Us and the Bottleman | Page 8

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