"Stay there! We'll send a boat for you!" called Mr. Brown, making a sort of trumpet of his hands. "Stay on board! You'll be all right."
Bunny and Sue heard him and felt better. They had no notion, of course, of jumping overboard and trying to swim to shore. They knew they were safe on the Fairy while it was in the rather quiet water of Sandport Bay. Out on the rough ocean it would be a different matter, though they had sailed on the open sea with their father and mother, of course in a larger boat.
"How are we going to get 'em back?" asked one of Mr. Brown's men.
"Oh, we'll do that easily enough," was the answer. "Bring around the big motor boat. We'll have to tow the Fairy back here. I don't see how she ever got adrift," went on Mr. Brown. "I'm sure neither Bunny nor Sue loosened the cable."
"I'm positive they didn't," said Captain Ross. "It must have been that greenhorn cabin boy I had. I hired him yesterday, and let him go this morning because he didn't know one end of a rope from the other. I told him to make the Fairy fast to your dock while I came up here to talk to you. But he must have tied a grannie's or a landlubber's knot, and she pulled loose. I'm glad I'm rid of that boy!"
"Yes," agreed Mr. Brown, "a boy who doesn't know enough to tie a safe knot isn't of much use around boats. But there's no great harm done. She isn't drifting fast, and the motor boat will soon pick her up."
"I'll go along with you," offered Captain Ross, and soon he and Mr. Brown, with one of the dock men, were racing after the drifting Fairy.
On deck Bunny Brown and his sister Sue watched the rescue.
"It's just like being shipwrecked, isn't it, Bunny?" suggested Sue, as they sat down on deck to wait.
"Yes. It's fun when you know daddy is coming," said the little boy.