The Bobbsey Twins on the Deep Blue Sea

by Laura Lee Hope

And so it was, for it wasn’t a fish at all, but a woman’s big black hat, with feathers on it. Freddie’s bent-pin hook had caught in the hat which was being worn by a woman standing near the rail on the deck below where the Bobbsey family had their rooms. And Freddie had pulled the hat right off the woman’s head.

“No wonder the lady yelled!” laughed Bert when he came to see what was happening to his smaller brother and sister. “You’re a great fisherman, Freddie.”

“Well, next time I’ll catch a real fish,” declared the little boy.

Bert carried the woman’s hat down to her, and said Freddie was sorry for having caught it in mistake for a fish. The woman laughed heartily and said no harm had been done.

“But I couldn’t imagine what was pulling my hat off my head,” she told her friends. “First I thought it was one of the seagulls.”

Freddie wound up his string, and said he would not fish any more until he could see where his hook went to, and his father told him he had better wait until they got to St. Augustine, where he could fish from the shore and see what he was catching.

From the time they came on board until it was the hour to eat, the Bobbsey twins looked about the ship, seeing something new and wonderful on every side. They hardly wanted to go to bed when night came, but their mother said they must, as they would be about two days on the water, and they would have plenty of time to see everything.

Bert, Freddie and their father had one stateroom and Mrs. Bobbsey and the two girls slept in the other, “next door,” as you might say.

The night passed quietly, the ship steaming along over the ocean, and down the coast to Florida. The next day the four children were up early to see everything there was to see.

They found the ship now well out to sea, and out of sight of land. They were really on the deep ocean at last, and they liked it very much. Bert and Nan found some older children with whom to play, and Flossie and Freddie wandered off by themselves, promising not to go too far from Mrs. Bobbsey, who was on deck in her easy chair, reading.