Freddy Goes to the North Pole (17 page)

Mr. Hooker and the boatswain, Joel, slept on the floor above, and Mr. Hooker had had the speaking-tube put in so that, if any orders that he wanted to give the men occurred to him in the night, he could tell Mr. Pomeroy and have them carried out right away. So in a moment the captain's sleepy voice said hello.

“Hello, captain,” gasped the mate. “Guess you'd better come down here. There's a demon or an ogre or something out in the hall; he's about ten feet high and he's got teeth as long as your hand, and I think he's et up about half the crew accordin' to the noise they been makin'.”

“Eh?” said the captain incredulously. “Come, come, Mr. Pomeroy, this is no hour for jesting.”

“Jesting!” exclaimed the indignant mate. “You come down and look at him and you'll see how much jest there is to it.”

It took some time to convince Mr. Hooker that there was really something wrong, but when he had talked to Mr. Bashwater and found that his description of the demon agreed with the mate's, he said: “All right, all right, my men. Just wait till I get my cutlass and pistols. I'll soon settle his hash for him. Demon indeed! Cuttin' up didoes with my crew! I'll show him.”

The animals were rather scared themselves now, and they retreated into the stairway. Pretty soon they heard the clump, clump of the captain's heavy sea boots coming along the corridor. “Where is he?” roared the valiant captain. “Show me your ogre! Bring on your demons! What's a demon to me? What's ten demons? Me that's fought a galleyful o' Barbary pirates to a standstill single-handed! Me that's been a mate o' Blackbeard an' Teach! Me that's tamed the wild rhinoceros till he'd eat sugar out o' my hand, an' strode into the dens o' the Bengal tiger with no weapons but my fingers and my teeth! Trot out your terrors; let's see your ten-foot-high man-eaters! Let old Hooker git his hands on 'em once, and he won't leave nothin' of 'em but a couple o' teenty weenty grease spots on the floor that ye can mop up with a lady's pocket-handker-cher.”

So roared the captain as he clumped down the hall, and the animals, thoroughly frightened, crowded in the stairway, not daring to move. He came to the head of the stairs and peered down. “Are you down there, demon?” he shouted. “Come up an' rassle; come up an' git a taste o' old Doc Hooker's demon-medicine. Ye won't, hey? Well, I spose I'll have to come down to you, then.”

Now, among the false faces the animals had found in the Present Room was a particularly villainous-looking Chinese mask, and Freddy had touched it up with some radium paint so that it glowed fearsomely in the dark. Cowering with the other animals in the stairway, he had kept it hidden until the captain threatened to come down. But at that threat fear overcame all the animals, and with one accord they turned to run. Someone pushed Freddy, and to keep his balance he threw up the hand that held the mask. At the same moment Cousin Augustus's nerve gave way and he had hysterics.

Hooker, peering down the dark stairs, heard a strange tiny voice, a sort of whimpering squeak, and at the same moment was confronted by the baleful ferocity of the Chinese mask. He gave a yell—a louder yell than had yet been heard that night—dropped his cutlass, and, turning quickly, dashed back towards his room at top speed. What he did when he got there nobody knew, for he was not seen again that night, but there was a lot of dust on his coat at breakfast next morning—the kind of dust that is seldom found anywhere but under beds.

For a moment the animals were silent. Then they burst into a roar of laughter. “Good old captain!” they shouted. “‘Trot out your terrors,' eh? ‘Me that's tamed the wild rhinoceros! ‘It's ‘Me that's run from a mouse squeak,' I guess. Can you beat that? He was scareder than any of 'em.”

“That's all right,” said Ferdinand. “We've done fine. But there's something still to do. There's one we haven't scared, and that's Joel. We've got to scare 'em all, you see. If there's one that hasn't been scared, he'll be brave, and he'll shame all the others into being brave and staying too. But if they're all scared, they'll all want to leave.”

So they went upstairs to Joel's room. The captain's yell had waked Joel and he was sitting up in bed. Mrs. Wiggins got up on her hind legs, pulled her sheet around her, opened the door, and groaned. But the boatswain didn't yell and pull the covers over his head. He just said pleasantly: “Ah! A ghost. Come in, ghost. I've always wanted to see a ghost. Come in and sit down.” And he got up out of bed and politely offered her a chair.

Mrs. Wiggins didn't know what to do. The boatswain wasn't scared at all, but she thought that if she walked slowly towards him, it might scare him, so she tried that. Unfortunately the sheet that she wore was so long that it trailed on the ground, and as she moved towards the bed, she tripped on it and fell across the chair, smashing it into kindling wood.

Joel just smiled.” That's queer,” he said. “I thought ghosts didn't weigh anything.” Mrs. Wiggins scrambled to her feet and dashed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Out in the hall, Ferdinand was very angry. “You must have done something wrong,” he said. “It ought to be easy to scare him; he isn't half so brave as the captain.”

But Mrs. Wiggins was angry too. She had heard the other animals snicker when she fell over the chair. She tore off her sheet. “All right,” she said. “I'm going to bed. You can scare him yourself if you're so set on it. I've had enough monkey-shines for one evening.”

She was just starting for the stairs when the door opened again and Joel, in a long white night-shirt, appeared on the threshold with a candle in one hand and a pistol in the other.

“Well, upon my soul!” he exclaimed, looking from the crumpled sheet on the floor to Mrs. Wiggins. “It was the cow all the time, and not a ghost at all! Dear, dear! I have no luck at all! I did so want to see a ghost!” Then he looked round at the other animals, who still had their costumes on, and his face brightened. “But perhaps these are really ghosts,” he went on. “Well, there's one sure way to find out. All the story-books say that when you shoot at a ghost, the bullet goes right through him and he doesn't even notice it.” And he pointed the pistol straight at the bear.

The animals weren't sure whether he really meant to shoot or not, but they weren't taking any chances, so immediately they began pulling off their sheets and throwing aside their false faces. Then, looking very much crestfallen, they filed off down the hall to the stairs. Joel watched until the last of them had disappeared; then he went back to bed.

The animals did not blame Mrs. Wiggins for the failure of their plan. After all, she had done the best she could, and it was not her fault that Joel was not afraid of ghosts. But they knew that it wasn't any use trying to scare the sailors any more. Joel would tell his story, and the sailors would be ready for them the next time, and they would get the worst of it. They would just have to think up something else.

The sailors, fortunately, took the joke in good part. They thought the animals had been very clever to play such a trick on them. Mr. Pomeroy and Mr. Bashwater were a little ashamed of having been so frightened, and they tried to get even by hiding in dark corners and jumping out and shouting “Boo!” when any of the animals went past. As for the captain, he explained a dozen times a day that he had known all along that the ghosts were just animals dressed up, and that when he had run away he had only been entering into the spirit of the thing. “I just pretended to be scared,” he said. “That's what you should have done, Joel. Trouble with you is you don't know how to play. If somebody put a jack-lantern on your porch Hallowe'en night, you'd just go out and kick it to pieces. That's no way to act. Let 'em have their fun, I say.”

CHAPTER XIV

THE FLIGHT OF HOOKER

Freddy had taken very little interest in the schemes for getting rid of the sailors. He seemed to care for nothing but eating and sleeping and writing poetry. He had grown very fat, and as soon as a meal was over, he would go up to his room and lie down on the couch and take a nap. Then he would get up and lounge about and work at his verses or read until time for the next meal. His friends could seldom get him to go out skiing or coasting.

“You
ought
to get some exercise, Freddy,” they would say. “All that fat can't be healthy.” And they would tell him stories of pigs they had known who got so fat they burst.

But Freddy would just laugh. “Never felt better in my life,” he would reply. “Being fat's no disgrace. Look at all the famous men who have been fat.”

“But you used to be so slim and elegant and handsome,” they would protest.

“Handsome is as handsome does,” Freddy would say. “And if it's a choice between being handsome and a second helping of chocolate layer cake, I'll take the cake every time.” And to clinch the point he would take a chocolate bar from the drawer of his desk and bite off a big piece.

One day he was sitting at his desk when Jinx pushed open the door and walked in. Any other animal would have knocked first, but Jinx's manners were never very good, for he had been badly brought up. His mother had been a handsome but very vain tabby, who spent hours keeping her fur soft and sleek, but let her kittens, of whom there were seven besides Jinx, grow up just any way. So he really couldn't be blamed for his rudeness.

Freddy frowned. “Tut, tut, Jinx,” he said. “I'm glad to see you, of course, but you
must
learn to respect people's privacy. Don't you ever knock on doors?”

“Ho!” exclaimed the cat. “If I'm in the way—”

“Nonsense!” put in Freddy. “Don't be so touchy. It's all right with me. But others might not understand, and—”

“Oh, lay off, old boy,” said Jinx, throwing himself down upon the sofa. “And tell us the news. I haven't seen you, except at the dinner-table, for a cat's age.”

“Oh, I've been busy,” said Freddy. “I tell you, Jinx, it's no easy thing being a poet. You fellows think I just dash these things off, but I tell you there's hours and hours of solid work behind every verse I turn out. Take this little thing here,” and he handed a sheet of paper to his friend. “I've slaved over it until the perspiration has fairly dripped off my face.”

“You could do with a little sweating,” said the cat, eyeing the stout figure that filled the easy chair from arm to arm.

“That's as may be,” said Freddy. “But read it out to me, will you? I'd like to hear how it sounds.”

Jinx read the poem aloud.

Contented with my earthly lot,

My soul rejoicing sings

Until I gaze into the sky—

Then through my mind there rings

That saddest of all earthly thoughts:

Why do not pigs have wings?

When unimportant birds and bugs

And bats and other things

Can soar and wheel and flit, and know

The joy that flying brings—

Why is the pig denied the air?

Why do not pigs have wings?

My feet must stay upon the ground

In all my wanderings.

Yet still desire fills all my heart

With anxious questionings—

If even men have learned to fly,

Why can't this pig have wings?

“Do you like it?” asked Freddy anxiously.

“Very pretty,” said the cat. “How in the world you think of all these things I don't know.”

“‘Things,'” repeated Freddy absently. “That's a rhyme I didn't use—Eh? Oh, you asked how I think of them. Why, they just come to me,” he added modestly.

“But do you really want to fly?” asked the cat.

“Fly? Goodness, no! Why should I?”

“But that's what your poem was about.”

“Oh, you don't understand,” said Freddy. “That's just something I wanted in the poem, not something I really wanted. I just made myself think I wanted it so I could have something to write about.”

Jinx stretched and yawned. “Well, that's beyond me. But I don't understand poetry anyway. Give me good old prose every time. Take that book I was reading yesterday,
Treasure Island
. All about pirates and buried treasure and fighting. That's some book, Freddy.”

“I don't get time to read as much as I ought to,” said the pig. “What's the book about?”

“I'm just telling you. There was a map—it's printed in the front of the book—that showed where some pirate treasure was buried, and a lot of these sailors were after it. Men like Hooker they were, old pirates. And then some people got it—”

But Freddy was not listening any more. Jinx went on telling the story, but the pig had picked up a pencil and was drawing something on a piece of paper.

Presently Jinx broke off and said: “Hey, you aren't listening!”

“Eh?” said Freddy, looking up. “Oh no, I'm sorry, Jinx. But what you said gave me an idea. Look here: if we draw a map like the one in that book and leave it where the sailors will find it, we'll get rid of them for good.”