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 shore 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.
"He's come a long way with us. He has come away down here to Georgia,"
said Rose thoughtfully. "If he lives in Maine, do you s'pose he will
ever find his way back?"
"If he doesn't, what matter? It's a fine country," said the
quartermaster.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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