Adventure According to Humphrey (9 page)

When Mrs. Morgenstern came over to check on their progress, she asked Gail how she’d decided to decorate the sail.

“Mom, could I make a flag instead?” she asked.

“Fabulous idea!” Mrs. Morgenstern replied. “I love it!”

She seemed pleased, and so did Gail, who went right to work. First she studied nautical flags in one of Mrs. Brisbane’s books. It turns out there’s a whole language for flags. Boats raise them to send messages to shore or to other boats. Then Gail designed her own series of flags with brightly colored stripes and patterns. I was happy I’d been able to inspire her again.

Mr. Brisbane helped her string them along the side of the mast. Mrs. Morgenstern loved them, and best of all, Gail did, too.

It was a fine boat. They were all fine boats, especially after Mr. Brisbane helped Art and Mandy get their Viking ship to stand up straight.

Kirk looked very pleased when Mr. Brisbane checked out their tall ship.

“It floated perfectly last night,” Kirk said. “I knew it would.”

Mr. Brisbane was full of praise. After he moved on, Kirk turned to Richie and said, “I think we’ve pretty much got first prize wrapped up.”

“
You’ve
got first prize wrapped up,” Richie snapped. “I’m just a big nobody.”

Kirk looked surprised. “Come on, Richie. No one has to know I did all the work. You’ll look like a winner.”

“But I won’t feel like one.” Richie quickly got up and sharpened about a million pencils. After a while, Mrs. Brisbane noticed and went over to talk to him.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“I guess,” he answered.

She tried to get more information out of him, but he just kept sharpening pencils. So she wandered over to Kirk and asked him if everything was all right.

“Yeah. The boat’s fantastic—look!” he answered.

“I mean between you and Richie,” Mrs. Brisbane said.

“Sure. We make a great team,” Kirk said. He sounded as if he meant it.

“Does Kirk really think Richie doesn’t mind being left out?” I squeaked to Og.

“BOING,” Og answered. He didn’t sound very enthusiastic.

R
ichie cheered up a little when Mrs. Brisbane announced that I’d be going home with him for the weekend. I was happy, too. I thought maybe we could both get our minds off boats. But once I got to the Rinaldi home, I found out I was WRONG-WRONG-WRONG. In fact, boats were just about all that Richie thought about.

There’s always a lot going on at Richie’s house with his parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins hanging out there. They were all there on Saturday—so many kids! Serena and Sarah, Anthony and Alex, George and Josie, Richie and Rita! Late in the afternoon, they all ended up in the bathroom—with me!

I was in my hamster ball, which Richie carefully set on top of a tissue box so I wouldn’t roll off.

At first, I was happy that Richie brought me along.

A little later, I wasn’t so sure.

“Watch this,” said Richie as he turned on the faucets and the tub began to fill with water.

“What’s going on?” asked Rita.

George backed away. “I don’t want to take a bath! I had one yesterday!”

“I doubt that. Maybe the day before,” his sister, Josie, snapped. “Maybe.”

“We’re not here to take a bath,” said Richie. “We’re here to see what floats!”

Aha! I realized that Richie was going to show his cousins what Mr. Fitch and Mrs. Brisbane had showed us in the library.

Richie started things off by holding up a penny.

“Float or won’t float?” he asked.

“Won’t!” his cousins shouted in unison.

The penny sank to the bottom of the tub.

Next, George took a pencil out of his pocket. “Float or won’t float?”

“Will!” Rita, Serena and Sarah agreed.

“Won’t!” Alex, Anthony and Josie agreed.

The pencil floated beautifully. All it needed was a sail to look just like a sailboat.

The cousins soon scattered all over the house and returned with more things to test. They tried a peppermint stick (sank), a flip-flop (floated), a leaf (floated until it got soggy and sank) and a seashell (sank). A plastic cup did something very surprising. It floated on its side until it was three-quarters full of water, then it tipped up and floated upright.

Finally, a teddy bear floated on his back with a big happy smile on his face. I guess it’s okay for furry teddy bears to get wet, unlike furry hamsters.

Then George and Anthony got into a splashing fight. George’s dad looked in to see what was going on.

“It’s a science experiment,” Richie told him.

“Anything that can get George to the bathtub is fine with me,” he said. “Just clean up the mess when you’re finished.”

It was fun to watch all the splashing until Alex grabbed the hamster ball and said, “What about this? Will it float?”

“NO-NO-NO!” I squeaked. I didn’t know if the ball would float or not, but I knew that I didn’t want to get wet! And even though the plastic would protect me from the water, those air holes were sure to let water in. When I’d wished for an adventure on the water, this wasn’t what I had in mind!

Alex was carrying me toward the tub as I shrieked, “Stop him! I shouldn’t get wet!”

I wasn’t sure if anyone could hear me with all that plastic around me.

He held the ball over the water. I took a deep breath and squeaked, “Eeeeeeek!”

At that point, my friend Richie grabbed the ball out of Alex’s hand. “Not with Humphrey in it, you dodo.”

Richie opened the ball, took me out and handed the ball back to his cousin. “Here,” he said.

Alex dropped my hamster ball into the tub, where it bobbed up and down on the water, floating along.

My heart was pounding, but I was GLAD-GLAD-GLAD I wasn’t inside.

Richie put me back in my cage, where I burrowed into my sleeping hut for a long, dry nap.

On Sunday afternoon, Richie cleaned my cage. He did an excellent job. While he was changing my water, his mom brought in the phone and said he had a call.

“Hello?” Richie said. “Oh . . . Kirk.”

He sure didn’t seem happy to hear from his partner.

“Okay. Okay. Okay.” That’s all I heard. I couldn’t hear what Kirk said, but Richie told me after he said good-bye.

“Dumb old Kirk. He took the boat home again and wanted to tell me it sailed really great,” Richie explained. “What a jerk. Kirk the jerk.”

Then he unexpectedly slipped me in his pocket. It was dark in there, but I could make out a couple of dried-up raisins and half a stick of gum stuck to the cloth. Luckily, I was only there for a few seconds.

Richie went into the bathroom, locked the door, took me out of his pocket and set me in an empty soap dish. I was a little nervous when he started filling the bathtub with water, especially after the experiments from the day before.

“Don’t worry, Humphrey. You’re not getting a bath,” Richie assured me. “I just want to show you something. It’s a secret.”

Once the tub was full, he showed me a strange-looking boat. “This is my remote-controlled submarine. Pretty cool, isn’t it?”

The submarine was a very sleek boat, nothing like the sailboats we’d been studying. It was completely gray and had no sails at all—just a tower-like thing coming up out of the middle.

“Here’s the periscope.” Richie pointed to a long, narrow tube coming out of the tower. “When you’re underwater, you can use it to see what’s on top of the water.”

Amazing.

“In real submarines, people can live underwater for weeks. Even months. They can sneak up on enemies because no one even knows they’re there,” Richie said.

After he put the submarine in the tub, he used a remote control—like the one for Mr. Fitch’s television—to make it move through the water.

“I can control when it goes up and when it goes down,” he explained. “See?”

Using the controls in his hands, he made the submarine dive down until it was completely underwater. It glided silently across the bottom of the tub.

“Now, watch this,” he said.

I watched carefully as he pushed some buttons, and suddenly, the submarine glided up to the surface of the water.

“That’s GREAT-GREAT-GREAT,” I squeaked happily.

My classmates are so clever!

But my little hamster heart sank almost to my stomach when Richie said, “I’m going to take this submarine to Potter’s Pond for the boat race.”

“That’s against the rules,” I squeaked.

“Kirk thinks he’s so smart,” Richie muttered. The submarine dived to the bottom of the tub. “I’ll hide it in my backpack. While the race is on, I’ll sneak to the sidelines, slip the submarine in the water, then bring it up right next to his stupid tall ship. Just to show him I can handle a boat, too.”

“Something could go wrong! What if the submarine hits the boat?” I tried to warn him, but it was no use.

“I’ll probably get in trouble,” Richie admitted. “But I don’t want the stupid prize, anyway.”

My mind was racing. If I could get my paws on that controller, maybe I could stop him. But Richie put the submarine and the device in a cabinet way up high. I could see there was no way a small hamster could reach it.

I’ve helped a lot of my friends on a lot of my weekend visits, but there was no way I could change Richie’s mind.

“It’ll be our little secret,” he told me.

It wasn’t a secret I wanted to keep. At least I wouldn’t be there to see it.

 

“Good news, class,” Mrs. Brisbane announced on Monday. “The weather tomorrow should be picture-perfect, so the trip to Potter’s Pond is on.”

My friends gave a cheer. Even though the picnic was
off
for me, I managed a celebratory squeak.

I felt terrible for Mrs. Brisbane. She’d planned everything so well, but things weren’t going to go according to her plan unless I came up with a bright idea to stop Richie.

Everyone was excited about the picnic the next day, but they were perfectly quiet when Mrs. Brisbane read the final chapter to the Uncle Jolly Roger book. Vic and Vi helped their uncle scare off the pirates (with the help of a very loud whistle—can you believe it?). And then, to the children’s surprise, they set sail with the treasure to return it to the real owners. It turns out that Uncle Jolly Roger was a
good
pirate!

Richie was a good guy, too. And good guys don’t do bad things, do they? Well, maybe sometimes they do.

I needed a Plan. But in order to have a Plan, I needed research. Mrs. Brisbane talked about research from time to time, and I figured out it meant learning more about a subject. When students had to do research, they usually went to the library. So I decided to undertake a little research project of my own.

First, I had to wait for Aldo to finish cleaning the room. He was very cheery that night, whistling the hornpipe song and dancing around with the broom.

“Well, me buckos, tomorrow I set sail,” he said. “I hope your friends don’t get attacked by pirates.”

The thought of pirates attacking anyone, especially my friends, made my whiskers twitch, but Aldo let out a jolly laugh.

 

I waited a long time after Aldo left to make sure he’d left Longfellow School for the night. Then I told Og about my mission, slipped out of my cage, slid under the door and headed toward the library. The hallways didn’t seem so eerie anymore. I guess I was getting used to my nighttime journeys.

Once I squeezed under the door of the library, I stopped to catch my breath and look around. The fish tank was glowing, thank goodness, because I needed the light. I headed straight for the remote control. If I could figure out how it worked, maybe I could figure out how to make Richie’s remote
not
work. I scrambled up the stair-like shelves and scampered across the desk to the remote control.

Research can be HARD-HARD-HARD, as I found out that night, but I learned a lot. First of all, remotes don’t have cords that you can plug and unplug, like televisions and irons and other objects humans use.

Second of all, those buttons do some very strange things besides turning a television on and off. I found the On/Off button and up on the screen, I saw a group of children walking down a sidewalk. When I pushed the next button, the children started walking backward, which was pretty funny. I hate to admit, I spent quite a bit of time making those kids walk forward and then backward.

Then it was time to get on with my research. One button turned the sound on and off, and others made the picture do all kinds of strange things, like change color and get squiggly lines. None of the buttons made the remote stop except the On/Off button.