The Clockwork Twin (2 page)

It was getting lighter now, for the moon had come out from behind a cloud, and it turned the tumbling water to silver. Georgie looked out through an opening in the foliage and watched the lights along the shore swing by and sniffed the cool damp air, and every now and then he called Adoniram's attention to something. Pretty soon the boy sat down beside him.

“Isn't this fun?” said Georgie.

“Why—yes,” said Adoniram. “Only I can't help thinking about—”

“About all the awful things that may happen—is that it?” asked the dog. “Well, why don't you think about how maybe they won't happen? Why don't you think about
nice
things that may happen? It doesn't cost any more. Maybe we
will
be carried out to sea. But then, maybe we'll be rescued by a warship or an ocean liner, and live on it, and maybe you'll learn how to run it, and maybe when you grow up you'll be captain.”

“Oh, could I?” asked Adoniram.

“How do I know?” said Georgie. “But one thing's certain: there are hundreds of boys your age that are going to be sea captains some day and don't know it. Maybe you're one of them.”

Adoniram had never thought about things that way before. But as soon as he began to think about them that way, he began to have a good time. And he and Georgie pretended they were on a ship, and he was captain and Georgie was mate. “Full steam ahead, mate!” he would shout, and Georgie would reply: “Aye, aye, sir!” Then Georgie would call: “Submarine off the port bow, sir!” and perhaps a floating barn would loom up close to them and they would pretend to fire shells at it. And once when they were pretending to shell a shed that was bobbing along beside them, the little building struck a log and flew to pieces as if it really had been struck by a shell, and they shouted and cheered like anything.

They had been doing this for about an hour when Georgie shouted: “Village off the starboard bow, sir!” Hundreds of lights twinkled on the hillside above the river, and at the edge of the water some motor-boats were pulled up and a lot of men were working under a floodlight. They shouted and barked, but though out where they were the roar of the water did not seem very loud, the men on shore could not hear them, and the summerhouse was so hidden in the leaves that they could not be seen. And they swept on by and pretty soon the lights grew dim in the distance.

Adoniram was surprised to find that he didn't much care, really. After all, if they were rescued, he would just have to go back to his uncle and aunt. “This
is
fun, Georgie,” he said.

“Look,” said the dog. “What's that?”

A small object was coming up behind them, and on top of it was something that moved.

“Ahoy!” shouted Georgie. “What ship is that?”

He was answered by a feeble crow.

“A rooster!” said Adoniram. “Stand by, mate. We'll rescue him.”

He caught hold of the rail and leaned far out, but before the hencoop caught up he could see that he wasn't going to be able to reach it. Then he thought of something and, climbing on the rail, reached up under the roof and hauled down a small coil of fishline with a sinker at one end. There was no hook on it, because his uncle always took the hook off and put it in his hatband so Adoniram couldn't fish with it. But it was just what Adoniram wanted.

“Stand by to catch a line!” he shouted, and threw the sinker. The first throw missed, but the second time the sinker caught the rooster in the side, and with a terrified squawk he fell into the river. But he had the presence of mind to grab the line with his beak, and a minute later he was dragged into the summerhouse.

He ruffled his dripping feathers, shook them, settled them, and said peevishly: “I say, you might have aimed a little more accurately. You nearly sprained my wing.”

“Say, listen,” said Georgie, “we rescued you from a watery grave and is that what we get for it? Just complaints? Captain, what do you say we heave him back in?”

“Sorry,” said the rooster; “say no more about it. I dare say you would be annoyed if you'd ridden seventy miles on top of that coop, and whirling around all the time so sometimes you were so dizzy you could hardly hang on. And I've got a cold, too, and that water won't help it.”

He cleared his throat and tried to crow, but only a faint miserable piping came out that sent Georgie into a fit of laughter. Even Adoniram, who had never really laughed heartily in his life, had to smile.

“I say, you fellows,” said the rooster indignantly, “this is a bit thick. Not very sporting, what?—to laugh at a fellow because he has a cold.”

“I'd give an inch off my tail if I could make a noise like that, rooster,” said Georgie. “Oh, don't get sore; we're all in the same boat. Ho, that's a good one, isn't it?—all in the same boat.”

“What's funny about that?” said the rooster. “We
are
in the same boat, aren't we?”

“Sure. That's what I mean,” said Georgie.

“Indeed!” said the rooster; “so we're in the same boat. And it's funny. Well, really!”

Adoniram had got out his handkerchief, and now he rubbed the rooster down and got most of the water off him, and then he tucked him under his coat to keep him warm. And pretty soon the rooster went to sleep.

“We'd better get a little sleep ourselves,” said Georgie. “You might tie that line around us, captain, so we won't fall overboard in the night.”

So Adoniram looped the line a few times around his waist and then through the dog's collar, and fastened it to the railing. Then they lay down on the floor close together. It was warm, and the rush and roar of the water was pleasant and drowsy. Adoniram listened for a while, and watched for a while the black and silver pattern of the moonlit pine boughs, and then he turned over on the other side without disturbing his companions and went to sleep.

II
The Shipwreck

One very bad thing about being a rooster is that you have to get up at sunrise and crow to get the other chickens up. Most roosters don't realize that the other chickens would get up anyway, and they feel that their job is a pretty important one. So when the rescued rooster poked his head out from under Adoniram's coat and saw the eastern sky all pink and misty, instead of pulling it back again and taking another nap, as he wanted to, he said: “Oh, my word! I must arouse these sluggards!” And he crawled hastily out and shook himself and hopped up on the summerhouse rail and took a deep breath and—

Well, you could hardly say that he crowed. If
Cock-a-doodle-doo
is the way to write what a regular rooster does when he crows, what this rooster did can only be written as
Beep-a-weepy-weep.
It was just a thin little trembling pipe. He certainly had a terrible cold.

But the sound was so queer that it woke Adoniram and Georgie as quickly as if it had been a good loud crow. They sat up, looked around, and then Georgie began to laugh and after a minute Adoniram joined in. They laughed for several minutes while the rooster looked cross. But Adoniram, who didn't know how to laugh properly, got to coughing. So then the rooster began to laugh, and he went on for some time until Georgie said:

“Oh, keep still, rooster.”

“I shall not be silent,” said the rooster huffily, “unless you compel me to by force.”

“Oh, I can stop you all right,” said the dog. “Where do you expect to get breakfast? There isn't anything to eat on this boat, you know.”

“What!” said the rooster, staring at him. “Nothing to eat? You mean to say you've lured me on to this—this structure only in order to starve me to death? You've rescued me, and now you refuse to offer me nourishment? Why, I never heard of such a thing.”

“Yes, you have,” said Georgie with a grin. “You just heard of it now.”

“We're sorry,” said Adoniram. “But we haven't got anything to eat either.”

“Oh, my word,” said the rooster. “Oh, upon my soul!” And he walked away from them to the other side of the summerhouse and stood gloomily peering out through the pine needles at the tossing river, which under the red sunrise looked like a river of red paint.

“Well, I stopped his laughing all right,” said Georgie, “but I stopped my own, too.”

“What are we going to do?” asked the boy. “I'm pretty hungry. I only had part of my supper last night. And I'm thirsty, too.”

“Mustn't drink the river water,” said Georgie. “It'll make us sick. Oh well, cheer up. I expect we'll be rescued before long. We've come a long way in the night and I've heard that there are some big towns down the river. There are sure to be some boats out looking for people.”

“But they can't hear us, and they can't see us in all these pine needles.”

“Suppose you break away some branches and try to make a couple of windows in the tree,” said Georgie, “and then you can wave your handkerchief. They'll see that.”

So Adoniram got to work, and pretty soon the rooster came back and apologized for being so unpleasant, and helped. Of course he couldn't break off branches, but he climbed out on the limbs and picked off sprays that Adoniram couldn't reach. And in a little while they had two good windows, one on each side.

The river had grown much wider in the night. Even now that it was broad daylight, they could sometimes hardly make out the shore line. Most of the time they were held to the middle of the river by the current, but once in a while it would swing them in toward one bank or the other, and then they could see trees and telephone poles rising from the flood, and even the roofs of submerged barns and houses. Once it swung them in very close to a hill on which stood a farm. Several cows were standing on the shore, looking with mild surprise at the angry, tossing water. Adoniram waved to them, but Georgie gave a frightened whimper and crowded close to him.

“What's the matter?” the boy asked.

“Oh, those—those awful creatures! Why, I've seen big dogs before, but never any like that, with horns!”

“Why, those are nothing but cows,” said Adoniram.

“Well, I don't care what you call 'em. I just hope there aren't many of them in this part of the country, that's all.”

“You mean to say you've never seen a cow before?” asked the boy. “Why, every farm in the country has some. That's where the milk comes from. There are thousands and thousands of them.”

“Oh dear,” said Georgie, “I wish I was back in the city. I always thought the country was nice and safe and peaceful, but if there are a lot of those great, ferocious, horned things around, I guess I'm a gone pup.”

So Adoniram explained about cows, and by and by Georgie felt better.

To take their minds off their empty stomachs, Adoniram asked the rooster if he wouldn't tell them the story of his life. The rooster, whose name was Ronald, was more than willing, like most roosters, to talk about himself, but the story of his life, although he gave it everything he had, didn't take very long in the telling. It explained one thing, though. That was the funny way he talked. For he was English. He had been sent over to this country as an egg, and had been hatched out on a farm up-river that raised fancy poultry. He had indeed taken several prizes at poultry shows.

“Well, if you came over as an egg,” said Georgie, “I don't quite see why you have such a strong English accent.”

“My dear chap!” said Ronald. “After all, I
am
English, even if I did come over inside a shell and never saw England. And this English accent is useful at the shows. One could hardly win prizes as an English rooster if one hadn't an English accent. Of course,” he said, dropping the accent all at once, “I was brought up with American chickens, and I can talk American as well as you guys. You're darn tootin', I can. How about it, buddy, isn't that somethin'?”

“Sure, that's American you're talking now,” said Georgie. “Oh, look; there are some boats.”

But they had moved out again into the middle of the river, too far from the boats to be noticed.

As the morning went on they grew hungrier and hungrier and thirstier and thirstier. And then at last the river carried them swiftly round a long curve and they saw before them the closely pressed houses and high towers of a city.

Almost before they had time to realize it they were surrounded by buildings. But the muddy water was lapping at the second-story windows and it was plain that the buildings were empty. Not a face showed at any window, and, perhaps because the water ran so swiftly, no boats were in sight. The water here, too, was troubled by cross-currents, and the tree whirled and jerked and occasionally bumped heavily, so that the summerhouse swayed and shook and they had to hold on to the railing to keep from being thrown overboard.

As they got farther into the city the cross-currents got worse. Once an eddy at the corner of a big factory building set them whirling like a merry-go-round for five minutes, and when, released from that, they shot again downstream, a side current caught them and carried them out of the main stream of the river entirely and down a wide street. Here they moved more slowly. It was evidently one of the main shopping streets, for they passed a hotel, and the water splashed muddily against the signs over the doors of shops and stores. And then the tree trunk stopped with a jerk, wedged between a lamp-post and a wall, and the branches swung around and came close up against a large building on which was a big sign: Waterman Dinkelstein & Co.