Freddy and the Perilous Adventure (6 page)

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 that 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.

“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.