Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South Part 29

Bunny had thought the time would come when he and his sister might want to sit down on their raft, and to keep them up out of the water he had put two empty orange crates on the craft. These made fine seats, and on one the lunch bag had been placed.

Laying their pushing poles down on top of the raft, in the middle, Bunny and Sue sat down on the orange crates and began to eat what they had brought with them. It did not matter that the cake and the bread were stale. To the children the food tasted as good as anything they had ever eaten at a party.

As they ate and floated along, the raft swung this way and that, sometimes turning completely around, so, at times, the children were going backward down the stream. It was at one of these times that they felt a sudden b.u.mp and jar--almost like the time when the engine had hitched itself to the freight car.

"Oh!" cried Sue. "What's that?"

Bunny turned, gave one look and cried:

"Hurray! We're here!"

"Where?" Sue asked.

"On the pirate island! Come on! All ash.o.r.e!"

CHAPTER XXIV

THE ALLIGATORS

Bunny and Sue had, indeed, landed on an island in Squaw River. Or if they had not exactly landed as yet, they were soon going to. For their raft, floating downstream, had, as Sue expressed it, "bunked" on the sh.o.r.e of a patch of land in the middle of the stream, forming an island.

As you learned in school, an island is a "body of land entirely surrounded by water." That's what the place was where Bunny and Sue had come. Water was all around the little patch of land, on which grew several trees.

"All ash.o.r.e!" cried Bunny again, as he had often heard his father or Bunker Blue call when the fishing boats reached the dock. "All ash.o.r.e!"

"Are we going to stay here long?" asked Sue, as she got up and brushed the crumbs of bread and cake from her lap.

"Yes," Bunny answered, "we'll stay here all day and all night. We'll make believe we're regular pirates!"

"Oh, we can't stay all _night_!" objected Sue.

"Well, we'll stay all day, anyhow," Bunny said. "And we'll go home when it gets dark, and to-morrow we'll come back and stay all night."

"That'll be fun," agreed Sue. "Now we'll go on the island."

As yet the children were not off the raft. Their make-believe boat had grounded on one of the sandy stretches that marked the sh.o.r.e of the island, and there it stayed. Bunny took the mooring rope and made it fast to a tree stump on sh.o.r.e. He did not want the raft to float away as, more than once, some of his father's boats had floated off from the dock.

Then Bunny and Sue, taking the bag of lunch with them, went on sh.o.r.e--that is on the island. It was a pleasant place, with trees and bushes to make shade, and with birds to sing to them.

"There doesn't anybody live here, I guess," Sue said, as they walked about, looking on every side.

"n.o.body ever lives on an island 'cepting pirates," Bunny said; "and we're them."

"Maybe there are other pirates here," suggested Sue.

"If there are we'll fight 'em!" Bunny said.

"Oh!" exclaimed his sister, "mother wouldn't like to have us fight."

"Only make-believe," explained Bunny.

"Oh, make-believe is all right," Sue agreed.

Carrying their bag of lunch, the children wandered here and there over the island. It was larger than they at first supposed, and Bunny was glad of this. It was very still and quiet there, the ripple of the water, the wind in the trees, and the birds making the only sounds.

"I guess daddy and mother are away off, aren't they?" asked Sue, after a while.

"Miles and miles," Bunny answered. "Aren't you glad, Sue?"

"Ye--yes, I--I guess so," she answered, and her voice sounded so strange that Bunny was afraid his sister might be going to cry. This would never do! A crying pirate! Never!

Bunny must think of a way so his sister would not be lonesome. That was the trouble now, he decided--she was getting lonesome because it was so still and quiet on the island, far away from the orange groves.

The little boy ran back to the raft and brought off the sharp stick he had placed there at the start of the voyage.

"What's that for?" asked Sue.

"For alligators," answered her brother. "I've got to have a sharp stick to drive the alligators away, you know."

"Oh, Bunny!" gasped Sue, moving closer to him, "are there alligators here--on our island?"

"I don't know," he answered. "I'm going to look for some."

"You're going to look for alligators?" cried Sue in surprise.

"Sure!" Bunny answered. "So they won't crawl up behind our backs and bite us when we're eating some more lunch."

"Oh!" exclaimed Sue. "Well, I'll help you look for some then, so we can drive 'em away!"

That was one thing Bunny liked about Sue. After you had told her about a thing she was always ready to join in with you. And she was pretty brave after all.

"Shall I get you a sharp stick, too?" asked Bunny of his sister. "Then you can help drive the alligators away."

"No, I don't guess I want to," she answered. "I'll just help you look for 'em and help you drive 'em away."

"All right," said Bunny Brown.

So he and Sue began walking along the edge of the island, looking for alligators. They were in their bare feet, but the wet sand was smooth to walk on. Sue, however, made up her mind as soon as she saw an alligator to run back as far as she could. She did not want one to nip her bare toes, she decided. If she had had on shoes it might be different.

For a time no alligators were seen, though Bunny looked eagerly for them. I can not say that Sue looked as eagerly as did her brother.

Perhaps she wished that no alligators would be found.

But, all of a sudden, as they were walking along Sue grasped Bunny by the arm and exclaimed: