Freddy and the Perilous Adventure by Walter R. Brooks Read Free Book Online

of the buffeting it had taken from the storm, which might have knocked some of the gas out of it, the balloon was now much nearer the ground than it had been before, and the grapnel, which Freddy had forgotten to stow away after he had pulled up the hamper, barely missed by inches the tops of the taller trees over which they drifted. Indeed, once or twice during the night it caught for a second and then pulled free again, and at those times the sharp jerk of the basket woke Freddy up. But he was too sleepy to get up and investigate, and after waiting a minute to see if anything else happened, he dropped off again.
    But a little before daylight a sharp jerk woke him again, and this time it was followed by a series of tugs that tipped the basket and sent him and the two ducks and the hamper and Mr. Golcher’s box of canned goods into a heap in one corner. At first when he got out he couldn’t see much, partly because the sun was not yet up, and partly because in the struggle of getting out of the blankets Alice had stepped in his eye. But it was getting lighter all the time, and pretty soon he made out that the grapnel had caught under the eaves of a house and was holding them anchored there, only a few feet above the roof.
    There was something familiar about that house, and about the barn and the yard and the gate.
    â€œHave either of you girls ever seen this place before?” he asked, as the ducks hopped up beside him. He always called them girls when he thought of it, because it both pleased and flustered them a little. It pleased them because it made them seem younger than they really were, and it flustered them because it didn’t seem quite dignified. Of course, they weren’t very old, but for ducks they were really grown up.
    â€œWhy no, Freddy,” said Alice. “We haven’t, have we, sister?”
    â€œWe’ve never been in the Adirondacks before,” said Emma.
    â€œI think we’ve been blown out of the Adirondacks,” said Freddy, “though where we are now I don’t know. It just seemed to me I’d seen it all before.”
    â€œWhy, now you mention it,” Alice began, and then she stopped, for an upstairs window opened in the house, and a head came out and twisted around to look up at them, and then a mouth opened in the head, and yelled: “Hey, pa!”
    â€œDown!” whispered Freddy. “Keep out of sight. Oh, I know where we are now, all right.”
    â€œSo do I,” said Alice, “and I don’t like it, Freddy.”
    Indeed, there was a very good reason for them not to like it. On their famous trip to Florida, they had had some trouble, as you may remember, with a man with a black moustache and a dirty-faced boy. On the way back home, Charles and Henrietta had been captured by these two, and would have been eaten for Sunday dinner if the other animals hadn’t succeeded in rescuing them. And now, the face that was looking up at them …
    â€œAre you sure that’s the same boy, sister?” Emma asked.
    â€œI’m sure it’s the same dirt,” said Alice. “There’s the same black smudge on his left cheek. Why, he can’t have washed his face in five years!”
    â€œDisgraceful!” said Emma.
    The boy, followed by the man with the black moustache, who was his father, had come out into the yard and was staring up at the balloon.
    â€œThat must be the balloon you heard about last night over the radio, pa,” said the boy. “The one that pig went up in that the police are hunting for.”
    Freddy pricked up his ears.
    â€œYou get a rope, sonny,” said the man, “and climb up on the roof and hook it to that anchor thing, and then we’ll pull it down.”
    â€œIf that pig is the robber, and we get the reward the police are offering for him,” said the boy, “will you take me to see the circus over at South Pharisee, pa?”
    â€œMaybe yes and maybe