PREVIEW: Captain on the Bridge!

ONE - What’s Going On?

Bebe couldn’t figure it out.  There was a hustle and bustle going on at home that was making her teeth rattle.  The Captain and Mum were all excited about something, and she could feel it buzzing in the air around her.  Mum had been very busy the last couple of days, making piles of clothing, stacking boxes of food on the counter,  talking about boat and grub, and using all kinds of words she didn’t understand.  She didn’t know what boat was, or grub.  There were other words that now wouldn’t even stay in her head long enough so she could maybe figure them out.  

Back and forth they went, carrying things, fixing things, sounding excited and talking a lot, lot’s more than before.  Captain was busy down in the basement and in the garage, doing all kinds of things that made no sense.  He said stuff like sounder and diesel and dock.  She didn’t know what those things were either!  It was all a big mystery, and Bebe loved mysteries.

All she could do right now, was go back to sleep, and she was about to do just that when she had a horrible thought.  What if they were going away again?  On no!  That would not do at all.  Once in a while they would leave, and not come back for two whole days!  Sure, they would leave lots and lots of food and water out for her, so she didn’t starve, but still … she always missed Captain, because his nice warm lap would go with him.  She didn’t like that at all!  No sir.

Mum’s lap would do once in a while, she supposed.  It was warm too, but Captain’s lap was special.  When she was in his lap, he would tease her .. just a little,  and she would tease right back.  Just a little.

Finally Bebe drifted off to sleep again, curled up in Captain’s blanket-covered chair, and dreamed about that cardboard box from a long time ago.  She still liked cardboard boxes, but now, only if they were inside the house.  That way, she would know that she was still home for real, and not stuck out somewhere in the wilderness like before.  

When she was awake Bebe followed Mum and Captain around, to see what they were doing.  That mystery needed solving, but it wasn’t like anything that normally went on, and that had her watching them like a hawk.

Then one day, the carrier was brought up out of the basement.  Uh oh.  Now what?  Normally, this meant she needed to go to the vet.  Now, however she wasn’t so sure.  She didn’t mind the vet, but she wasn’t particularly happy about being stuck in the carrier.  Oh no.

When the carrier came out, Bebe hid under the bed, just like she always did.  And, like always, Mum shook the treat box.  Loving her treats, she came out as usual to get one.  While she was munching, Mum picked her up and put her in the carrier.  Yes, Mum tricked her again.  Funny, how that always happened.

Still, she was a good girl, because Captain always told her she was a good girl, and she didn’t make a sound in the carrier.  Not a peep or a whine or sad meow.  Away she went in the van, sitting in her carrier on the back seat, expecting to go to the vet.  

They travelled far longer than the short trip to the animal clinic.  She  noticed that the back of the van was piled high with a lot of stuff.  It looked like the same things that Mum had been piling up all week. When the van finally stopped, they were not at the vet at all.  They were somewhere that Bebe did not recognize.  Captain and Mum unloaded everything and disappeared.  Where were they now?

Back and forth Captain and Mum went, until finally, the van was empty.  All except for her. Mum came back. “Come Bebe,” she heard Mum say, “it’s your turn.”  Her turn?  For what?  She still didn’t know, but now maybe, just maybe, she’d get to find out and solve the mystery.  

The carrier swung this way and that more than usual for a short time.  Bebe got a little nervous.  Looking out through the mesh, she could see a very, very steep path in front of her that zig-zagged back and forth down a very high cliff.  She hung on for dear life and closed her eyes, hoping Mum would not fall and drop her!  All she could think about was that whatever was happening, it better be worth it, after all this.

TWO - Learning the Lingo

When Mum and Bebe got to the bottom of the path, Bebe got brave enough to peek out of her carrier again.  This time, things out there looked a little different.  No .. wait, it looked a whole lot different.

At the bottom of the cliff was a really long and straight path made out of wood, and it was high up, instead of down on the ground where it should be.  What was this?  All around this strange wooden path was something that moved.  Now this … this was really, really strange.  It almost looked like the water in her dish, except there was way, way more of it!  That was impossible, wasn’t it?  If it was water, how could there be so much of it?  She’d never seen anything like it, so she thought of it as “maybe-water”.

The wooden path was held up high with posts, but underneath  was all this moving and rippling maybe-water.   Ahead of her and right beside the path, moving up and down on all this maybe-water was  something else that was tied to the wooden path.  It looked like the funniest shaped house she had ever seen.  It wasn’t big like their house at home, and it came to a point on one end.  There was also a smaller house on the top of it, like a house on a house.  Since she wasn’t sure if it was a house, she called this a “maybe-house”.

Mum set the carrier on this strange maybe-house and then climbed in after.  As she sat in her carrier waiting she could feel it moving up and down.  It was all very, very strange.  

Mum opened the mesh flap to let her out.  She really didn’t want to because this was so, so different from anything she had ever seen before.  And she’d seen a lot already.

“Come on, Bebe, be a brave girl, and come out to enjoy the sunshine.”  Mum said.  The Captain came out of a door, “Come Bebe, come look around the boat!  We’re going for a trip on the water!”

Boat?  This was one of the things Captain had been talking about!  Aha!  This maybe-house was a boat!  And Captain had definitely said “trip on the water”, so all that maybe-water really was water.  So much water.  Amazing! 

Bebe decided to be a brave girl and stuck her head out of the carrier.  Then she slowly climbed out and stood on the floor.  No matter what she did with her feet, the floor kept moving.  It almost made her dizzy!  Well, this was really interesting.  It was almost like the chair at home that rocked back and forth.  

She jumped up onto a huge box in the middle of the floor of the boat.  From up there she could look around and see everything much, much better.  It wasn’t quite as scary as she first thought.

As they continued to get all the things they’d brought put away, Bebe listened very carefully.  There was a lot she needed to  learn.  She heard Captain calling the floor she’d been standing on, a deck.  The small house on top of the boat was really called a house, and sometimes it was called a cabin.  Out on the deck, the box she was standing on was actually the roof of a back cabin, another room on the boat.  And all around her, except for one side, which was the wooden path, all she saw was water, lots and lots of it.  Bebe could only stand on the rail and stare down at it, amazed.

And what about the rest of the boat?  She learned that the front of the boat was called the bow and the back of the boat was the stern.  There were stern lines and spring lines and bow lines to tie the boat up to things so it wouldn’t float away.  There were bumpers to keep the boat from banging into other things that it shouldn’t bang in to.  There were suddenly so many new things to learn, and new words to remember!  Her head was getting just a little mixed up.

Mum looked at Bebe and smiled, “It feels funny that everything is moving up and down, doesn’t it, Bebe?  That’s because we’re floating on water!”  Bebe peered anxiously over the rail.  There was so much more than she’d ever seen before in her life.  It was not the same kind of water that she drank, no, no.  Mum told her that this was salt water.  Bebe didn’t know why it was salty.

She heard Captain say that they were going on a shake-down cruise.  She didn’t quite know what this meant either, but she imagined a lot of shaking, and wasn’t looking forward to that at all.  Captain said they were trying to see how Bebe liked the boat, and how she behaved.  Bebe snorted and thought to herself, When have I ever NOT behaved myself? 

Although everyone said she was a bit bonkers, she didn’t believe a word of that.  It wasn’t her fault that her toy mouse landed in the coffee.  It wasn’t her fault that beds got messed, and teddy bears ended up in the hallway.  It wasn’t even her fault that she got stuck in the refrigerator last week!  No sir, not her fault at all.  It was Mum who closed the door on her.  She was just curious to see what they were going to have for dinner, and boy, did she get cold while she was stuck in there! It took a while before Mum opened the door again to let her out.

Before long, Bebe was beginning to understand a lot of what she needed to about the boat.  And, she was getting used to bobbing up and down all the time.  She learned later, that this was called getting her sea legs, although when she looked at her legs, they seemed to be the very same legs she’d always had.

Finally, after a turn or two around on the deck, Mum called her inside the big cabin.  Here, there were two big, comfortable, cushioned benches facing each other, with a table in between.  There were  windows to look out of as well.  At the very front there was a big window with a funny curved shelf along the bottom of it that Captain called a bridge, and also a dash, with all kinds of strange things attached to the surface.  The two names confused her to no end.  Why would it have two names?  There was also a funny-looking wheel with posts sticking out all around out of it, and another shorter cushioned bench.  

Through the front window she could see the pointy bow of the boat.  There was a big heavy-looking thing hanging off the point.  Captain stood behind the wheel and said, “Well, time to turn her on!”  Without another word of warning, he turned a key and pushed a button.

A shock ran through Bebe as a great roar started up under her feet.  The vibration shook everything, making the cushion she sat on tremble.  But she was a brave girl.  Her eyes widened a bit, and she looked around to see if she could spot where the sound was coming from, but it seemed to come from underneath somehow.  She couldn’t see what would make that kind of big noise.