “You wait till we get it down and see what’s in it.”
“There ain’t anything in it.”
“Oh, yes there is,” said the man. “The pig’s in it. I can see the tips of his ears.”
“Is that the pig that talks, pa?”
The man laughed coarsely. “He won’t talk much when we put an apple in his mouth and pop him in the oven.” He turned suddenly and cuffed the boy. “Go get that rope!”
“Didn’t I hear Breckenridge say something to you about South Pharisee?” Emma asked Freddy.
“My goodness, I don’t know. What difference does it make? Did you hear what the man said?”
“You needn’t be so cross,” said Emma. “They’ll eat us too.”
Freddy shuddered. “Don’t talk like that! Don’t you realize that to escape from here I’ve got to have all my wits about me, and how can I when you keep talking about we’re going to be eaten up? It—it unnerves me.”
“Hush, sister,” said Alice calmly. “Let Freddy think.”
So Emma hushed and Freddy thought. And he really did think of something. He took hold of the grapnel rope and unfastened it from the cleat. At first he was going to let the grapnel and the rope both go, but the other end of the rope was tied to the basket in a knot that it would take some time to untie, and besides, he didn’t want to lose the grapnel if he could help it. So he waited until the breeze slackened a little, and then he loosened the rope and gave it a quick shake. And the grapnel came free and the balloon started slowly away from the house.
At this the man with the black moustache, who had been watching with a superior grin on his face, gave a loud yell and ran into the house. The balloon, which was moving very slowly, was only halfway across the next field when he came out again with a gun and began to run after it.
“He’s going to shoot us,” said Alice. “Oh, Freddy, I wish we could get out and push.”
“All he’s got to do is hit the balloon,” said Freddy, “and the gas will come out and down we’ll come.”
The man had caught up and was nearly under them now, but as he pulled up the gun to shoot, Freddy snatched two cans of beans out of the box of canned goods and threw them quickly down at him, one after the other. The first one hit the gun, which went off with a bang, and the charge of shot whizzed harmlessly by the balloon. And as the man opened his mouth to yell, the second can hit a rock and burst, showering him with baked beans and tomato sauce, some of which went right into his mouth.
… the second can hit a rock and burst.
“Help! I’m being bombed!” he shouted, and threw himself flat on his face in the hay. Then he licked his moustache. “Beans!” he exclaimed thoughtfully, and was starting to get to his feet again when he saw the tomato sauce all over his shirt, and then he gave a very loud yell and fell down even flatter than before.
Freddy hadn’t realized it, but the weight of two cans of beans makes quite a difference in a balloon, and when he threw them out, the balloon went up quite a lot higher in the air. They still weren’t out of gunshot, but the man with the black moustache was so sure that he was mortally wounded that he lay still until the dirty-faced boy came out and helped him to his feet. And when he found out that he wasn’t wounded after all, he cuffed the dirty-faced boy good. He did this for three reasons: first, because the balloon had got away; and second, because he would now probably have to take a bath to get the tomato sauce off him; and third, because it seemed like a pretty good thing to do anyway. And I don’t say they were good reasons, but that is what they were.
In the meantime the balloon had sailed off across two meadows and a hill, and Alice and Emma were praising Freddy. “You saved our lives,” they said.
“Pshaw!” said Freddy modestly. “That’s nothing.”
“Our lives may be nothing to you,” said Alice tartly, “but they are pretty important to us.”
So Freddy apologized. He wasn’t quite sure what he was apologizing for, but as a general thing, if anybody expects an apology, the polite thing is to give it to them. It saves a lot of wear and tear.
Although their adventure had been pretty terrifying, one thing they had learned through it: they were not very far from home.
“The storm must have blown us back towards Centerboro,” said Freddy. “If we could get down now, we could be home by supper-time. What do you say: shall we let down the grapnel and try to hook on to a fence or a tree? Then maybe we could pull the balloon down and get on the ground.”
The two ducks looked at each other. Then Emma said: “If you want to go home now, Freddy, Alice and I are willing. But—” She hesitated. “Why, dear me,” she said, “if anyone had ever told me that I should really enjoy being blown around the sky, and half starved, and thundered at, and chased by men with guns, I wouldn’t have believed them. Our Uncle Wesley enjoyed that kind of thing, but Alice and I have always been home bodies. Of course I have been simply terrified a good deal of the time, but now that I am not terrified any more—well, sister, what do you think?”
“I think you are showing a spirit of which Uncle Wesley would be very proud,” said Alice. “For myself, I came out to have adventures, and if there are any more to be had, I say—have them. I am quite willing to continue our voyage for a time.”
“Well, that’s fine,” said Freddy. “We don’t need to ask the Webbs: they’re game for anything, I know. Now there is one reason why I would prefer not to go home right away, and that is that apparently the police are looking for us. That means that Mr. Golcher thinks we have stolen his balloon, and has got out a warrant for our arrest. If we go home now, the police will catch us and put us in jail, and nobody will believe our explanation that the valve cord wouldn’t work. But if we bring the balloon back to Mr. Golcher ourselves, or at least leave it somewhere and then find him and explain, I think everything will be all right. Because there’s a lot of difference between being arrested with the stolen goods in your possession, and returning them to the owner yourself.”
“The police are undoubtedly looking for us,” said Emma. “Look down there.”
They were passing over a road, and as Freddy looked he saw a white police car beside which stood two state troopers. They were looking up and waving their arms and shouting, and although the balloonists couldn’t hear what they were saying, there was no misunderstanding what they wanted. One of them even pulled out a pistol and fired two warning shots.
“We’d better just pretend not to understand,” said Freddy, and he leaned over and waved and nodded. The troopers shook their fists and motioned, but Freddy pretended to misunderstand, and he continued to wave and even blow kisses until the balloon had drifted over the next hill.
“I’m afraid you have made them very angry,” said Emma.
“Well,” said Freddy, “they can’t prove I knew what they wanted. My goodness, lots of people wave to us.”
“They don’t shoot pistols,” said Alice.
“They probably would if they had them,” said Freddy. “And now let me see; that road down there runs west into Centerboro, and then northwest to the farm. The wind is taking us a little to the north of that, into the hills above Centerboro. So let me tell you what I plan to do, and see if it meets with your approval.”
Chapter 7
It was late in the morning before the balloon drifted over a place that Freddy thought would do for the plan he had in mind. It was a cleft between two heavily wooded hills. He let down the grapnel as far as it would go, and it disappeared into the treetops, and then there was a tug and he knew it was caught fast. He took a turn of the
rope around the cleat, and every time there came a lull in the breeze and the balloon stopped pulling, he would haul in a little of the rope, and thus pull them down towards the earth. Ducks aren’t very strong and they aren’t built for pulling anyway, but they helped as much as they could.
“It’s like—pulling in a big—fish,” panted Emma. “Only we’re—pulling in the earth. I don’t suppose—anybody ever caught—a bigger fish than that.”
“Maybe we could catch the moon next,” said Freddy. “We could hang it up in the barnyard, and then Mr. Bean wouldn’t have to pay any more electric bills.”
“We’d better make sure of the earth first,” said Alice, “before we plan anything else.”
It was hard work and slow work, but at last the balloon was pulled down until the basket was anchored just above a thick limb that grew halfway up a big oak. Then Freddy threw out the rope ladder and climbed down it. The end of the ladder was a good six feet from the ground, but Freddy only hesitated long enough to say “Oh, dear!” and then dropped.
I know that they say it doesn’t hurt fat people to fall as much as it does thin people, but it hurt Freddy all right. He bounced three times, and the first bounce made him yell, and the second bounce brought the tears to his eyes and the third bounce made him grunt. And then he lay still for a minute watching what looked like Roman candles going off in all directions. He looked around to see if his legs were all in place, and then he got slowly to his feet.
“Oh, Freddy, are you all right?” Emma called.
He looked up and saw the ducks peering anxiously over the edge of the basket.
“Sure, I’m all right,” he said bravely. “So long, and don’t expect me back before tomorrow night.” And he limped off into the woods.
After he had gone a little way he felt better. He kept his shadow on his right and trudged steadily southward, for that was the direction in which the Bean farm lay. After a couple of hours he came out of the woods into the open fields. In front of him was a broad valley, dotted with farmhouses and laced with roads, and on the other side of the valley, perhaps four miles away, the woods began again. These, he knew, were the Big Woods, where he had once hunted the strange and terrible Ignormus, and beyond the Big Woods were Mr. Bean’s woods, and then the farm. But how was he to get across this open valley without running the risk of being seen and captured by the police?
Freddy and the Perilous Adventure Page 4
