"I promised I wouldn't tell anybody. But when I gave him his supper I told him I'd just have to tell my father, I was afraid; and he said he didn't have any father and he didn't know whether fathers wouldn't 'snitch,' and I said my father wouldn't."

"I see," said Mr. Bunker gravely. "You recommended me as being a safe person to trust a secret with. I am glad you did so."

"Yes, sir. For you see he's got to be fed until we get to Charleston."

"Do you mind telling me who this new friend of yours is, and where he is, and why he must be fed?"

"He's a sailor boy. He belongs on a destroyer and got left at Boston when his ship started for Charleston two days ago."

"He is in the Navy?" exclaimed Mr. Bunker, in surprise.

"Yes, sir. And he spent all his money and did not know how to get down there where the fleet will be in winter quarters, he says, unless he went secretly on one of these steamers."

"He is stealing his pa.s.sage, then?" asked Daddy Bunker.

"I suppose he is, Daddy," said Russ, ruefully enough. "He is in a boat, all covered up with canvas. Up there on the deck. I can show you. I found him quite by myself, and I was sorry for him, 'specially when he said he didn't have anything to eat. And he said, would I keep still about it? And at first I said I would."

"I see," said Daddy Bunker, smiling. "Then you thought that you ought not to keep the secret from me?"

"That's it, Daddy."

"Quite right," rejoined Mr. Bunker encouragingly. "It is not good policy to keep secrets from your mother and father. What do you want to do about it now?"

"Why--why, I want you to tell me," confessed Russ. "I got him some food."

"I see you did," returned his father, smiling. "At your own cost, Russ."

"We-ell, yes, I could have eaten more if I hadn't taken what I did for the sailor boy."

"We'll have to see about that----"

"I don't mind--much. I'm not very hungry," said Russ hurriedly. "It wasn't that made me tell you."

"I know it wasn't, Russ," said Daddy Bunker, with a pride that the little boy did not understand, and he dropped an approving hand upon Russ' shoulder. "Now, I will tell you what we will do. This sailor boy shall have his chance to rejoin his ship without getting into any more trouble than is necessary. He is probably very young and foolish."

"He isn't very old, I guess," said Russ. "He has been in the Navy only a little while, and it was his first 'sh.o.r.e leave,' he called it, in Boston. He had some cousins there. They begged him to stay longer than he should have. And so he got left."

"I'll fix it if I can," promised Daddy Bunker. "Of course, the first thing to do is to pay his fare and then he can come out of the lifeboat and have his proper meals. I will see the purser, and the captain if it is necessary, and you go to bed, Russ."

"That will be nice!" cried the boy, greatly relieved. "Of course I ought to have told you right at first. You always do know how to straighten things out, Daddy!"

"That is what fathers and mothers are for," replied Mr. Bunker. "Go down and go to sleep, Son, and I will do my best for this young deserter."

When Mr. Bunker entered the stateroom an hour later Mother Bunker wanted to know all about it, of course. And if Russ had known just what they both said of him he would certainly have been proud.

"He's a manly boy," said Daddy Bunker in conclusion. "I am glad he is our son."

The trouble about it all was, in Rose's opinion, that she never quite understood it. If Russ had done anything to be punished for, he certainly didn't seem to mind the punishment! And Daddy and Mother seemed to have a little secret between them, as well as Russ.

"I don't like secrets," she complained the next day, on thinking it all over.

"Oh, I do!" cried Laddie. "'Specially now that Christmas is coming."

But Rose knew this was not a Christmas secret. She wondered where the nice, pleasant-faced sailor boy came from who seemed to know Russ and Daddy Bunker so well. She had not seen him before. And that was another mystery that n.o.body seemed willing to explain to her.

They all had so many good times on the _Kammerboy_, however, that Rose really could not be vexed for long. It proved, as had been announced in Boston, that the ship sailed into summer seas. There was scarcely a cloud in sight for the entire voyage, and certainly the steamship did not roll.

At length, late one afternoon, the children were taken up on the hurricane deck to see the islands of Charleston Harbor ahead. Many warships, and of all sizes, lay in the roadstead, but they did not see much of these vessels save their lights that evening.

The _Kammerboy_ was docked to discharge freight and some of her pa.s.sengers. Daddy Bunker arranged for the boy lost from the destroyer to be put aboard his ship. Russ hoped that he would not be punished very sorely for being left behind.

CHAPTER XI

THE MEIGGS PLANTATION

The Bunker children watched the lights of the fleet until quite late in the evening and thought the sight very pretty indeed. They would have liked to have gone aboard at least one of the Government vessels preferably, of course, the one to which their sailor friend belonged, but there was no opportunity for such a visit. For early the next morning the _Kammerboy_ steamed out of the harbor of Charleston again on the last lap of her voyage to Savannah.

"You can't do it, Russ--ever!" declared Rose, with confidence.

"Well," said the oldest of the six little Bunkers, puffing very much, "I can try, can't I? I do wish I could cut that pigeon wing just as Sam did it."

They were on the sunshiny deck of the _Kammerboy_, which was plowing now toward the headlands near Savannah Harbor. But the little folks had been seeing the blue line of the sh.o.r.e ever since leaving Charleston, so they were not much interested in it. As Laddie said, they knew it was there, and that was enough.

"We know the continent of North America didn't get lost while we were out there in the Gulf Stream," said the boy twin, with satisfaction. "So it doesn't matter what part of it we hit--it will be land!"

"If we hit it most any old place," said Vi, "we would be shipwrecked and be castaways like the game we started to play that time and Russ wouldn't let us finish. I wonder why?"

She had ended with a question. But Laddie could not answer it. He was watching Russ trying to do that funny dance.

"Uncle Sam's nephew could do it fine," Laddie said to Russ. "But you don't get the same twist to it."

"Me do it! Me do it!" cried Mun Bun excitedly, and he began to try to dance as Russ had. He looked so cunning jumping about and twisting his chubby little body that they all shouted with laughter. But Mun Bun thought they were admiring his dancing.

"Me did it like Sam," he declared, stopping to rest.

"You do it fine, Mun Bun," Russ said.

It was a fact, however, that none of them could cut that pigeon wing as Sam, the colored boy, had cut it in Aunt Jo's kitchen in Boston.

Now that they were nearing the end of the voyage there were many things besides pigeon wings to interest the little Bunkers. In the first place the big sea-eagle had to be released from the turkey coop. The quartermaster called him Red Eye. And truly his eye was very red and angry all the time. And he clashed his great beak whenever anybody came near him.

"I guess you couldn't tame him in a hundred years," Russ said thoughtfully. "He can't be tamed. That is why we have an eagle for a symbol, I guess. We can't be tamed."

It was decided to let Red Eye out of the cage when the ship entered Savannah Harbor.