Part 7 (1/2)

”I think they've fooled us,” replied the Unwiseman with a doubtful shake of his gray head. ”This don't look like England to me, and I've been wondering if that s.h.i.+p mightn't be a pirate s.h.i.+p after all that's carried us all off to some strange place with the idea of thus getting rid of us, so that the Captain might go home and steal our kitchen-stoves and other voluble things.”

”Pooh!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Whistlebinkie. ”What makes you thinkit-taint England?”

”It's too big in the first place,” replied the Unwiseman, ”and in the second it ain't the right color. Just look at this map and you'll see.”

Here Mr. Me took a map of the world out of his pocket and spread it out before Whistlebinkie.

”See that?” he said pointing to England in one corner. ”I've measured it off with a tape measure and it's only four inches long and about an inch and a half wide. This place we're in now is more'n five miles long and, as far as I can see two or three miles across. And look at the color on the map.”

”Tspink,” said Whistlebinkie.

”I don't know what you mean by tspink,” said the Unwiseman, ”but----”

”It's-pink,” explained Whistlebinkie.

”Exactly,” said the Unwiseman. ”That's just what it is, but that ain't the color of this place. Seems to me this place is a sort of dull yellow dusty brown. And besides I don't see any houses on the map and this place is just chock-full of them.”

”O well, I guess it's all right,” said Whistlebinkie. ”Maybe when we get further in we'll find it grows pinker. Cities ain't never the same color as the country you know.”

”Possibly,” said the Unwiseman, ”but even then that wouldn't account for the difference in size. Why should the map say it's four inches by an inch and a half, when anybody can see that this place is five miles by three just by looking at it?”

”I guess-smaybe it's grown some since that map was made,” suggested Whistlebinkie. ”Being surrounded by water you'd think it would grow.”

Just then a British policeman walked along the landing stage and Whistlebinkie added, ”There's a p'liceman. You might speak to him about it.”

”Good idea,” said the Unwiseman. ”I'll do it.” And he walked up to the officer.

”Good morning, Robert,” said he. ”You'll pardon my curiosity, but is this England?”

”Yessir,” replied the officer politely. ”You are on British soil, sir.”

”H'm! British, eh?” observed the Unwiseman. ”Just what _is_ that?

French for English, I suppose.”

”This is Great Britain, sir,” explained the officer with a smile.

”Hingland is a part of Great Britain.”

”Hingland?” asked the Unwiseman with a frown.

”Yessir--this is Hingland, sir,” replied the policeman, as he turned on his heel and wandered on down the stage leaving the Unwiseman more perplexed than when he had asked the question.

”It looks queerer than ever,” said the Unwiseman when he had returned to Whistlebinkie. ”These people don't seem to have agreed on the name of this place, which I consider to be a very suspicious circ.u.mstance. That policeman said first it was England, then he said it was Great Britain, and then he changed it to Hingland, while Mollie's father says it's Liverpool. It's mighty strange, and I wish I was well out of it.”

”Why did you call the p'liceman Robert, Mr. Me?” asked Whistlebinkie, who somehow or other did not seem to share the old gentleman's fears.

”O I read somewhere that the English policemen were all Bobbies,” the Unwiseman replied. ”But I didn't feel that I'd ought to be so familiar as to call him that until I'd got to know him better, so I just called him Robert.”

Later on Mollie explained the situation to the old fellow.

”Liverpool,” she said, ”is a part of England and England is a part of Great Britain, just as Binghamton is a part of New York and New York is a part of the United States of America.”