“All right! I’ll excuse you!” laughed the sailor. “Lower away now, my lad!”
Bunny did not know exactly what this meant, but he guessed the sailor wanted him to let the cord unwind again so the hat would go down, and this Bunny did. Looking over the rail, he and Sue saw the sailor unhook his hat from the bent pin, put the hat on his head, and then, still laughing, go about his work.
The dangling hooked pin, weighted by the button, had caught under the brim of the sailor’s hat as he leaned over near the rail on the deck below, and Bunny had really made a catch, though it was not a fish.
“You’d better not try to catch anything more,” advised Sue.
“I guess I hadn’t,” agreed Bunny, as he took the pin off the string, wound the latter back into a ball and put it in his pocket. He also put the button in his pocket, intending to ask his mother to sew it on later. The bent pin he threw away.
Bunny and Sue continued to play about the deck while the Beacon steamed her way down the Delaware River, toward Delaware Bay, whence she would get into the Atlantic Ocean. After a while the children decided to play hide-and-seek, and Bunny said he would hide first.
Sue covered her eyes and began to count so as to give her brother a chance to find a good hiding place. And at last, having waited as long as she thought was proper, Sue called:
“Ready or not, I’m coming.”
Opening her eyes, she began to search for Bunny. There were many places where he might hide, new and strange places on the deck of the steamer.
Sue looked in many of these without finding Bunny. She was going to “give up” when, as she was standing near a big coil of rope, she heard what sounded like a sneeze half held back.