Arabel and Mortimer (4 page)

Unfortunately, Mortimer soon began to get overexcited while this was going on and to shout, "Nevermore!
Nevermore!
" at the end of each verse and sometimes in the middle as well; the lady began to cast some very annoyed glances in their direction, and presently a waiter came to ask if they could please keep their bird a little quieter, as Miss Brandy Brown didn't like being interrupted.

She started singing another song.

"
Sail bonny boat like a bird in the air
Over the sea to Spain
Oh what a riot of fun we'll share
Out on the bounding main
Dancing and singing and eating and drinking
Cancel all care and pain
If we were clever we'd sail on and never
Ever go home again...
"

Mortimer seemed to disagree strongly with the sentiment of this song, for he muttered, "Never, never, never, never, never, never, KAAARK," all the time that Miss Brown was singing it, his voice growing louder and louder, until she suddenly lost patience, left the piano, and strode over to their table.

Keeping their large silver teapot warm was a blue quilted tea cozy; Miss Brown picked this up and clapped it over Mortimer like a fire extinguisher. Then she walked away; just in time, as Mortimer kicked off the tea cozy in about five seconds flat and emerged looking very indignant indeed.

Luckily, at this moment Lady Dunnage appeared and came up to their table; she was wearing a pink-and-gray silk dress and she carried, perched on a bracelet on her wrist, a gray parrot with a long scarlet tail. Mortimer's eyes almost shot out on stalks when he saw the parrot; he became completely silent and stared with all his might. The parrot stared back. She had a beak that was curved like the back of a spoon, and she looked very knowing indeed.

"I do hope you are enjoying yourselves, dears," said Lady Dunnage.

"Oh yes, thank you, dear, we're having ever such a nice time," said Mrs. Jones.

"This is my parrot, Isabella," said Lady Dunnage.

"Kaaaark," said Mortimer.

"I've arranged for you to sit at Captain Mainbrace's table for dinner; he has a son called Henry who is about your age, Arabel. And do let me know if there's anything you want in the meantime."

"Oh please," said Arabel, "could your parrot come to my cabin and play with Mortimer? I think he'd like that."

"Certainly," said Lady Dunnage graciously. "I'm sure Isabella would enjoy it, too. When she wants to
come back to me, just let her out into the passage; she knows her way all over this ship, as we came on board such a lot while it was being built."

"Can she talk?" Arabel asked.

"Not really yet; she's only a year old. All she can say is 'hard cheese.'"

Arabel went back to her cabin with a bird perched on each shoulder. In spite of the very good tea, she knew that Mortimer had not been enjoying himself in the Rumpus Lounge; somehow his bright black eyes didn't seem as bright as usual, and he kept swallowing; Arabel was worried in case he wasn't going to be happy on the cruise.

However, once back in the cabin he seemed to cheer up. Arabel had thought the two birds might like to play with marbles or tiddledywinks, both of which she had brought with her, but they did not; they took turns climbing the ladder to the upper bunk and then jumping off on top of each other.

Then they took turns shutting each other in Arabel's suitcase and bursting out with a loud shriek. Then they had a very enjoyable fight, rolling all over the floor and kicking each other; showers of red, gray, and black feathers flew about. Mortimer shouted, "Nevermore!" and Isabella screamed, "Hard cheese!" Between them they made a lot of noise and presently there was a bang on the door and it burst open.

There stood Miss Brandy Brown, her eyes flashing even more than the sequins on her dress.

"
Will
you stop making such a row? I'm trying to rest after my performance," she said very crossly indeed.

The instant she opened the door, Isabella flew out through it like a feathered bullet, so that all Miss Brandy Brown saw inside the room was Arabel, looking perfectly tidy, and Mortimer, looking decidedly
un
tidy.

"If that bird makes any more disturbance I shall tell Captain Mainbrace that he's got to be shut up in a crate in the hold!" she said. Then she went out, slamming the door, and flounced back to her own cabin. She was not best pleased when, ten minutes later, Mike the steward tapped on the door and came in.

"It's just to fetch the tie, Miss," he said.

"Tie? What tie?"

"Tie for the young lady's raven next door," said Mike, taking it from the fridge and tiptoeing out again.

After that, relations were a bit strained between Mortimer the raven and Miss Brandy Brown.

On the second day at sea, luckily, the weather was calm, if rather foggy. Arabel spent a good deal of time in the games room, playing table tennis with Henry Mainbrace, the captain's son. This was fine, so long as they managed to keep a rally going and the ball stayed on the table. But Mortimer and Isabella were watching, perched like umpires on a convenient pile of folding deck chairs. Every time a ball went onto the floor either Isabella or Mortimer would swoop down and swallow it. By eleven o'clock each bird had swallowed so many balls that Henry declared he could hear them rattling inside.

"All those balls can't be good for them," Arabel said rather anxiously.

"No worse than having eggs inside you," Henry pointed out. "And lots of birds have those. Isabella laid an egg last month."

"Mortimer has never laid an egg," Arabel said.

Anyway, at this point Mr. Spicer, the steward who was in charge of the games room, came in, and when he discovered that Mortimer and Isabella between them had swallowed seventeen Ping-Pong balls, he said that was quite enough, and they had better go and play somewhere else or there would be none left for the other passengers.

They went and played with the fruit machines for a while, as Mortimer loved putting coins into slots. But nobody won anything, and presently they ran out of cash. Also, Mortimer was discovered posting a whole lot of potato crisps into a letter box labeled SUGGESTIONS.

"It's supposed to be for people who have good ideas for entertainment," said Henry.

"Now your father will think people want more potato crisps," said Arabel.

"Or not so many," said Henry. "Let's go out onto the promenade deck. We can get out through these sliding doors."

"Oughtn't we to put on our raincoats?" said Arabel, who wasn't sure that Mortimer wanted to go outside.

Isabella definitely didn't want to go; she flew off in the direction of Lady Dunnage's cabin.

"It's only fog," said Henry. "Fog doesn't wet you."

Out on the big triangular deck to the rear of the games room everything looked very misty and mysterious. When Arabel and Henry walked right to the back, they could see the ship's wake, creaming away into the fog like two rows of white knitting. Arabel held tight on to Mortimer's leg in case he should be tempted to try flying. The ship was going so fast that if he did she was afraid he might be left behind. But Mortimer displayed no wish to fly; on the contrary, he did not seem at all interested in the sea. He huddled against Arabel's ear and muttered, "Hek-hek-hek," which was his way of informing her that he wanted to put on his tie.

As it happened, Arabel had the tie in her cardigan pocket. She pulled it out and waved it up and down in the cold, damp, foggy air until it was cool enough to satisfy Mortimer. Then she carefully wrapped it round and round him and walked along the deck carrying him wrapped up like a caterpillar in a cocoon with his eyes shut.

"I'm afraid he's not enjoying the trip very much," she said.

"He'll like it better when the weather gets hotter," Henry said.

They had come to a big flat square in the middle of the deck with a handle on it.

"What's that?" said Arabel. "It looks like the cover of a cheese dish."

"It is a cover," Henry said. "The swimming pool's under there. When the weather gets hot, they lift off that cover with a hoist and we can swim. The water's heated."

"I hope it gets warmer soon," said Arabel. "It isn't very hot now."

A few people were sitting out in deck chairs, but they were all wrapped up in thick rugs, like Mortimer in his tie.

Mr. Spicer came out with a trayful of steaming cups and handed them round to the people in the chairs.

"What's that?" Arabel asked.

"Hot beef tea and cream crackers," said Henry.

Mortimer sniffed, opened one eye, and poked Arabel's ear to inform her that he wanted to try a cup of hot beef tea; however, when he had tasted a beakful of the stuff he decided that he did not like it and spat it out, making a very vulgar noise which caused all the ladies and gentlemen in the deck chairs to raise their eyebrows. He poked the cream cracker in among the folds of his tie.

Arabel and Henry walked on quickly, up some stairs, and along a narrower part of the deck toward the front end of the ship. Mortimer huddled down inside his tie and shut his eyes again.

"What are all those small boats hanging up there in a row?" Arabel asked.

"They're the lifeboats," Henry told her. "If the ship was wrecked, or someone fell overboard, they'd unhook the boats and slide them down those sloping things, which are called davits, into the sea."

"There don't seem to be very many boats; are there enough for all the passengers?" Arabel said.

"Each one holds thirty people and there are fifteen on each side."

"But how many people are there on the ship?"

That
Henry didn't know.

Near the front end of the deck they came to another flight of steps leading up to a locked door.

"What's in there?" asked Arabel.

"That's the bridge, where they have all the controls and steer the ship," said Henry. "It's like the engine room of a train."

Arabel had never been in the engine room of a train, so that did not help.

"Well, it's like the dashboard of a car," said Henry. "I daresay my dad will let you go in and look at it sometime."

Just then a dreadful thing happened.

The nearer they got to the forward end of the ship, the harder the wind blew, because the ship was traveling fast and there was nothing to screen them; it was like standing up in an open car that is rushing along at sixty miles an hour.

When they reached the steps leading up to the bridge, Mortimer opened an eye and looked about him. The first thing he noticed was a letter box slot in the locked door that said
CAPTAIN.
Before Arabel could stop him, he left her shoulder, scrabbled his way very fast, beak over claw, up the rail of the staircase, and posted his cream cracker, which had been tucked in among the folds of his tie, through the letter box.