The Project Gutenberg eBook, Us and the Bottleman, by Edith Ballinger Price, Illustrated by Edith Ballinger Price This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Us and the Bottleman Author: Edith Ballinger Price Release Date: June 22, 2004 [eBook #12681] [Date last updated: January 9, 2005] Language: English Character set encoding: iso-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK US AND THE BOTTLEMAN*** E-text prepared by Thaadd, Susan Lucy, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders US and THE BOTTLE MAN BY EDITH BALLINGER PRICE Author of “SILVER SHOAL LIGHT,” “BLUE MAGIC,” etc. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR 1920 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Greg rigged himself up as an Excavator We hoped the Bottle Man would like the letter “Hang on, Chris!” Jerry said. “I can get it” “Ye be Three Poore Mariners” US AND THE BOTTLE MAN CHAPTER I It began with Jerry’s finishing off all the olives that were left, “like a pig would do,” as Greg said. His finishing the olives left us the bottle, of course, and there is only one natural thing to do with an empty olive-bottle when you’re on a water picnic. That is, to write a message as though you were a shipwrecked mariner, and seal it up in the bottle and chuck it as far out as ever you can. We’d all gone over to Wecanicut on the ferry,—Mother and Aunt Ailsa and Jerry and Greg and I,—and we were picnicking beside the big fallen-over slab that looks just like the entrance to a pirate cave. We had a fire, of course, and a lot of things to eat, including the olives, which were a fancy addition bought by Aunt Ailsa as we were running for the ferry. When we asked her if she had any paper, she tore a perfectly nice leaf out of her sketch-book, and gave me her 3 B drawing-pencil to write with. It was very soft, and the paper was the roughish kind that comes in sketch-books, so that the writing was smeary and looked quite as if shipwrecked mariners had written it with charred twigs out of the fire. We’d done lots of messages when we were on other water picnics, but we’d never heard from any of them, although one reason for that was that we never put our address on them. We decided we would this time, because Jerry had just been reading about a fisherman in Newfoundland picking up a message that somebody had chucked from a yacht in the Gulf of Mexico months and months before. I wrote the date at the top, near the raggedy place where the leaf was torn out of Aunt Ailsa’s sketch-book, and then I put, “We be Three Poore Mariners,” like the song in “Pan-Pipes.” Jerry and Greg kept telling me things to write, till the page was quite full and went something like this: “We be Three Poore Mariners, cast away upon the lone and desolate shore of Wecanicut, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, lat. and long. unknown. Our position is very perilous, as we have exhausted all our supplies, including large stores of olives, and are now forced to exist on beach-peas, barnacles, and—and—” “Eiligugs’ eggs,” said Greg, dreamily. Jerry pounced on him and said they only grew on the Irish coast, but I said: “All right! Beach-peas, barnacles, and eiligugs’ eggs, of which only a small supply is to be had on this bleak and dismal coast. Our ship, the good ferry- boat Wecanicut, left us marooned, and there is no hope of our being picked up for the next two hours. Any person finding this message, please come to our assistance by dropping us a line,” (I must honestly say that this was Jerry’s, and much better than usual) “as the surf is too heavy for boats to land on this end of the island. Signed:—” “Don’t sign it ‘Christine’,” Jerry said. “Put ‘Chris,’ if we’re to be real mariners.” So I put “Chris Holford, æt. 13,” which I thought might look more dignified and scholarly than “aged,” and Jerry wrote “Gerald M. Holford,” and put “æt. 11” after it, but I’m sure he didn’t know what it meant until I did it. Then we stuck the paper at Greg, and he stared at it ever so long and finally said: “Ate eleven! He ate lots more than that; I saw him.” Jerry pounced again,—I was laughing too hard to,—and said: “It’s not olives, silly; it’s an abbreviated French way of saying how old we are.” Then I had to pounce on him, and tell him it was Latin, as he might know by the diphthong. By that time Greg had written “Gregory Holford, Ate 8,” across the bottom, very large, and Jerry said he might as well have put 88 and had done with it. We folded the paper up in the tinfoil that the chocolate came in and jammed it into the bottle and pounded the cork in tight with a stone. Greg was all for chucking it immediately, but Jerry said it would have a better chance if we dropped it right into the current from the ferry going home. So we cocked the bottle up on a rock and went back to the pirate- cave-entrance place to finish a game of smugglers. Wecanicut is a nice place to smuggle and do other dark deeds in, and I don’t believe we’ll ever be too old to think it’s fun. This time we cut the rest of the tinfoil into roundish pieces with Jerry’s jackknife, and stowed them into a cranny in the cave. They shone rather faintly and looked exactly like double moidores, except that those are gold, I think. We also borrowed Aunt Ailsa’s hatpin with the Persian coin on the end. By running the pin down into the sand all the way, you can make it look just like a goldpiece lying on the floor of the cave. She is a very obliging aunt and doesn’t mind our doing this sort of thing,—in fact, she plays lots of the games, too, and she can groan more hollowly than any of us, when groans are needed. This time we didn’t ask her to, because she was reading a book by H. G. Wells to Mother, and anyway all our proceedings were supposed to be going on in the most Stealthy and Silent Secrecy. The moidores and the Persian coin were all that was left of an enormous lot of things which the villainous band had buried,—golden chains, and uncut jewels, and pots of louis d’ors, and church chalices (Jerry says chasubles, but I think not). Greg and Jerry had dragged all these things up from the edge of the water in big empty armfuls, and we stamped the sand down over them. It really looked exactly as if the tinfoil moidores were a handful that was left over. Greg was just giving the final stamp, when Jerry crooked his hand over his ear and said: “Hist, men! What was that?” They were having artillery practice down at the Fort, and just then a terrific volley went sputtering off. “’Tis a broadside from the English vessel!” Jerry said. “We are pursued!” We crept out from the cave and made off up the shore as fast as possible. Jerry went ahead and jumped up on a rock to reconnoiter. He did look quite piratical, with my black sailor tie bound tight over his head and two buttons of his shirt undone. Greg had his own necktie wrapped around his head, but several locks of hair had escaped from under it. He always manages to have something not quite right about his costumes. He has very nice hair—curly, and quite amberish colored—but it’s not at all like a pirate’s. I poked him from behind to make him hurry, for Jerry was pointing at a big schooner that was coming down the harbor. We all lay down flat behind the rock until she had gone slowly around the point. We could see the sun winking on something that might have been a cannon in her waist—that’s the place where cannon always are—and of course the captain must have been keeping a sharp lookout landward with his spy-glass. “Eh, mon,” said Jerry, when the schooner had passed, “but yon was a verra close thing!” That’s one of the worst things about Jerry,—the way he mixes up language. We’d been reading “Kidnapped,” and I suppose he forgot he wasn’t Alan. “Silence, dog!” I said, to remind him of who we were. “Very like she’s but hove to in the offing, and for aught you know she’s maybe sending ashore the jolly-boat by now.” “Then let’s go to the end of the point and have a look,” Greg suggested. He doesn’t often make speeches, because Jerry is apt to pounce on him and tell him he’s “too plain American,” but I think it isn’t fair, because he hasn’t read as many books as Jerry and I. So I hurried up and said: “Bravely spoke, my lad; so we will, my hearty!” And we crawled and clambered along till we came to the end of the point where it’s all stones and seaweed and big surf sometimes. The surf was not very high this time,—just waves that went whoosh and then pulled the pebbles back with a nice scrawpy sound. The schooner was half-way down to the Headland, not paying any attention to us. “Ah ha!” Jerry said, “safe once more from an ignominious death. But, Chris, look at the Sea Monster! What’s happened to it?” The Sea Monster is a bare black rock-island off the end of Wecanicut. We called it that because it looks like one, and it hasn’t any other name that we know of. We’d always wanted awfully to go out there and explore it, but the only time we ever asked old Captain Moss, who has boats for hire, he said, “Thunderin’ bad landin’. Nothin’ to see there but a clutter o’ gulls’ nests,” and went on painting the Jolly Nancy, which is his nicest boat. But the thing that Jerry was pointing out now was very queer indeed. It was just a little too far away to see clearly what had happened, but it seemed as if a piece of rock had fallen away on the side toward us, leaving a jaggedy opening as black as a hat and high enough for a person to stand upright in. “The entrance to a subaground tunnel!” Greg shouted, leaping up and down in the edge of a wave. He will say “subaground,” and it really is quite as sensible as some words. “The entrance to a real pirate cave, you mean!” said Jerry. “Glory, Chris, I really shouldn’t wonder if it were. Captain Kidd was up and down the coast here. What if they buried stuff in there and then propped a big chunk of rock up against the hole?” “I wish we had a telescope,” I said, “though I don’t suppose we could see into the blackness with it. Mercy, I wish we could get out there! It’s more worth exploring than ever.” “Let’s tell Mother and Aunt!” said Greg, and started running back down the beach, shouting something all the way. Mother said, “Nonsense!” and, “Of course it’s a natural cave in the rock. You probably only noticed it today.” But she and Aunt Ailsa shut up the H. G. Wells book and came to look. They did think, when they saw it, that it was something new. Aunt Ailsa thought it looked very exciting and mysterious, but she agreed with Mother that it was no sort of place to go to in a boat. “Just look at the white foam flinging around those rocks,” she said; “and there’s practically no surf on today.” We had to admit that it wasn’t a nice-looking place to land on from a rowboat, but we did wish that we were hardy adventuring men, bold of heart and undeterred by grown-ups. We knew, too, that Captain Moss would say, “Pshaw!” if we told him there might be treasure on the Sea Monster, and he certainly wouldn’t risk the Jolly Nancy on those rocks in her nice new green paint. We were so much excited about the Sea Monster suddenly having a big black hole in it that we almost forgot to take the bottle when we went home. We did forget Aunt Ailsa’s hatpin, and Greg had to run back for it, because he can run faster than any of the rest of us, and Captain Lewis held the ferry for him. Everybody leaned out from the rail and peered up the landing, because they thought it must be a fire or the President or something. They all looked awfully disappointed when it was only Greg, with the black necktie still around his head and Aunt’s hatpin held very far away from him so that it wouldn’t hurt him if he fell down. He tumbled on board just as the nice brown Portuguese man who works the rattley chain thing at the landings was pushing the collapsible gate shut, and Greg gasped: “I brought—the moidores—too!” But Jerry collared him and pulled the necktie off his head. Jerry hates to have his relatives look silly in public, but I thought Greg looked very nice. We chucked the bottle overboard from the upper deck, just when the Wecanicut was halfway over. The nice Portuguese man shouted up, “Hey! You drop something?” but we told him it was just an old bottle we didn’t want, and not to mind. We watched it go bob-bobbing along beside an old barrel-head that was floating by, and we wondered how far it would go, and if it would leak and sink. The tide was exactly right to carry it outside, if all went well. “Perhaps,” said Greg, when we were halfway up Luke Street, going home, and had almost forgotten the bottle, “perhaps it will land on the Sea Monster, and the pirates will find it.” “Glory!” said Jerry, “perhaps it will.” CHAPTER II Just in the middle of the rainiest week came the thing that made Aunt Ailsa so sad. She read it in the newspaper, in the casualty list. It was the last summer of the war, and there were great long casualty lists every day. This said that Somebody-or-other Westland was “wounded and missing.” We didn’t know why it made her so sad, because we’d never heard of such a person, but of course it was up to us to cheer her up as much as possible. Picnics being out of the question, it had to be indoor cheering, which is harder. Greg succeeded better than the rest of us, I think. He is still little enough to sit on people’s laps (though his legs spill over, quantities). He sat on Aunt Ailsa’s lap and told her long stories which she seemed to like much better than the H. G. Wells books. He also dragged her off to join in attic games, and she liked those, too, and laughed sometimes quite like herself. Attic games aren’t so bad, though summer’s not the proper time for them, really. There is a long cornery sort of closet full of carpets that runs back under the eaves in our attic, and if you strew handfuls of beads and tin washers among the carpets and then dig for them in the dark with a hockey- stick and a pocket flash-light, it’s not poor fun. Unfortunately, my head knocks against the highest part of the roof now, yet I still do think it’s fun. But Aunt Ailsa is twenty-six and she likes it, so I suppose I needn’t give up. The day Aunt Ailsa really laughed was when Greg rigged himself up as an Excavator. That is, he said he was an excavator, but I never saw anything before that looked at all like him. He had the round Indian basket from Mother’s work-table on his head, and some automobile goggles, and yards and yards of green braid wound over his jumper, and Mother’s carriage- boots, which came just below the tops of his socks. In his hand he had what I think was a rake-handle—it was much taller than he—and he had the queerest, glassy, goggling expression under the basket. He never will learn to fix proper clothes. He might have seen what he should have done by looking at Jerry, who had an old felt hat with a bit of candle-end (not lit) stuck in the ribbon, and a bandana tied askew around his neck. But Aunt Ailsa laughed and laughed, which was what we wanted her to do, so neither of us remonstrated with Greg that time. Father plays the ’cello,—that is, he does when he has time,—and he found time to play it with Aunt, who does piano. I think she really liked that better than the attic games, and we did, too, in a way. The living-room of our house is quite low-ceilinged, and part of it is under the roof, so that you can hear the rain on it. The boys lay on the floor, and Mother and I sat on the couch, and we listened to the rain on the roof and the sound—something like rain—of the piano, and Father’s ’cello booming along with it. They played a thing called “Air Religieux” that I think none of us will ever hear again without thinking of the humming on the roof and the candles all around the room and one big one on the piano beside Aunt Ailsa, making her hair all shiny. Her hair is amberish, too, like Greg’s, but her eyes are a very golden kind of brown, while his are dark blue. We thought she’d forgotten about being sad, but one night when I couldn’t sleep because it was so hot I heard her crying, and Mother talking the way she does to us when something makes us unhappy. I felt rather frightened, somehow, and wretched, and I covered up my ears because I didn’t think Aunt would want me to hear them talking there. The next day the sun really came out and stayed out. All of us came out, too, and explored the garden. The grass had grown till it stood up like hay, and there were such tall green weeds in the flowerbeds that Mother couldn’t believe they’d grown during the rain and thought they were some phlox she’d overlooked. The phlox itself was staggering with flowers, and all the lupin leaves held round water-drops in the hollows of their five-fingered hands. Greg said that they were fairy wash-basins. He also found a drowned field- mouse and a sparrow. He was frightfully sorry about it, and carried them around wrapped up in a warm flannel till Mother begged him to give them a military funeral. Jerry soaked all the labels off a cigar-box, and then burned a most beautiful inscription on the lid with his pyrography outfit. Part of the inscription was a poem by Greg, which went like this: “O little sparrow, Perhaps to-morrow You will fly in a blue house. And perhaps you will run In the sun, Little field-mouse.” Jerry didn’t see what Greg meant by a “blue house,” but I did, and I think it was rather nice. I copied the poem secretly, before the cigar-box was buried at the end of the rose-bed. I think Greg really cried, but he had so much black mosquito netting hanging over the brim of his best hat that I couldn’t be sure. Fourth of July came and went—the very patriotic one, when everybody saved their fireworks-money to buy W.S.S. with. We bought W.S.S. and made very grand fireworks out of joss-sticks. Joss-sticks have wonderful possibilities that most people don’t know about. The three of us went down to the foot of the garden after dark and did an exhibition for the others. By whisking the joss-sticks around by their floppy handles you can make all sorts of fiery circles. I made two little ones for eyes, and Greg did a nose in the middle, and Jerry twirled a curvy one underneath for a mouth that could be either smiling or ferocious. A little way off you can’t see the people who do it at all, and it looks just like a great fiery face with a changing, wobbly expression. Then Greg did a fire dance with two sparklers. He dances rather well,—not real one-steps and waltzes, but weird things he makes up himself. This one lasted as long as the sparklers burned, and it was quite gorgeous. After that we had a candle-light procession around the garden, and the grown people said that the candles looked very mysterious bobbing in and out between the trees. We felt more like high priests than patriots, but it was very festive and wonderful, and when we ended by having cakes and lime-juice on the porch at half-past nine, everybody agreed that it had been a real celebration and quite different. In spite of being up so late the night before, Greg was the first one down to breakfast next morning. Our postman always brings the mail just before the end of breakfast, and we can hear him click the gate as he comes in. This morning Jerry and Greg dashed for the mail together, and Greg squeezed through where Jerry thought he couldn’t and got there first. When they came back, Jerry was saying: “Let me have it, won’t you; it’ll take you all day!” and dodging his arm over Greg’s shoulder. “Messrs. Christopher, Gerald, and Gregory Holford; 17 Luke Street,” Greg read slowly. Then he tripped over the threshold and floundered on to me, flourishing the big envelope and shouting: “It’s funny paper, and it’s funny writing, and I know it’s from The Bottle!” “My stars!” said Jerry, with a final snatch. But I had the envelope, and I looked at it very carefully. “Boys,” I said, “I truly believe that it is.” CHAPTER III The envelope was a square, thinnish one, addressed in very small, black handwriting. “It must be from The Bottle,” Jerry said; “otherwise they wouldn’t have thought you were a boy and put Christopher.” I had been thinking just the same thing while I was trying to open the envelope. It was one of the very tightly stuck kind that scrumples up when you try to rip it with your finger, and we had to slit it with a fruit-knife before we could get at the letter. There were sheets of thin paper all covered with writing, and when Jerry and Greg saw that, they both fell upon it so that none of us could read it at all. I persuaded them that the quickest thing to do would be to let me read it aloud, and as we’d finished breakfast anyway, we each took our last piece of toast in our hands and went out and sat on the bottom step of the porch. I read: Fellow Adventurers and Mariners in Distress: By this time there may be naught left of you but a whitening huddle of bones, surf bleached on the end of Wecanicut,—for I know well what meager fare are eiligugs’ eggs and barnacles. However, I take the chance of finding at least one of you alive, and address you fraternally as a companion in distress. I am myself stranded on a cheerless island where, against my will, I am kept captive—for how long a time I cannot guess. I was brought here at night, only forty-eight hours ago, and landed from a vessel which almost immediately departed whence it had come, into the darkness. My captors left me to go with the vessel, the chief of them threatening to return every week to torment me unless I obeyed his slightest command. I stand in great fear of this man, who is tall and bearded, for he brings with him instruments of torture and bottles containing, without doubt, poison. Can you imagine my joy when, tottering down the beach this morning, supporting my frame upon two sticks, I beheld your bottle cast up on the sands? Now, thought I, I can unburden myself to these three unfortunate men, obviously in even greater distress than my own, and we can, perhaps, ease each other’s monotonous maroonity. Scholars, too, I perceive you to be,—witness the Latin following your signatures. Ah well, Grata superveniet quae non sperabitur hora, as the poet so truly says, and I cannot express to you how eager, how happy I am, in the thought of communicating with some one other than the natives of this desolate isle. These inhabitants, though friendly on the whole, are uncouth and barbaric. They spend their entire time fishing from boats which they build themselves, or squatting beside their huts mending their fishing implements. The good soul with whom I am lodging is calling me to my scanty repast. In the rude language of the place she tells me that there is “Krabss al ad an dunny.” How can I live long, I ask, on such fare? Hopefully, your CASTAWAY COMRADE. P.S. My address—mail reaches me from time to time, by aforesaid vessel —is P.O. Box 14, Blue Harbor, Me. ME stands for Mid Equator, but the abbreviation is sufficient. Blue Harbor is my own literal translation of the native Bluar Boor. Box 14 refers to the native system of delivering messages. P.O. has, I think, something to do with the P. & O. steamers, which, however, do not very often touch here. “I told you it would go around the world!” Greg said, when I had finished, and Jerry and I were staring at each other. “Well!” Jerry said at last. “What luck!” “I should rather say so,” I said; “suppose a fisherman had found it, or no one at all.” “Bless his old heart,” said Jerry, taking the letter. I wanted to know why “old.” “He must be ancient if he has to totter along on two sticks,” Jerry said. “Besides, he has a stately, professorish sort of style. Do you suppose he really does want us to write to him?” “Of course he does,” Greg said; “he tells us to often enough. Think of being alone out there with savages, and that bearded chief coming with poison bottles and all.” “Shut up, Greg,” said Jerry; “you don’t understand. There’s more in this than meets the eye, Chris. I didn’t get on to this crab salad business when you read it.” Neither had I; in fact, I hadn’t got on to it until Jerry said it in proper English. “He’s a good sort, poor old dear,” I said. “Why do you suppose they keep him out there?” “He’s there of his own free will, right enough,” Jerry said. But I didn’t think so. We were still confabbing over the letter, and explaining bits to Greg, who was hopelessly mystified, when Mother came out to transplant some columbine that had wandered into the lawn. We did a quick secret consultation and then decided to let her in on the Castaway. So we bolted after her and took away the trowel and showed her the letter. She read it through twice, and then said: “Oh, Ailsa must hear this, and Father!” But what we wanted to know was whether or not we might write to the Castaway, because we didn’t quite want to without letting her know about it. She laughed some more and said, “yes, we might,” and that he was “a dear,” which was what we thought. We decided that we would write immediately, so Jerry dashed off to Father’s study and got two sheets of nice thin paper with “17 Luke Street” at the top in humpy green letters, and I borrowed Aunt Ailsa’s fountain-pen, which turned out to be empty. I might have known it, for they always are empty when you need them most. Jerry, like a goose, filled it over the clean paper we were going to use for the letter, and it slobbered blue ink all over the top sheet. But the under one wasn’t hurt, and we thought one page full would be all we could write, anyway. We took the things out to the porch table, and Greg held down the corner of the paper so it wouldn’t flap while I wrote. Jerry sat on the arm of my chair and thought so excitedly that it jiggled me. But minutes went on, and the fountain pen began to ooze from being too full, and none of us could think of a single thing to say. “If we just write to him ourselves,—in our own form, I mean,” Jerry said, “it’ll be stupid. And I don’t feel maroonish here on the porch. We’ll have to wait till we go to Wecanicut again, and write from there.” I felt somehow the way Jerry did, so we put away the things again and went out under the hemlock tree to talk about the Castaway. Greg didn’t come, and we supposed he’d gone to feed a tame toad he had that year, or something. The toad lived under the syringa bush beside the gate, and Greg insisted that it came out when he whistled for it, but it never would perform when we went on purpose to watch it, so I don’t know whether it did or not. Under the hemlock is one of the best places in the garden for councils and such. The branches quite touch the grass, and when you creep under them you are in a dark, golden sort of tent, crackley and sweet-smelling. You can slither pine-needles through your fingers as you discuss, too, and it helps you to think. We thought for quite a long time, and then I got out the letter and spread it down in one of the wavy patches of sunlight, and we read it again. “Did you really think anybody’d find it?” Jerry asked suddenly, and I told him I hadn’t thought so. “Neither did I,” he said; “let alone such a jolly old soul. Why, he’d be better than Aunt on a picnic.” “I do wonder why he has to stay there,” I said. “Perhaps he’s a fugitive from justice,” Jerry suggested; “or perhaps he’s a prisoner and the bearded person comes out with Spanish Inquisition things to make him confess his horrible crime.” “He sounds like a person who’d done a horrible crime, doesn’t he!” I said in scorn. “Well, then,” said Jerry, who really has the most inspired ideas for plots, “perhaps he’s an innocent old man whose wicked nephews want to frighten him into changing his will, leaving an enormous fortune to them. And they’re keeping him on the island till he’ll do it.” “Well, whatever it is,” I said, “I don’t think he’s awfully happy somehow, and it’s nice of him to write such a gorgeous thing.” So we both decided that whether he was staying on the island of his own free will, or in bondage, in any case it must be frightfully dull for him and that our letter ought to be interesting and cheerful. Just then the hemlock branches thrashed apart and Greg crawled under with pine-needles in his hair. He sat back on his heels and blinked at us, because he’d just come out of the sunlight. “I thought somebody ought to write to the Bottle Man,” he said, “so I did.” “Well, I never!” Jerry said. Greg fished up a bent piece of paper from inside his jumper and handed it to me. “You can see it,” he said, “but not Jerry.” “As if I’d want to!” Jerry said; but he did, fearfully. Greg is the most unexpected person I ever knew. He’s always doing things like that, when everyone else has given up. I spread his paper out on top of the other letter, and he sprawled down beside me, all ready to explain with his finger. What with his dreadfully bad writing and the sunlight moving off the paper all the time as the branches swayed, it took me ever so long to read the thing. This is what it was: Dear Bottle Man: To-day we got your leter wich surprised us very much. Although I kept hopeing and hopeing some body would find the bottle. We are not so distresed now because we were picked up and now have toast and other things beter than barnicles. I mesured from here to the equater on the big map and it is an aufuly far way for the bottle to go. Only I thought it would. I am sorry you are so imprisined on the iland and please dont let the cheif with the beard poisen you because we would like to hear from you agan. If there is tresure on that iland I should think you could look for it and it would be exiting. But prehaps there is none. We hope there is some on Wecanicut. But it is hard to know sirtainly. Chris and Jerry are going to do a leter. But I thought I would first. I hope the saviges will be frendly allways. Your respecfull comrade, GREGORY HOLFORD. P.S. None of us are Bones yet. “Will it do?” Greg asked anxiously, when I folded it up. His eyes grow very dark when he’s anxious, and they were perfectly inky now. You never would have guessed that they were really blue. “It’ll do splendidly,” I said, for I did think the Castaway man would like Greg’s letter tremendously. “Better let me see it, my lad,” said Jerry, rolling over among the pine-cones and sitting up. Greg got his precious letter with a snatch and a squeak, and scurried off with it. I pitched Jerry back on to the pine-needles, because I knew he’d never let the thing go if he saw it. “Oh, let him send it,” I said. “It’s perfectly all right, and it will do the Bottle Man heaps of good.” But Jerry growled about “beastly scrawls” and wasn’t pleased with me until supper-time. Somehow we all began calling our island person the “Bottle Man” after Greg did, for it seemed as good a name as any for him, seeing that we didn’t know his real one. We read the letter from him after supper to Aunt Ailsa, and she laughed and liked it, and so did Father. We also asked Father what the Latin meant, and he made a funny face and said he’d forgotten such things, but then he looked at it again and told us it meant something like this: “The happy hour shall come, all the more appreciated because it comes unexpectedly.” So we went to bed thinking about our poor old Bottle Man consoling himself out there on his island with Latin quotations. CHAPTER IV We all went to Wecanicut next day, which was a glorious one, and when the food had disappeared we three walked up the point and wrote to the Bottle Man from there. We’d decided that the paper with “17 Luke Street” on it was much too grand for “poore mariners” anyway, so we’d just brought brownish paper that comes in a block. We told the Bottle Man how wonderful we thought it was that he had found our message, and how his letter had cheered our lonely watching for a sail. Also, how we had been picked up and were returned now to Wecanicut of our own will, seeking rich treasure. We described the “Sea Monster” very carefully, and wrote about the black cave- entrance-looking place that had happened, where no boat would dare to venture. Jerry’s description of it was quite wild. He dictated it to me above the shrieking of a lot of gulls which were flying over us all the time. It went like this: “The Sea Monster was quite terrific enough looking before, like the slimy black head of something huge coming out of the water. Now it looks as if it had opened a cavernous maw” (I’m sure he nabbed that from some book) “as black as ink, ready to swallow any unfortunate mariner which came near. Below the base of this fearsome hole roars the cruel surf, ready to engulf a boat which would never be seen more if it was once caught in this deadly eddy.” I thought “deadly eddy” sounded like Illiteration, or something you shouldn’t do, in the Rhetoric Books, but Jerry was much excited over his description. He sat on top of a rock, pointing out at the Sea Monster like a prophet. He has quite black hair which blows around wildly, and he looked very strange sitting up there raving about the cavern. The letter was very long by the time we’d put in everything, and we hoped the Bottle Man would like it. Just before we signed it, I said: “Do you think we’d better tell him I’m really Christine and not Christopher?” “No,” Jerry said; “put Chris, the way you did before. He’s writing now as man to man. He might be disgusted if he knew it was just a mere female.” “Oh, thank you,” I said; but I did put “Chris,” on account of our all being fellow castaways. When we’d finished the letter we walked a long way down the other shore toward the Fort. The wind was blowing right, and we could hear bits of what the band was playing and now and then peppery sounds from the rifle practice. It’s not a very big fort, but it squats on the other side of Wecanicut, watching the bay, and real cannon stick out at loopholes in the wall. The ferry really only goes to Wecanicut on account of the Fort, because there’s nothing else there but a few farm houses and some ugly summer cottages near the ferry-slip. The point from which you see the Monster is not near the Fort or the houses at all, and is much the wildest part of Wecanicut. When you’re standing on the very end you might think you really were on a deserted island, because you can look straight out to sea. We cut back cross-country through the bay-bushes and the dry, tickly grass to our usual part of Wecanicut, where the grown-ups were just beginning to collect the baskets and things and to look at their watches. We posted the letter on the way home, and Greg jiggled the flap of the letter-box twice to make sure that it wasn’t stuck. It was that week that Jerry sprained his ankle jumping off the porch-roof and had to sit in the big wicker chair with his foot on a pillow for days. He hated it, but he didn’t make any fuss at all, which was decent of him considering that the weather was the best we’d had all summer. We played chess, which he likes because he can always beat me, and also “Pounce,” which pulls your eyes out after a little while and burns holes in your brain. It’s that frightful card game where you try to get rid of thirteen cards before any one else, and snatch at aces in the middle, on top of everybody. Jerry is horribly clever at it and shouts “Pounce!” first almost every time. Greg always has at least twelve of his thirteen cards left and explains to you very carefully how he had it all planned very far ahead and would have won if Jerry hadn’t said “Pounce” so soon. Also, Father let Jerry play the ’cello, and he made heavenly hideous sounds which he said were exactly like what the Sea Monster’s voice would be if it had one. Just when we were all rather despairing, because Dr. Topham said that Jerry mustn’t walk for two days more, the very thing happened which we’d been hoping for. Greg came up all the porch steps at once with one bounce, brandishing a square envelope and shouting: “The Bottle Man!” It was addressed to all of us, but I turned it over to Jerry to do the honors with, on account of his being a poor invalid and Abused by Fate. He had the envelope open in two shakes, with the complicated knife he always carries, and pulled out any amount of paper. He stared at the top page for a minute, and then said: “Here, Greg, this is for you. You can be pawing over it while we’re reading the proper one.” But I said, “Not so fast,” and “Let’s hear it all, one at a time.” So I took Greg’s and read it aloud, because he takes such an everlasting time over handwriting and this writing was rather queer and hard to read. This is his letter: Respected Comrade Gregory Holford: I am writing to you separately because you wrote to me separately, and very much I liked your letter. I cannot tell you how much relieved I am to hear that toast has been substituted for barnacles in your diet. In the long run, toast is far better for a mariner, however hardy he may be.