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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"
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, aet. 13," which I thought might look more
dignified and scholarly than "aged," and Jerry wrote "Gerald M.
Holford," and put "aet. 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.