“Hi there, stop, hold hard, I’m not going!” he yelled.
“Freddie!” gasped Mrs. Wise; she had seen him actually off the boat, held his hand indeed down the gangway, but once off—he was a big boy now—she had not thought of him.
[229]
]And now there he was, hatless, shouting, gesticulating among the passengers bound for the continent of Europe.
“Hi there, stop!” he screamed again, his voice grown shrill with terror; “let me off; hi there! make the captain stop, father! Clif, get me off, make him stop, can’t you!”
Alf and the agent rushed down the deck to the small, frantic youth, and there quickly sprang up in the little crowd several officers.
Freddie was almost beside himself; he shrank away from his astonished brother; he fought himself free of the burly German’s hands; they had to hold him firmly, or he would have gone bodily over the vessel’s side.
The officers acted with the promptitude necessary seeing the vessel was almost past the wharf now, and no one seemed anxious to have the boy’s company as far as Melbourne. Freddie found them tying a rope round his waist and making arm-loops for him with another one. He quietened a little while they did this, only his heaving chest and streaming eyes showing the agitation under which he was labouring.
“Perhaps he had better come on to Melbourne, Mr. Johansen,” said the first officer gloomily to the third who was roping Freddie.
But at this Freddie began to kick and give vent to such heart-broken howls that the third officer, father of sundry small boys, said he thought they could manage to deposit him.
[230]
]They hallooed to a rowing-boat to come up, and the boatman approached as closely as he might. Then Freddie was lowered slowly down the side by a couple of sailors; the girls and Mrs. Wise shut their eyes one fearful minute when they saw the little dangling body and terrified white face.