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 s...o...b..red 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 gra.s.s, 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 _some_body 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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?"