Arabel and Mortimer (5 page)

Then he began to come down again. But the tie, probably loosened by the removal of the cream cracker, was suddenly dragged off his neck by the fresh wind. Quick as thought, before he could even let out a squawk, or Arabel could grab it, the wind whisked it away, over the deck rail and out of view.

"Oh, my goodness—," cried Arabel in utter dismay.

She and Henry rushed to the rail and looked over; but there was nothing to be seen. The fog was now so thick that they could see only a few yards down the side of the ship.

No tie.

It had taken a moment or two for Mortimer, clinging to the balustrade, to understand what had happened. He felt a draft, an unaccustomed chill round his middle. Then he realized that the reason why he felt so unwrapped was because his tie had disappeared. He let out a long and lamentable squawk.

"Kaaaaaark!"

"Oh, Mortimer, I'm
sorry
!" cried Arabel.

Mortimer gave her a look of frightful reproach. It said, plain as words, "What's the use of your sorrow to me?
That
won't keep me warm. Why didn't you tie the tie in a knot?"

Arabel picked up Mortimer and held him tight.

"I'd better take him back to our cabin," she said.

Henry kindly promised that he would ask his father to tell all the crew to keep a lookout for Mortimer's tie, just in case it had blown to another part of the ship and got tangled up in some bits of machinery.

"But I'm afraid it's most likely gone straight into the sea," he said.

Mortimer glared at him balefully.

Arabel carried Mortimer back to their room, stopping at the ship's shop on the way for a bag of raspberry jelly delights. Usually Mortimer was very fond of these, but at this moment he couldn't have cared less about them. Nor did he want to throw cards into the air and stab them with his beak, or any of the other activities that Arabel suggested. He made it plain that he wanted nothing but his tie. He croaked and flapped and moped and sulked and sat hunched in the upper bunk, looking miserably down at Arabel or out through the porthole at the heaving gray sea.

To make matters worse, the weather was becoming quite rough. The
Queen of Bethnal Green
was entering the Bay of Biscay, where the water comes rushing in from the Atlantic and bumps against the shore and bounces back and tosses passing ships up and down in a very disagreeable way.

The
Queen of Bethnal Green
began to tip up and down and to roll from side to side. Arabel found, presently, that all the lurching about made her feel rather queer; and as for Mortimer, he started to look decidedly unlike himself; if a bird of his complexion could be said to look green, then Mortimer looked it.

Arabel began to feel really anxious about him.

At last she pushed the red button to summon Mike the steward.

Mike, when he came, was cheerful and reassuring. He examined Mortimer, who was now sitting on Arabel's pink-blanketed bunk with his eyes closed.

"Feeling a bit all-overish, is he? You, too? Lots o' the passengers are, just now. It'll be better tomorrow when we get across the Bay. You'd better take a couple of Kwenches—they'll put you right in no time. Here you are—I always carry a few."

He brought out of his pocket a couple of large pale-green pills.

"There you are! Guaranteed to relieve any discomfort or travel sickness or indisposition due to climatic conditions."

"Oh, thank you, Mike. You are kind," said Arabel. She swallowed her pill with a glass of water.

"WARNING," said Mike, reading from the packet. "These tablets may cause drowsiness. If affected, be sure not to drive or operate machinery."

"Well, Mortimer and I aren't likely to be operating any machinery," said Arabel. "Unless you count the fruit machines. Mike, do you think this tablet is rather large for Mortimer? After all, he's only a bird. Should we cut it in half? Or even a quarter?"

"Maybe we better," said Mike. He dug into his white jangle pocket again and pulled out a collection of jingling things—keys, bottle openers, corkscrews, can openers, and a penknife. But before he could cut the pill in half with any of these tools, Mortimer, who had been peering at it through half-closed eyes for the last few minutes, suddenly opened his beak very wide indeed and swallowed it down. Then he shut his eyes again.

"Oh, well," said Mike. "I daresay he'll be all right. He's swallowed plenty odder things than that, if what I hear from Mr. Spicer is true. It'll probably just give him a good nap." He gathered up his keys and corkscrews.

Mortimer slightly opened his eyes and directed a hostile look at Mike's back, which was now turned to him, as the steward drew the curtains across the porthole to shut out the dismal view. Very neatly, and without making the slightest noise, Mortimer reached out a claw and hooked up a ring of keys which was dangling half out of Mike's pocket, and tucked it under his wing. Neither Mike nor Arabel observed this.

"I'd have a nap, too, if I was you," said Mike. "I'll bring you along some tea and sponge cakes by and by."

Arabel thought this was good advice. She curled up in her warm pink blankets and had a nap. Mortimer did, too, with the keys tucked safely under his wing.

When Arabel woke next, quite a lot of time had passed by. It was five o'clock. Mike had come back with the tea and sponge cakes. He had with him also a large selection of ties.

"Cap'n Mainbrace was sorry to hear from young Henry that your bird lost his comforter. He took up a collection among the ship's officers. This here's the result."

There were ties of every kind—spotted, striped, wool, satin, wide, narrow, plain, and bow. But no dark green tie.

"Oh, that's very kind of them," said Arabel. "Mortimer's still asleep. I'll show them to him as soon as he wakes up."

As a matter of fact, she was not too hopeful that Mortimer would like any of the ties, knowing how hard he was to please. But there would be no harm in trying.

"Let sleeping birds lie," said Mike. "I wouldn't rouse him till he wakes of hisself. I was to tell you that your ma's having her hair done in the beauty salon, and your pa's playing bingo."

Arabel certainly had no intention of rousing Mortimer.

She tiptoed away, leaving him still fast asleep, warmly cocooned in pink blankets. Just to be on the safe side, she locked the cabin door.

Arabel watched Mr. Jones playing bingo for a while, but she did not find it very interesting, and presently she went off with Henry, who came to tell her that a ship's treasure hunt was being organized and she had been invited to help lay the clues. They had just begun doing this on the fiesta deck when they heard loud screams coming from the direction of the beauty salon, which was not far away.

Screams always made Arabel anxious if Mortimer was anywhere in the neighborhood; so often they seemed to have some connection with him. She started off toward the beauty salon and saw Miss Brandy Brown running down the stairs with half her hair in curlers and the other half loose and floating behind her.

"What is it?" Arabel asked. But Miss Brown rushed past without answering.

Then Mrs. Jones came out of the salon.

"Oh my stars, is that you, Arabel?" she said. "Why ever haven't you been keeping an eye on Mortimer? He came wandering into the beauty parlor as if he was under the affluence of incohol, gliding along with his eyes tight shut and his toes turned up and his wings stuck straight out before him, just like good Queen MacBess on her way to the Hampton Court Palais de Danse. It's my belief he's been magnetized by one of those hypopotanists."

"Oh dear," said Arabel. "I thought he was safe in my cabin fast asleep."

"He
was
fast asleep. That's what I mean!"

"Why was everybody screaming?"

"Well it wasn't everybody, dearie," said Mrs. Jones, "but only that Miss Brandy Brown, who, say what you like, is a very silly historical girl to fly off the handle just because she sees a bird walk past when she's sitting under the dryer; she says she's got an algebra about birds, or an agony—all he did was give her green towel a tweak—"

"Poor Mortimer," said Arabel, "I expect he was looking for his tie in his sleep."

"And then, of course, a bottle of setting lotion fell on him, and with the dryer on the floor, blowing, all his feathers turned curly, so he did look rather peculiar—"

"I'd better find him," said Arabel, and hurried off.

When she got to the beauty salon, Mortimer was not to be seen, though there was a fair amount of chaos which suggested that he had spent several minutes in there hunting for his tie; some dryers were knocked over and blowing hot air in every direction, taps were running, bottles were broken, green nylon overalls and towels lay all over the place, and there were enough scattered hairpins to build a model of the Eiffel Tower.

Henry joined Arabel and they began methodically hunting through the ship. They were partly helped and partly hindered by the public-address system.

"Will any member of the crew or passengers seeing a large raven, who doesn't answer to the name Mortimer and is apparently walking in his sleep and searching for a green tie, please contact Miss Arabel Jones in Cabin 1K on the upper deck."

"How could he have got out of your cabin? I thought you locked it," panted Henry as they ran along the promenade deck, examining all the tarpaulin-covered lifeboats to see if any of them seemed to have been disturbed lately.

"I don't understand it," said Arabel. "But I've heard that when people are walking in their sleep they can fall off very high places without being hurt. Perhaps they can go through locked doors, too."

She didn't know, of course, that Mortimer had Mike's bunch of passkeys, which would open any door on the ship. Nobody knew this until the
Queen of Bethnal Green
suddenly began sailing in circles.

"Losh sakes! What's come wi' the ship?" exclaimed old Mr. Fairbairn, the chief engineer, who had gone off duty and was having a cup of tea in the Rumpus Lounge. He dashed back to the bridge, where the door was swinging open and the second engineer, Hamish McTavish, with a very red face, was declaring:

"I swearr to goodness all I did was turrrn my back for aboot thirrrty seconds tae charrt the day's courrse, and yon black rrruffian had the lock picked and was in like a whirrlwind—"

Mr. Fairbairn roared over the public-address system, "Wull Miss Arrabel Jones come withoot delay tae the brreedge, whurr her rraven Morrtimer is mekking a conseederable nuisance o' himself?"

Arabel and Henry rushed to the bridge, but by the time they arrived Mortimer, in his somnambulistic search for his tie, had evidently decided that it was not there, and had left by way of a ventilator. Just after he did so a series of red and green rockets began to shoot up from the
Queen of Bethnal Green.

"Och, mairrrcy, he must ha' set off the deestress signals when he was sairrching through yon bank o' sweetches," exclaimed Hamish McTavish, and began hastily sending out radio messages to cancel the message of the distress signals before a whole posse of passing ships should begin to take them seriously and come steaming to the rescue.

Now a new message sounded over the loudspeaker.

"Will Miss Arabel Jones please come to the first-class kitchen where her raven, Mortimer, walking in his sleep, has destroyed seventy-four pounds of iceberg lettuce?"

But long before Arabel and Henry had got to the kitchen, Mortimer had moved on, leaving a trail of green beans, spinach, brussels sprouts, angelica, broken plates, and irate cooks' assistants.

"Will Miss Arabel Jones please come to the casino, where a large black bird is wandering around the pool table in a dazed manner with a sprig of broccoli dangling from his beak?"

But by the time they reached the casino, Mortimer had departed, leaving a scene of torn green baize and snapped cues behind him.

"Will Miss Arabel Jones please come to the Swedish gymnasium—the Finnish sauna—the Spanish bar—the Chinese laundry—the bank—the crèche—the card room—the library—the hospital—"