The Motor Boys on the Atlantic

The Mystery of the Lighthouse (Volume 6 of 22)

The popular adventure story in 20th century.This is one of the Motor Boy series.

Example in this ebook

CHAPTER I
LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE

“Oh! It’s yo heave ho! and never let go, while the stormy winds do blow! blow! blow!”
“Is that you, Jerry Hopkins?” asked a youth, without looking up from a box he was hammering, in the yard back of his home.
“Aye, aye, my hearty! Shiver my timbers messmate, but we’re in for a spell of bad weather!” and Jerry walked up to where Bob Baker was trying to drive a nail straight into a piece of board.
“Why this sudden nautical turn?” asked Bob, aiming a hard blow, in hope of correcting a certain wobbly tendency on the part of the nail. “Is there—Wow! Jimminy crickets!” and Bob began dancing about on one foot, while his thumb was stuck in his mouth.
“What’s the matter, Chunky?” asked Jerry, giving Bob the nickname he sometimes was called because of his general fleshiness. “Did you hit your finger?”
“No, I’m doing this for amusement,” replied Bob, taking his injured thumb from his mouth and gazing critically at the wounded member. “Um, it’s going to swell,” he added.
“Put cold water on it,” Jerry advised. “That’s a good thing. Then wrap it up in arnica.”
“Come on into the house,” Bob mumbled. “You can tell me the news there, while I’m doctoring up.”
“What news?” asked Jerry.
“Why there must be something in the wind when you come around this way, singing sea songs and walking like a sailor on a pitching deck.”
“Oh, yes, of course there’s some news,” Jerry went on. “I forgot about it in the excitement of seeing you do that war dance. Well, it’s just as I was singing. It’s going to be a life on the ocean wave for me this summer vacation.”
“How’s that?”
“Mother is going to take a cottage on the Atlantic coast. Maybe I’ll not have swell times! I’m going in bathing every day, and I can learn all about a sail boat.”
Bob had been so busy looking for the arnica bottle, and a rag in which to wrap his thumb, that he paid little attention to what Jerry was saying, save in a vague sort of way. He caught the last reference to a boat, however, and asked:
“You’re not going back on our motor boat, are you, when you say you’re going to take up with a sail boat? Jerry I’m ashamed of you!”
“Go back on the dear Dartaway? I guess not much,” Jerry answered. “But we can’t take her down with us, very well. The cottage is too small.”
“I don’t know about that,” Bob said, in rather muffled tones, for he held one end of a string in his mouth and was wrapping the other about the rag on his thumb. “I wish we were going to the shore. The folks don’t know yet what they will do. There, that feels better. When I turn carpenter again you’ll know it.”
“What were you making?”
“Oh, the cook wanted something to keep the stove blacking in, and I said I’d make it. Glad it’s finished though. Maybe she’ll give me something to eat before dinner’s ready.”
“You don’t mean to say you’re going to eat again, and breakfast not over more than two hours?”
“There you go, poking fun at my appetite as usual,” Bob complained.
“Well, it’s hard to forget it, since you always seem to have it with you,” Jerry commented, referring to Bob’s one failing, if it could be so called.
The Baker family’s cook entered the dining room at this point and Bob mentioned that the box she had asked for was finished. Then, while the woman was expressing her thanks, Bob added:
“You haven’t got any bread and butter and jam you could spare, have you, Mary?”
“Sure there’s lots of it,” was the answer. “Though it’s not long since I cleared off the breakfast things. Will I bring two plates?”
“Have some, Jerry?”

 To be continue in this ebook...............................................................................................................