The Voyage to No-Such Land
Whoops and Putty-Nose were at the seaside, playing on the shore of a beautiful, big blue bay—a bay which was really part of the big, beautiful blue ocean, where their father and mother had taken them for the summer. Whoops was a very pretty little girl with long yellow curls, and big brown eyes which were almost always wide open with surprise. She had been given her funny nickname because she always cried “Whoops!” when she saw anything that pleased her, and as almost everything pleased her she was crying “Whoops!” most of the time. Putty-Nose was her brother—a jolly, fat little fellow with a round face and a quaint snub nose in the exact middle of it so covered with big brown freckles it looked just like a lump of putty. Whoops and Putty-Nose had a very small tent, buckets, shovels, and a pop-gun, and had been playing that they were Robinson Crusoe and his good man Friday, cast away on a desert island. But after a while they got tired—it was hard work imagining oneself quite deserted when one could see home all the while! So they sat down by the water to rest and to think up some more interesting game.
All of a sudden Putty-Nose exclaimed, “Whoopsie! Look at that big, round, flat rock out in the water! Let’s wade out to it and we can pretend it’s a really truly island!”
Whoops was always ready for fun, so they waded out, carrying all their playthings in their arms with them; they pitched their tent in the very middle of the rock, and there they were, really on an island, with water all around. It was ever so much cooler than on the beach, and much more exciting, so they sat down to enjoy life and plan what to do next. Whoops had just noticed that their rock was all marked out in a diamond pattern, something like a giant checkerboard, only not colored, when she felt it begin to move smoothly and slowly through the sparkling blue waters. Whoops “whooped” in her very best manner, crying out to her brother, “Hold on tight, Putty-Nose! Our island is swimming away with us!”
Our Island Is Swimming Away With Us
And sure enough, the island was moving off to sea, making tiny ripples like those that follow in the wake of a boat. The children didn’t know what to do; they had never heard of a swimming island, and they had just about decided to become very, very frightened indeed, when a big, long, ugly head lifted itself up over the western shore of the island, turned, and looked back at them. It was exactly like the head of a turtle they had once seen, only a great many times larger, and although it was quite hideously ugly, it had a kindly humorous expression around its mouth and a merry twinkle in its eye.
“I’m Old Flipperoo, the sea-turtle,” it said by way of polite introduction, “and I’m perfectly harmless, so you mustn’t be afraid. You can stay on my back and I’ll carry you across the ocean to a place I know, and show you all the queer and wonderful things that grow there. Then I’ll bring you back safe and sound in time for supper. How does that sound?”
Now of course, Whoops and Putty-Nose said it was the one thing they wanted to do most of all, so Old Flipperoo tucked his head away out of sight again and set himself to paddling away at a great rate. The mariners were soon so far out to sea that they could no longer see land, and when they passed close by the great sea-going vessels and trans-oceanic liners, all the people on their decks ran to the rail to look at the queer flat boat and its very youthful passengers. Everybody waved and called greetings to the children, and the children waved back, and shouted “Ship ahoy!” which they knew was the polite thing to do.
After a long, long voyage they sighted a land almost completely covered with the queerest looking trees. Flipperoo swam into a quiet bay and waddled right up on the sand, so that Whoops and Putty-Nose were able to step ashore without even wetting their feet. “I’ll lie here in the sun and take a nap,” said the turtle, “and you children start off on a journey of discovery. Nothing in this strange country will hurt you, although you will be surprised at many of the things you will see. Only be sure to come back here to me when you hear the Tick-Tock bird calling, ‘Five o’clock!’, or we’ll all be late for supper.”