“Why didn’t you come and tell us?” asked Mrs. Horton, catching up a sweater and running down the steps after her husband. “Ellen dear, what could you have been thinking of not to let us know?”
“I thought Sunny Boy would be back,” said Ellen. “He said it wouldn’t take him but just a minute.”
Captain Franklin was an old sea captain with a wrinkled kind brown face and keen blue eyes.
“Sure we’ll find him, ma’am,” he assured Mrs. Horton, when he had heard the story of the lost Sunny Boy. “Just let me put some fresh water on board and see if the cracker box is full, an’ we’ll start right out. Never go out, if it’s only across the bay, without fresh water. You never know when you’ll need it. And the little feller will be mighty thirsty when we do find him.”
“Better get a tube of cold cream,” Mr. Horton advised his wife. “The glare on the water will bum Sunny Boy even if he is tanned. You can get some in that little shop there.”
Mrs. Horton bought some cold cream in the little shop where fishing supplies were sold, and as soon as Captain Franklin had filled his water kegs they set out.
“Chug-chug-chug!” sang the motor-boat engine cheerily. “We’re going to find Sunny Boy. Chug-chug-chug!”
And what was Sunny Boy doing all this time, alone in his boat and so far out on the big ocean?
When he found that he couldn’t see the land and that The Billow had disappeared, Sunny Boy was puzzled.