“Well, Elizabeth is real,” declared Sue. “She’s a real doll and she’s my child.” And nothing Mr. or Mrs. Brown could say would make Sue believe she had done anything wrong.
Later Mr. Brown told the sailors how sorry he was that his little girl had caused them such a fright, making them think a real child had gone over the rail.
“Oh, we don’t mind that,” laughed one of the men. “We’re only too glad to know it was only a doll and that the little girl has it back again.”
Though Sue had her doll, the salt water had spoiled some of the clothes. But Elizabeth’s little mistress did not mind, for she said they were going to the West Indies where it would be so warm that Elizabeth would need few clothes.
The storm raged all the remainder of that day and far into the night. But when morning dawned the wind went down and the rain ceased, though the waves were still high and would be for another day or so. Big storms at sea do not pass as quickly as they do on shore, for the ocean keeps up its restless, heaving motion.
The Beacon came out of the hurricane with little damage as far as could be seen. Though later Captain Ward blamed the storm for something very strange and serious that happened. That is, it was serious for a time.
With the ceasing of the storm, Bunny and Sue were allowed to go out on deck the next day. They both enjoyed this, for it was no fun to be “cooped up,” as Bunny called it, in one of the cabins. The staterooms where the Brown family slept were too small to sit in except for a few minutes, so when they wanted to talk or when the children wanted to play games they did so in one of the larger cabins, or saloons, as they are called.
Every hour it seemed to be getting warmer, now that the Beacon was getting well into the south. The wind that blew across her decks was as balmy as the hot breezes of summer, though this was only early spring, or had been when Bunny and Sue left Bellemere.
“It’s always summer in the south, isn’t it, Daddy?” asked Sue of her father when she and her brother were talking about the warm weather.
“Well, yes, it is if you go far enough south,” he said. “They don’t have winter in the far south, but they have what is called the rainy season, and that at times is worse than our winter, though it is never cold. But it is very wet—raining every day for months, some times more than once a day.”