“Well, of all mean tricks!” Jerry said.“It’s worse than a continued story,” I said. “Bother the horrid native child! Do you suppose that’s really why he stopped?”“Probably not; he knew it was the excitingest place to stop. What did I tell you about his being ancient? Now hesayshe has gray hairs, so that proves it.”“I should think he might,” I said, “after such experiences. What do you think it could have been that stared at him?”“An octopus, most likely,” Jerry said. “They have goggly black eyes; I’ve read it.”“But he said he’d never seen such eyes on any sea beast he knew of, and he’s read as much as you have; that’s sure.”“That treasure! Oh, my eye!” Jerry sighed. “Do you suppose he brought home hunks of it?”“Just the same hunks that we dig up on Wecanicut, I suppose,” I said.“You mean you think he’s making up the whole yarn?” Jerry asked. “Well, even if he is, it’s a mighty good one, and it might have happened to him, at that.”Greg looked up suddenly from beside me, and said:“Ithink the thing what stared at him was a mer-person.”“My child,” said Jerry, “I believe you’re right.”
“Well, of all mean tricks!” Jerry said.
“It’s worse than a continued story,” I said. “Bother the horrid native child! Do you suppose that’s really why he stopped?”
“Probably not; he knew it was the excitingest place to stop. What did I tell you about his being ancient? Now hesayshe has gray hairs, so that proves it.”
“I should think he might,” I said, “after such experiences. What do you think it could have been that stared at him?”
“An octopus, most likely,” Jerry said. “They have goggly black eyes; I’ve read it.”
“But he said he’d never seen such eyes on any sea beast he knew of, and he’s read as much as you have; that’s sure.”
“That treasure! Oh, my eye!” Jerry sighed. “Do you suppose he brought home hunks of it?”
“Just the same hunks that we dig up on Wecanicut, I suppose,” I said.
“You mean you think he’s making up the whole yarn?” Jerry asked. “Well, even if he is, it’s a mighty good one, and it might have happened to him, at that.”
Greg looked up suddenly from beside me, and said:
“Ithink the thing what stared at him was a mer-person.”
“My child,” said Jerry, “I believe you’re right.”
Next day Jerry was well enough to walk around with a cane, and when he’d broken Father’s second-best malacca stick by vaulting over the box border with it, we decided that he was quite all right, and the summer went on again as usual. Of course we wrote to the Bottle Man at once, and told him, as respectfully as we could, just what we thought of him for letting the native child interrupt him in such an exciting part. We also begged him to write again as soon as possible, and to choose a place where the inhabitants weren’t likely to come with offerings. We kept waiting and waiting, and no letter came, so we settled ourselves to Grim Resignation, as Jerry said. It was worse than waiting for the next number of a serial story, because you’re pretty certain when that will come, but we had no idea how long it would be before the Bottle Man wrote to us.Aunt Ailsa still needed cheering up a good deal, and that kept us busy. The cheering was great fun for us, because it consisted mostly of picnics and long, long walks,—the kind where you take a stick and a kit-bag and eat your lunch under a hedge, like a tinker. We also wrote a story which we used to put in instalments under her plate at breakfast every other day. We took turns writing the story, and Greg’s instalments always made Aunt Ailsa the most cheered up of all. The story was much too long to put in here, and rather ridiculous, besides.By this time it was almost September, and asters were beginning to bloom in the garden and the hollyhocks were almost gone. Wecanicut was turning the dry, russetty color that it does late in the summer, and the harbor seemed bluer every day. Captain Moss took us out in theJolly Nancyone afternoon just for kindness—we didn’t hire her at all. She is a sixteen-footer and quite fast, in spite of being rather broad in the beam. He let each of us steer her and told us a great many names of things on her, which I forgot immediately. Jerry always remembers things like that and can talk about reef-cringles and topping-lift as if he really knew what they were for. We went quite far out and saw the Sea Monster from a different side in the distance, and tacked down to the other end of Wecanicut under the Fort guns.It was when we got in from the gorgeous sail, with Greg carrying the little basket all made of twisted-up rope Captain Moss had done for him, that we found a big, square envelope lying on the hall table. And, to our despair, supper was just ready and we couldn’t read the letter till afterward. Supper was good, I must admit,—baked eggs, all crusty and buttery on top, and muffins, and cherry jam. We ate hugely, because of theJolly Nancymaking us so hungry.When we’d finished we went into Father’s study, where he wasn’t, and turned on the desk-light and got at the letter. I read it, while the boys crouched about expectantly. Here it is:
Next day Jerry was well enough to walk around with a cane, and when he’d broken Father’s second-best malacca stick by vaulting over the box border with it, we decided that he was quite all right, and the summer went on again as usual. Of course we wrote to the Bottle Man at once, and told him, as respectfully as we could, just what we thought of him for letting the native child interrupt him in such an exciting part. We also begged him to write again as soon as possible, and to choose a place where the inhabitants weren’t likely to come with offerings. We kept waiting and waiting, and no letter came, so we settled ourselves to Grim Resignation, as Jerry said. It was worse than waiting for the next number of a serial story, because you’re pretty certain when that will come, but we had no idea how long it would be before the Bottle Man wrote to us.
Aunt Ailsa still needed cheering up a good deal, and that kept us busy. The cheering was great fun for us, because it consisted mostly of picnics and long, long walks,—the kind where you take a stick and a kit-bag and eat your lunch under a hedge, like a tinker. We also wrote a story which we used to put in instalments under her plate at breakfast every other day. We took turns writing the story, and Greg’s instalments always made Aunt Ailsa the most cheered up of all. The story was much too long to put in here, and rather ridiculous, besides.
By this time it was almost September, and asters were beginning to bloom in the garden and the hollyhocks were almost gone. Wecanicut was turning the dry, russetty color that it does late in the summer, and the harbor seemed bluer every day. Captain Moss took us out in theJolly Nancyone afternoon just for kindness—we didn’t hire her at all. She is a sixteen-footer and quite fast, in spite of being rather broad in the beam. He let each of us steer her and told us a great many names of things on her, which I forgot immediately. Jerry always remembers things like that and can talk about reef-cringles and topping-lift as if he really knew what they were for. We went quite far out and saw the Sea Monster from a different side in the distance, and tacked down to the other end of Wecanicut under the Fort guns.
It was when we got in from the gorgeous sail, with Greg carrying the little basket all made of twisted-up rope Captain Moss had done for him, that we found a big, square envelope lying on the hall table. And, to our despair, supper was just ready and we couldn’t read the letter till afterward. Supper was good, I must admit,—baked eggs, all crusty and buttery on top, and muffins, and cherry jam. We ate hugely, because of theJolly Nancymaking us so hungry.
When we’d finished we went into Father’s study, where he wasn’t, and turned on the desk-light and got at the letter. I read it, while the boys crouched about expectantly. Here it is:
Dear Comrades:I should have answered your frantic appeals for news of me long since, had I not been slavishly occupied in carrying out the demands of the Man of Torture from whom I am now completely released, praises be. I am even contemplating escape from Bluar Boor by stealth. But no doubt you have no desire for these modern details and are all agog to find out whether or not I met a wretched death at the bottom of the sea. I think you left me—or I left you—with a soft and hideous something resting upon my shoulder.Sirs, it was a Hand, a webbed hand, and turning, I looked straight down into another pair of flat dark eyes. They belonged to a creature not as tall as I, and certainly not human in shape. Arms and legs it had, of a sort, and scales, also, and finny spines, and a soft slimy body. Then, through the door which led to the silver street, I saw more of the creatures, and more,—a soft, hurrying crowd patting over the ingot blocks which paved the road, peering in at the door, beckoning with webby fingers.My helmet smothered the cry I gave as I struggled against the horrible resistance of the water toward the door. Out in the street the mer-crowd surrounded me, fingered my arms, looking at me with unfathomable, disc-like eyes, black as ink. With dawning comprehension it came over me that these creatures inhabited the desolate, sea-filled city, lived in the mighty golden halls that once had echoed to the footsteps of Peruvian kings, fared about the rich streets where coral now grew instead of tree and flower.The things were speechless, with no seeming means of communication, and I saw, too, that they could not leave the sea-bottom, but walked upon it as we do upon earth, and could no more rise than we can leap into the air and swim upon it. I tried to push my difficult way through the clinging swarm, who seemed friendly enough in a weird, inhuman way, but I could not pass through. Dimly through the swinging water I could see others coming from every carven doorway down the silent street. I thought then of the weights attached to me, and I decided to cut them loose at once and rise from the ghostly place, of which I had seen quite enough to suit me. But I determined to take with me at least one thing from the vast mounds of treasure which held me breathless with utter bewilderment.So I turned and with my long knife began prying from its doorway a ruby as large as my fist. Instantly, without warning, the creature nearest me raised its scaly hand in a flinging gesture, and I felt a hot and rushing pain just above my right elbow. I felt, too, a coldness of water spurting down my arm and clutched wildly at the sleeve of my diving-suit to seal the little hole which I saw in it. Holding it tightly with my left hand, I slashed with my right at the creatures who were now moving upon me menacingly, pressing me close. If they forced me back into the doorway, all hope would be gone. I cut desperately at the fastenings that secured the weights; felt myself rising; felt my legs pull out from the clinging, slimy arms; looked down at them—a sea of bobbing smooth heads, of round, expressionless, black eyes; saw them waving their tentacle-like arms in fury; saw at last the dim, golden crest of the tallest tower below my feet; burst above the blessed sea-level and saw good blue waves slapping the bow of the brigantine drifting lazily down toward me.I know nothing of the voyage home. I must have been poisoned by the missile, whatever it was, that the sea-creature flung at me. (I bear the scar to this day.) For I have no recollection of much more, until I sat in the library bow-window of my father’s house, very tired and stiff and thoroughly thankful that the voyage was over. It was dark, and my mother sat sewing beside a shaded lamp and singing to herself. I fingered the book that lay beside me, on the window-seat, and said:“Mother, did you keep the book just here all the time I was gone because you were sorry I went and wanted to remember me?”She laughed, and said: “Yes, all the time while you were sailing to the Port of Stars. Come now to supper, my dear.”So I got up very stiffly, for I felt weak and dizzy still, and went with her. I said:“I’m sorry, Mother, that after all I couldn’t bring you any of the jewels.”Whereupon she laughed again and said something about “Cornelia” which I am too modest to repeat, but which, being scholars, you will know by heart, and said that she was glad enough to have me back at all.Sirs, you cannot think how beautiful our little dining-room looked to me, with the old brass-handled highboy in the corner and the pots of flowers on the sill—far more beautiful than the fretted golden towers and gem-girdled walls of the City under the Sea.So take my advice, young sirs, the advice of a man many years older than you bold young blades: don’t you ever go listening to a half-breed Peruvian that comes slinking to your window, no matter how enticing may be his tales of treasure.Your most faithfulBOTTLE MAN.
Dear Comrades:
I should have answered your frantic appeals for news of me long since, had I not been slavishly occupied in carrying out the demands of the Man of Torture from whom I am now completely released, praises be. I am even contemplating escape from Bluar Boor by stealth. But no doubt you have no desire for these modern details and are all agog to find out whether or not I met a wretched death at the bottom of the sea. I think you left me—or I left you—with a soft and hideous something resting upon my shoulder.
Sirs, it was a Hand, a webbed hand, and turning, I looked straight down into another pair of flat dark eyes. They belonged to a creature not as tall as I, and certainly not human in shape. Arms and legs it had, of a sort, and scales, also, and finny spines, and a soft slimy body. Then, through the door which led to the silver street, I saw more of the creatures, and more,—a soft, hurrying crowd patting over the ingot blocks which paved the road, peering in at the door, beckoning with webby fingers.
My helmet smothered the cry I gave as I struggled against the horrible resistance of the water toward the door. Out in the street the mer-crowd surrounded me, fingered my arms, looking at me with unfathomable, disc-like eyes, black as ink. With dawning comprehension it came over me that these creatures inhabited the desolate, sea-filled city, lived in the mighty golden halls that once had echoed to the footsteps of Peruvian kings, fared about the rich streets where coral now grew instead of tree and flower.
The things were speechless, with no seeming means of communication, and I saw, too, that they could not leave the sea-bottom, but walked upon it as we do upon earth, and could no more rise than we can leap into the air and swim upon it. I tried to push my difficult way through the clinging swarm, who seemed friendly enough in a weird, inhuman way, but I could not pass through. Dimly through the swinging water I could see others coming from every carven doorway down the silent street. I thought then of the weights attached to me, and I decided to cut them loose at once and rise from the ghostly place, of which I had seen quite enough to suit me. But I determined to take with me at least one thing from the vast mounds of treasure which held me breathless with utter bewilderment.
So I turned and with my long knife began prying from its doorway a ruby as large as my fist. Instantly, without warning, the creature nearest me raised its scaly hand in a flinging gesture, and I felt a hot and rushing pain just above my right elbow. I felt, too, a coldness of water spurting down my arm and clutched wildly at the sleeve of my diving-suit to seal the little hole which I saw in it. Holding it tightly with my left hand, I slashed with my right at the creatures who were now moving upon me menacingly, pressing me close. If they forced me back into the doorway, all hope would be gone. I cut desperately at the fastenings that secured the weights; felt myself rising; felt my legs pull out from the clinging, slimy arms; looked down at them—a sea of bobbing smooth heads, of round, expressionless, black eyes; saw them waving their tentacle-like arms in fury; saw at last the dim, golden crest of the tallest tower below my feet; burst above the blessed sea-level and saw good blue waves slapping the bow of the brigantine drifting lazily down toward me.
I know nothing of the voyage home. I must have been poisoned by the missile, whatever it was, that the sea-creature flung at me. (I bear the scar to this day.) For I have no recollection of much more, until I sat in the library bow-window of my father’s house, very tired and stiff and thoroughly thankful that the voyage was over. It was dark, and my mother sat sewing beside a shaded lamp and singing to herself. I fingered the book that lay beside me, on the window-seat, and said:
“Mother, did you keep the book just here all the time I was gone because you were sorry I went and wanted to remember me?”
She laughed, and said: “Yes, all the time while you were sailing to the Port of Stars. Come now to supper, my dear.”
So I got up very stiffly, for I felt weak and dizzy still, and went with her. I said:
“I’m sorry, Mother, that after all I couldn’t bring you any of the jewels.”
Whereupon she laughed again and said something about “Cornelia” which I am too modest to repeat, but which, being scholars, you will know by heart, and said that she was glad enough to have me back at all.
Sirs, you cannot think how beautiful our little dining-room looked to me, with the old brass-handled highboy in the corner and the pots of flowers on the sill—far more beautiful than the fretted golden towers and gem-girdled walls of the City under the Sea.
So take my advice, young sirs, the advice of a man many years older than you bold young blades: don’t you ever go listening to a half-breed Peruvian that comes slinking to your window, no matter how enticing may be his tales of treasure.
Your most faithful
BOTTLE MAN.
“Doyou think he dreamed it?” Jerry said.“Whatever it was, he must have been glad to get back,” I said, switching off the light so that we could talk in the dark, which is more creepy and pleasant.“But the treasure!” Jerry said. “Do you suppose there ever was such treasure in the world? That’s something like! Imagine finding gold trees and birds eating jewels on the Sea Monster! By the way, do you know about ‘Cornelia’?”I said I thought she had something to do with sitting on a hill and her children turning to stone one after the other, but Jerry said that was Niobe and that it was she who turned to stone, not the children. He has a fearfully long memory. So we put on the light again and looked it up in “The Reader’s Handbook,” because we didn’t want to bother the grown-ups, and we found, of course, that she was the Roman lady who pointed at her sons and said, “These are my jewels!” when somebody asked her where her gold and ornaments were. So naturally the Bottle Man didn’t feel like repeating such a complimentary thing, being an un-stuck-up person, but we did think it was nice of his mother.We put away the “Handbook” and made the room dark again and were arguing over all the exciting places in the Bottle Man’s story, when Greg spoke up suddenly from the corner where we’d almost forgotten him.“IfIfound a thing like those mer-persons,” he said drowsily, “I wouldn’t let it bite me. I’d keep it in the bath-tub and teach it how to do things.”“Like your precious toad, I suppose,” said Jerry. “Don’t be idiotic.”So we all went to bed, and I, for one, dreamed about all kinds of glittering treasures and heaps of jewels each as big as your hat, and of our nice old Bottle Man, with his long white beard flowing in the wind.
“Doyou think he dreamed it?” Jerry said.
“Whatever it was, he must have been glad to get back,” I said, switching off the light so that we could talk in the dark, which is more creepy and pleasant.
“But the treasure!” Jerry said. “Do you suppose there ever was such treasure in the world? That’s something like! Imagine finding gold trees and birds eating jewels on the Sea Monster! By the way, do you know about ‘Cornelia’?”
I said I thought she had something to do with sitting on a hill and her children turning to stone one after the other, but Jerry said that was Niobe and that it was she who turned to stone, not the children. He has a fearfully long memory. So we put on the light again and looked it up in “The Reader’s Handbook,” because we didn’t want to bother the grown-ups, and we found, of course, that she was the Roman lady who pointed at her sons and said, “These are my jewels!” when somebody asked her where her gold and ornaments were. So naturally the Bottle Man didn’t feel like repeating such a complimentary thing, being an un-stuck-up person, but we did think it was nice of his mother.
We put away the “Handbook” and made the room dark again and were arguing over all the exciting places in the Bottle Man’s story, when Greg spoke up suddenly from the corner where we’d almost forgotten him.
“IfIfound a thing like those mer-persons,” he said drowsily, “I wouldn’t let it bite me. I’d keep it in the bath-tub and teach it how to do things.”
“Like your precious toad, I suppose,” said Jerry. “Don’t be idiotic.”
So we all went to bed, and I, for one, dreamed about all kinds of glittering treasures and heaps of jewels each as big as your hat, and of our nice old Bottle Man, with his long white beard flowing in the wind.
* * * * *
And now comes the perfectly awful part.
I must say at the beginning that it was all my fault. Jerry says that it was just as much his, but it wasn’t, because I’m the oldest and I ought to have known better. To begin with, Father had to go to New York to give a talk at the American Architects’ League, or something, and Mother decided to go with him. At the last minute Aunt Ailsa got a weekend invitation from somebody she hadn’t seen for ages and went away, too, which left us alone with Katy and Lena. Katy has been with us next to forever and took care of Jerry and Greg when they were Infant Babes, so that Mother never imagined, of course, that anything could happen in two days. It wasn’t Katy’s fault either.The first day was foggy, and the garden dripped, so we went down to call on Captain Moss, who lives near the ferry-landing. Besides having boats for hire, he sells such things as fishing-tackle and very strong-smelling rope, and sometimes salt herring on a stick. The things he sells are all mixed up with parts of his own boats and pieces of canvas and rope-ends, and curly shavings that skitter across the floor when the wind blows in from the harbor. There is a window at one end of his shop-place that goes all the way to the floor, like a doorway, and it is always open. His shop is half on the ferry-wharf so that the window hangs right over the water, very high above it. It is quite a dizzyish place, but wonderful to look out at. Far away you see boats coming in, and Wecanicut all flat and gray, and then right below is nice sloshy green water with old boxes and straws floating by, and sometimes horrid orange-peels that picnic people throw in.That afternoon Captain Moss was mending the stern of one of his boats, and when we asked him what he was fitting on, he said: “Rudder-gudgeons.”He grunted it out so funnily that it sounded just like some queer old flounder trying to talk, and we thought he was joking. But he wasn’t at all. Sometimes he is very nice and tells us the longest yarns about when he shipped on a whaler, but this time he was busy and the rudder-gudgeons didn’t behave right, I think, so he let us do all the talking. We told him a good deal about the bottle, and also something about the city under the sea. He said he shouldn’t wonder at it, for there was powerful curious things under the sea. He also said he supposed now we’d be wanting to hire theJolly Nancy“fer to find submarine cities, sence he wouldn’t let us have her to go a-stavin’ in her bottom on them rocks off Wecanicut.”We decided that he really didn’t want to be bothered, so we went away presently. To soothe him, Jerry bought some of the dry herring things and carried them home in a pasteboard box that said “1/2 doz. galvanized line cleats. Extra quality” on the lid. Lena cooked the herrings for supper, but I don’t think she could have done it right, because they were quite horrid.The second day was the perfectly gorgeous kind that makes you want to go off to seek your fortune or dance on top of a high hill or do anything rather than stay at home, however nice your own garden may be. We agreed about this at breakfast, and I said:“Let’s go to Wecanicut.”We’d never gone to Wecanicut alone, but I couldn’t see any reason why we shouldn’t. Captain Lewis, on the ferry, always watches over every one on board with a fatherly sort of eye, and Wecanicut itself is a perfectly safe, mild place, without any quicksands or tigers or anything that Mother would object to.“I tell you what,” Jerry said, “let’s make it a real adventure and take some costumes along. We never had any proper ones there before.”I thought this was a rather good idea, and after breakfast we went up to select things that wouldn’t be too bothersome to carry, from the Property Basket.“Is it to be pirates or smugglers or what?” Greg asked, poking in the corner where he keeps his own special rigs.“Explorers, my fine fellow,” Jerry said, “exploring after a submerged city.”“Oh!” Greg said, evidently changing his ideas.Jerry and I went down to ask Katy to make us some lunch.“Just food; nothing careful,” Jerry explained.“What are ye goin’ to do with it?” Katy asked.Jerry was all ready to say, “Eat it, of course,” but I saw what Katy meant and said:“We’re going out; it’s such a nice day. We thought we’d take our lunch with us to save Lena trouble.”“Don’t get streelin’ off too far,” Katy said, “Where are ye goin’?”“Oh, down by the shore,” I said, which was not quite the whole truth, because of course it was not our shore, but the shore of Wecanicut I meant. Yes,allof it was my fault.Just as we were putting the lunch into the kit-bag Greg came staggering downstairs, trailing along the weirdest lot of stuff he’d collected.“What on earth is all that?” Jerry asked him. “Drop it and get your hat.”“It’s—my costume,” Greg explained, out of breath from having dragged all the things down from the attic.“Glory!” Jerry said, “You don’t suppose you’re going to lug all that rubbish on to the ferry, do you? Not whileI’mwith you, my boy.”“You couldn’t begin to put on half of it, Gregs,” I said. “Let’s weed it out a little.”“And look sharp about it,” Jerry said, jingling the money for the ferry in his pocket.Greg finally took a Turkish fez thing, and a black-and-orange sash, and a white brocade waistcoat that Father once had for a masque ball ages ago. We hadn’t time to tell him that it was no sort of outfit for an explorer, so we bundled the things up with our own and stuffed them all into the kit-bag on top of the lunch.Luke Street has a turn in it just beyond our house, so neither Katy nor Lena could have seen which way we went; anyhow, I think they were both in the back kitchen, which looks out on the clothes-yard. I thought perhaps we should have told Katy where we were going after all, but Jerry said:“Fiddlesticks, Chris; we’re not babies. I suppose you’d like Katy to take us in a perambulator.”This was horrid of him, but he made up for everything later on.Our Captain Lewis was not in the pilot-house of theWecanicut. Instead there was a strange captain, a scraggly, cross-looking person, staring at a little book and not watching the people who came on board, the way Captain Lewis does. Jerry and I sat on campstools on the windy side, and Greg went to watch the walking-beam, which he thinks will some day knock the top off its house. It always stops and plunges down just when he thinks it surely will forget and go smashing on up through the roof. He is quite disappointed that it never does. It behaved perfectly properly this time and paddled the old ferry-boat over to Wecanicut as usual.We went up the hot little road that goes from the landing, and then ran through a prickly, stony short-cut that leads among wild rose-bushes and sweet fern to our part of the shore. There were tiny little wavelets splashing over the rocks, and you couldn’t think which was bluer—the sea or the sky. The first thing we did was to bury our bottle of root-beer in a pool up to its neck and mark the place with two white stones. This is something we have learned by experience, for nothing is nastier than warm root-beer. Then we put on the costumes and capered about a little. I had a tight, striped football jersey, and my gym bloomers, and a black, villainous-looking felt hat; and Jerry had a ruffle pinned on the front of his shirt, and a wide belt with the big tinfoil-covered buckle that Mother made for us once, and a felt hat fastened up on the sides so that it looked like a real three-cornered one. Greg had arrayed himself in his things, and he did look too absurd, with more than a foot of the brocade waistcoat dangling below the sash, the end of which trailed on the ground behind.It gave us a queer, wild feeling, being there without the grown-ups, and we decided to tell them that as we’d proved we could do it, we might go again. We never did tell them that, as it happens.We all grew hungry so soon that we had lunch much earlier than the grown-ups would have had it. The food Katy had fixed was wonderful, though rather squashed on account of all the costumes being on top of it in the kit-bag. While we ate we organized the Submerged-City-Seeking-Expedition. Jerry was “Terry Loganshaw,” in charge of the party, and I was “Christopher Hole, shipmaster,” and Greg was “Baroo, the Madagascar cabin-boy,” because we couldn’t think of what else he could be, with such clothes.We tidied up all the picnic things so that there was nothing left, and put the root-beer bottle into the kit-bag, because it was a good one with a patent top. The kit-bag we took with us for duffle, and we set off for the point. We went by the longest way we could think of, to make it seem like a real expedition,—’cross country and back again. Jerry led us through the scratchy, overgrown part of Wecanicut, and we pretended that it was a long, wearytrekthrough the most poisonous jungles to the coast of Peru; and when Greg walked right into a spider’s web with a huge yellow spider gloating in the middle of it, he said he’d been bitten by a tarantula. We told him that we should have to leave him there to die, for we must press on to the sea, but he cured himself by eating a magic sweet-fern leaf and came running after us, tripping over his sash. Thetrekkingtook a long time, and when we reached the end of the point we were quite exhausted and flung our weary frames down on the tropic sand to rest. All at once Jerry clutched my arm and said:“Look yonder, Hole! Does not yon strange form appear to you like the topper-most minaret of a sunken tower?”He was pointing at the Sea Monster, and it really did look much more like a rough sort of dome than a monster’s head. There was a lot of haze in the air, which made it look bluish and mysterious instead of rocky.“It do indeed, sir,” I said. “Could it be that city we be seeking?”“Would that we had a boat!” said Greg, which might have been quite proper if he’d been somebody else, instead of Baroo.We’d been sprawling on the sand again for quite a while, when Jerry suddenly jumped up and shouted:“Glory! Look, Chris!” not at all like Terry Loganshaw.I did look, and saw what he had seen. It was an empty boat, a sort of dinghy, bobbing and butting along beside the rocks a little way down the shore. We all ran helter-skelter, and Jerry pulled off his shoes like a flash and waded out and pulled the boat in.“It’s one of those old tubs from around the ferry-landing,” he said. “It must have got adrift and come down with the tide. Oars in it and all.”We stood there silently, Jerry in the water holding the boat, and we were all thinking the same thing. It was Greg who said it first, quite solemnly.“We could go out to the Sea Monster.”Of course it was then that I ought to have said that we couldn’t, but Jerry pulled the boat up the beach and ran back to the end of the point to see how high the waves were before I could say it. It was too late to say it afterwards, because when we saw that there was not even the faintest curl of white foam around the Sea Monster, it did seem as though we could do it.“It’ll only take about five minutes to row out there,” Jerry said, “and then we’ll have seen it at last. It couldn’t be a better time. Why, a newly hatched duckling could swim out there to-day.”It did look very near, and the water was calm and shiny, with just a long, heaving roll now and then, as if something underneath were humping its shoulders.So I said, “All right; let’s,” and we climbed into the boat. Jerry rows very well, and he pulled both the oars while I bailed with an old tin can that I found under the stern thwart. The boat didn’t leak badly enough to worry about, but I thought it might be just as well to keep it bailed. We talked in a very nautical way, though Jerry kept forgetting he was Terry Loganshaw and mixing up “Treasure Island” and Captain Moss. But I didn’t feel so much like being Chris Hole, anyway, even to please the boys, and I didn’t say much.The Sea Monster was much further away than you might suppose. When there was ever so much smooth, swelling water between us and Wecanicut, the Monster’s head still seemed almost as far away as before. Somehow the water looked very deep, although you couldn’t see down into it, and it humped itself under the boat.
I must say at the beginning that it was all my fault. Jerry says that it was just as much his, but it wasn’t, because I’m the oldest and I ought to have known better. To begin with, Father had to go to New York to give a talk at the American Architects’ League, or something, and Mother decided to go with him. At the last minute Aunt Ailsa got a weekend invitation from somebody she hadn’t seen for ages and went away, too, which left us alone with Katy and Lena. Katy has been with us next to forever and took care of Jerry and Greg when they were Infant Babes, so that Mother never imagined, of course, that anything could happen in two days. It wasn’t Katy’s fault either.
The first day was foggy, and the garden dripped, so we went down to call on Captain Moss, who lives near the ferry-landing. Besides having boats for hire, he sells such things as fishing-tackle and very strong-smelling rope, and sometimes salt herring on a stick. The things he sells are all mixed up with parts of his own boats and pieces of canvas and rope-ends, and curly shavings that skitter across the floor when the wind blows in from the harbor. There is a window at one end of his shop-place that goes all the way to the floor, like a doorway, and it is always open. His shop is half on the ferry-wharf so that the window hangs right over the water, very high above it. It is quite a dizzyish place, but wonderful to look out at. Far away you see boats coming in, and Wecanicut all flat and gray, and then right below is nice sloshy green water with old boxes and straws floating by, and sometimes horrid orange-peels that picnic people throw in.
That afternoon Captain Moss was mending the stern of one of his boats, and when we asked him what he was fitting on, he said: “Rudder-gudgeons.”
He grunted it out so funnily that it sounded just like some queer old flounder trying to talk, and we thought he was joking. But he wasn’t at all. Sometimes he is very nice and tells us the longest yarns about when he shipped on a whaler, but this time he was busy and the rudder-gudgeons didn’t behave right, I think, so he let us do all the talking. We told him a good deal about the bottle, and also something about the city under the sea. He said he shouldn’t wonder at it, for there was powerful curious things under the sea. He also said he supposed now we’d be wanting to hire theJolly Nancy“fer to find submarine cities, sence he wouldn’t let us have her to go a-stavin’ in her bottom on them rocks off Wecanicut.”
We decided that he really didn’t want to be bothered, so we went away presently. To soothe him, Jerry bought some of the dry herring things and carried them home in a pasteboard box that said “1/2 doz. galvanized line cleats. Extra quality” on the lid. Lena cooked the herrings for supper, but I don’t think she could have done it right, because they were quite horrid.
The second day was the perfectly gorgeous kind that makes you want to go off to seek your fortune or dance on top of a high hill or do anything rather than stay at home, however nice your own garden may be. We agreed about this at breakfast, and I said:
“Let’s go to Wecanicut.”
We’d never gone to Wecanicut alone, but I couldn’t see any reason why we shouldn’t. Captain Lewis, on the ferry, always watches over every one on board with a fatherly sort of eye, and Wecanicut itself is a perfectly safe, mild place, without any quicksands or tigers or anything that Mother would object to.
“I tell you what,” Jerry said, “let’s make it a real adventure and take some costumes along. We never had any proper ones there before.”
I thought this was a rather good idea, and after breakfast we went up to select things that wouldn’t be too bothersome to carry, from the Property Basket.
“Is it to be pirates or smugglers or what?” Greg asked, poking in the corner where he keeps his own special rigs.
“Explorers, my fine fellow,” Jerry said, “exploring after a submerged city.”
“Oh!” Greg said, evidently changing his ideas.
Jerry and I went down to ask Katy to make us some lunch.
“Just food; nothing careful,” Jerry explained.
“What are ye goin’ to do with it?” Katy asked.
Jerry was all ready to say, “Eat it, of course,” but I saw what Katy meant and said:
“We’re going out; it’s such a nice day. We thought we’d take our lunch with us to save Lena trouble.”
“Don’t get streelin’ off too far,” Katy said, “Where are ye goin’?”
“Oh, down by the shore,” I said, which was not quite the whole truth, because of course it was not our shore, but the shore of Wecanicut I meant. Yes,allof it was my fault.
Just as we were putting the lunch into the kit-bag Greg came staggering downstairs, trailing along the weirdest lot of stuff he’d collected.
“What on earth is all that?” Jerry asked him. “Drop it and get your hat.”
“It’s—my costume,” Greg explained, out of breath from having dragged all the things down from the attic.
“Glory!” Jerry said, “You don’t suppose you’re going to lug all that rubbish on to the ferry, do you? Not whileI’mwith you, my boy.”
“You couldn’t begin to put on half of it, Gregs,” I said. “Let’s weed it out a little.”
“And look sharp about it,” Jerry said, jingling the money for the ferry in his pocket.
Greg finally took a Turkish fez thing, and a black-and-orange sash, and a white brocade waistcoat that Father once had for a masque ball ages ago. We hadn’t time to tell him that it was no sort of outfit for an explorer, so we bundled the things up with our own and stuffed them all into the kit-bag on top of the lunch.
Luke Street has a turn in it just beyond our house, so neither Katy nor Lena could have seen which way we went; anyhow, I think they were both in the back kitchen, which looks out on the clothes-yard. I thought perhaps we should have told Katy where we were going after all, but Jerry said:
“Fiddlesticks, Chris; we’re not babies. I suppose you’d like Katy to take us in a perambulator.”
This was horrid of him, but he made up for everything later on.
Our Captain Lewis was not in the pilot-house of theWecanicut. Instead there was a strange captain, a scraggly, cross-looking person, staring at a little book and not watching the people who came on board, the way Captain Lewis does. Jerry and I sat on campstools on the windy side, and Greg went to watch the walking-beam, which he thinks will some day knock the top off its house. It always stops and plunges down just when he thinks it surely will forget and go smashing on up through the roof. He is quite disappointed that it never does. It behaved perfectly properly this time and paddled the old ferry-boat over to Wecanicut as usual.
We went up the hot little road that goes from the landing, and then ran through a prickly, stony short-cut that leads among wild rose-bushes and sweet fern to our part of the shore. There were tiny little wavelets splashing over the rocks, and you couldn’t think which was bluer—the sea or the sky. The first thing we did was to bury our bottle of root-beer in a pool up to its neck and mark the place with two white stones. This is something we have learned by experience, for nothing is nastier than warm root-beer. Then we put on the costumes and capered about a little. I had a tight, striped football jersey, and my gym bloomers, and a black, villainous-looking felt hat; and Jerry had a ruffle pinned on the front of his shirt, and a wide belt with the big tinfoil-covered buckle that Mother made for us once, and a felt hat fastened up on the sides so that it looked like a real three-cornered one. Greg had arrayed himself in his things, and he did look too absurd, with more than a foot of the brocade waistcoat dangling below the sash, the end of which trailed on the ground behind.
It gave us a queer, wild feeling, being there without the grown-ups, and we decided to tell them that as we’d proved we could do it, we might go again. We never did tell them that, as it happens.
We all grew hungry so soon that we had lunch much earlier than the grown-ups would have had it. The food Katy had fixed was wonderful, though rather squashed on account of all the costumes being on top of it in the kit-bag. While we ate we organized the Submerged-City-Seeking-Expedition. Jerry was “Terry Loganshaw,” in charge of the party, and I was “Christopher Hole, shipmaster,” and Greg was “Baroo, the Madagascar cabin-boy,” because we couldn’t think of what else he could be, with such clothes.
We tidied up all the picnic things so that there was nothing left, and put the root-beer bottle into the kit-bag, because it was a good one with a patent top. The kit-bag we took with us for duffle, and we set off for the point. We went by the longest way we could think of, to make it seem like a real expedition,—’cross country and back again. Jerry led us through the scratchy, overgrown part of Wecanicut, and we pretended that it was a long, wearytrekthrough the most poisonous jungles to the coast of Peru; and when Greg walked right into a spider’s web with a huge yellow spider gloating in the middle of it, he said he’d been bitten by a tarantula. We told him that we should have to leave him there to die, for we must press on to the sea, but he cured himself by eating a magic sweet-fern leaf and came running after us, tripping over his sash. Thetrekkingtook a long time, and when we reached the end of the point we were quite exhausted and flung our weary frames down on the tropic sand to rest. All at once Jerry clutched my arm and said:
“Look yonder, Hole! Does not yon strange form appear to you like the topper-most minaret of a sunken tower?”
He was pointing at the Sea Monster, and it really did look much more like a rough sort of dome than a monster’s head. There was a lot of haze in the air, which made it look bluish and mysterious instead of rocky.
“It do indeed, sir,” I said. “Could it be that city we be seeking?”
“Would that we had a boat!” said Greg, which might have been quite proper if he’d been somebody else, instead of Baroo.
We’d been sprawling on the sand again for quite a while, when Jerry suddenly jumped up and shouted:
“Glory! Look, Chris!” not at all like Terry Loganshaw.
I did look, and saw what he had seen. It was an empty boat, a sort of dinghy, bobbing and butting along beside the rocks a little way down the shore. We all ran helter-skelter, and Jerry pulled off his shoes like a flash and waded out and pulled the boat in.
“It’s one of those old tubs from around the ferry-landing,” he said. “It must have got adrift and come down with the tide. Oars in it and all.”
We stood there silently, Jerry in the water holding the boat, and we were all thinking the same thing. It was Greg who said it first, quite solemnly.
“We could go out to the Sea Monster.”
Of course it was then that I ought to have said that we couldn’t, but Jerry pulled the boat up the beach and ran back to the end of the point to see how high the waves were before I could say it. It was too late to say it afterwards, because when we saw that there was not even the faintest curl of white foam around the Sea Monster, it did seem as though we could do it.
“It’ll only take about five minutes to row out there,” Jerry said, “and then we’ll have seen it at last. It couldn’t be a better time. Why, a newly hatched duckling could swim out there to-day.”
It did look very near, and the water was calm and shiny, with just a long, heaving roll now and then, as if something underneath were humping its shoulders.
So I said, “All right; let’s,” and we climbed into the boat. Jerry rows very well, and he pulled both the oars while I bailed with an old tin can that I found under the stern thwart. The boat didn’t leak badly enough to worry about, but I thought it might be just as well to keep it bailed. We talked in a very nautical way, though Jerry kept forgetting he was Terry Loganshaw and mixing up “Treasure Island” and Captain Moss. But I didn’t feel so much like being Chris Hole, anyway, even to please the boys, and I didn’t say much.
The Sea Monster was much further away than you might suppose. When there was ever so much smooth, swelling water between us and Wecanicut, the Monster’s head still seemed almost as far away as before. Somehow the water looked very deep, although you couldn’t see down into it, and it humped itself under the boat.
Presently Wecanicut began to drop further away, and then the Sea Monster loomed up suddenly right over us, and Jerry had to fend the boat off with an oar. We had never guessed how big the thing really was,—not big at all for an island, but very large for a bare, off-shore rock. I should say that it was just about the bigness of an ordinary house, and very black and beetling, with not a spear of grass or anything on it. When Jerry said, “My stars,whata weird place!” his voice went booming and rumbling in among the rocks, and a lot of gulls flew up suddenly, flapping and shrieking. He held the boat up against the edge of a rock while Greg and I got out. We took the kit-bag ashore, and Jerry made the boat fast by putting a big piece of stone on top of the rope. There was nothing like a beach or even a shelving rock to pull it up on, so that was the best we could do. The boat backed away as far as it could, but the rope was firmly wedged between the rock and the stone so it couldn’t get away.Of course we went first to look at the black cave-entrance. Sure enough, a great flat slab had fallen down from it and lay half in the water,—we could see scratchy marks and broken places where it had slid. The cave itself was about six feet deep, and very dank and dismal-looking. There was no sign of there ever having been treasure, for nobody could possibly have buried it, unless they’d hewn places in the living rock, like ancient Egyptians. We might have thought of that before, but of course we didn’t honestly believe that there was treasure. Somehow the Sea Monster didn’t seem nearly so jolly and exciting as it had from Wecanicut. It was so real and big, and whenever a wave came in, it boomed and echoed under the hanging-over rocks. We climbed around to the other side and went up on top of the highest place, which was about three times as high as I am. From there we could see the Headland, very far away and blue, and Wecanicut behind us, safe and green and friendly-looking, but a long way off; and nothing else but a smeary line of smoke from a steamer at sea.“We named this place well,” I said; “itisa Monster.”“Brrrr, hear it roar!” Jerry said. “The waves must be bigger, or something. There weren’t any when we came out.”We looked down and saw that the water was behaving differently. Instead of being smooth and rolling, there was a skitter of sharp ripples all over it, and the waves wentslapand frothed white when they hit the rock. The sky had changed, too. It was not so blue, and there were switchy mares’ tails across it, and the wind was blowing from Wecanicut, instead of toward it.“We’d better start back,” I said. “I’m afraid we’ll be late for the next ferry, as it is, and Father and Mother will be home on the six o’clock train.”“Whew!” said Jerry, “I’d forgotten that. It’s latish already, judging by the sun. Come along, Greg, and loop up your sash so you won’t fall off this beast.”Itwaslatish. The sun was quite low, and we saw that the Sea Monster threw a long, queer shadow on the water, as if the sea had been land. We hurried along to the boat, Jerry ahead.“She’s all right,” he shouted, turning around.When he turned back he made a sort of wild spring that I didn’t understand at first. Then I saw the stone we had put over the rope rolling off the rock,—joggled off by the boat’s pulling harder when a wave lifted it. The stone rolled in cornery bounces, with a dull noise, and the rope slipped after it slowly. I thought Jerry would be in time. I couldn’t believe that I really saw the rope floating its whole length on the water, dry at first, then darkening wetly.“Hang on, Chris!” Jerry said. “I can get it.”“Hang on, Chris!” Jerry said.I caught his hand, and he snatched after the rope. But he plunged wildly, nearly pulling me in, and scrambled up at once with one leg wet to the hip.“There’s no bottom at all,” he said queerly. “I believe the thing rises straight out of the sea.”By that time the boat was ten feet away from the Monster. It circled once, very quietly, as if it were trying to decide which way to go, and then it drifted gently away toward the sea, with the rope trailing along like a snake swimming beside it.We stood there looking at the boat until it faded to a hazy speck, and by that time the sun was really low. I don’t think Greg altogether realized what had happened. We’d played at being marooned so often that I suppose he didn’t quite see that this was different.I hope that I shall never, never forget, as long as I live, what a brick Jerry was through the whole of that nightmarish thing. I know I never shall.“Chris,” he said, “you stay on this side. I’ll go around to the Headland side. Greg, you climb up on top. If any of us sees a boat near enough to do any good, call the others, and we’ll all yell and wave things.”I’d never heard his voice so commanding, even in plays. He still had on the cocked hat, and it looked very strange indeed. We scattered as he ordered, and when the others had gone, I remembered that Greg had on slippery-soled shoes instead of sneakers, which we usually wear. I thought of calling after him to be careful, but he never was a falling-down sort of person, even as a baby. I hoped, too, that he would have sense enough to loop up that sash or take it off entirely.I sat on the Wecanicut side and stared at the shore and the water till my eyes ached. More and more wind was blowing all the time, straight from Wecanicut. It blew so hard in my face that my eyes watered and I couldn’t be sure whether or not I did see boats. In books, people think of all their past sins when they’re in perilous positions, but all I could think of was that a boatmustcome before dark. I did think of how much it all was my fault, but that was not far enough in the past to count. Presently Jerry came back and said that if we moved a little toward each other we could see just as much of the bay and consult at the same time. So we did, and sat down not very far apart.Isaid that I supposed we ought to change off with Greg, because it was horrid lonely up there, but Jerry said:“Nonsense; he likes to be alone. He’s probably pretending he’s the King of the Cannibal Isle, or something, and not worrying a bit.”“I was looking us up in the dictionary the other day,” I said, trying to forget the Sea Monster for a minute, “andGregorymeans ‘watchful, vigilant’.”“Now’s the first time he’s ever lived up to his name, then,” said Jerry. “Keep looking, Chris, and don’t moon about.”We sat there for quite a long time without saying anything, and the last little golden sliver of sun disappeared behind the point, and the lighthouse on the Headland came out suddenly, though it was still quite light, and began to wink—two long flashes and two short ones.“Isn’t it queer,” Jerry said, “to think that people are there and we can’t possibly tell them.”“It’s worse than queer,” I said.Then we were still again, till presently Jerry said:“Do you hear that funny noise, Chris?”I had been listening to it just then, and said “Yes” and that I supposed it was the horrid noise the water made around on the other side. For quite a time we didn’t hear it, and then Jerry said:“There it is again! The water must suck into those echoey hollows. It sounds almost like a person groaning.”“Don’t!” I said.All at once he turned toward me and said in a queer, quick voice:“Do you suppose it could possibly be Greg?”I can’t describe the way I felt when he said it, but if you’ve ever felt the same you know what I mean. It was a little as though something heavy dropped from my throat down to my toes, through me, leaving me all empty, with cold, tingly things rushing up again to my head. They were still rushing as we flew around the rock, and I kept saying:“It can’t be Greg.... Itcan’tbe....”But it was.He was lying doubled up, just below the high place where Jerry had told him to keep watch. We didn’t dare to touch him, because we didn’t know how badly he was hurt, and he couldn’t seem to tell us. But when I tried to put my arm under him, he pushed me a little and said, “No, no,” so I stopped. Then I saw that his right arm was twisted under him horridly and that his shoulder looked all wrong. I touched it very gently and asked him if it was that, and he said, “Yes; don’t!” We had to get him out somehow from that jaggedy place in the rocks where he was lying. So Jerry got him under the arm that wasn’t hurt, and I took his legs, and we hauled him to a flattish part of the rock.I pulled off the football jersey and put it under him, and Jerry ran back to get my skirt, which I’d put in the kit-bag when we fixed our costumes. Just after Jerry had gone something dreadful happened. Quite suddenly Greg seemed to shrink smaller, and his face grew rather greenish and not at all like his, and his hand was perfectly cold when I snatched it. I suppose he’d fainted from our carrying him so stupidly, but I’d never seen anybody do it before and I didn’t know that was the way it looked. I’d never heard of people dying from hurting their arms, but I thought that perhaps he was hurt somewhere else that we didn’t know about. But by the time Jerry came back with the skirt Greg had opened his eyes and looked at me a little like himself. There is a book in our medicine cupboard at home called, “Hints on First Aid.” Jerry and I used to like to look at it, and Father said:“Go ahead; you may need it some day.” But neither of us could remember anything that was at all useful now. I could plainly see the picture of some queerly-drawn hands doing a “Spanish Windlass,” but that wouldn’t have done poor Greg any good at all. Jerry did remember that you ought to cut people’s clothes and not try to take them off in the ordinary way, so he took out his knife and ripped up the sleeve of Greg’s jumper and the shoulder-seam of the white brocaded waistcoat. I don’t see how people can stand being Red Cross nurses in France, for I’m sure I never could be one. Greg’s shoulder was quite awful,—what we could see, for it was almost dark now. There was nothing at all we dared to do. We couldn’t even bathe it, for there was only sea-water, so I just sat and held Greg’s other hand and patted it. He didn’t cry,—I think the hurting was too bad for that,—but he moaned a little, and sometimes he said, “Hurts, Chris.”I tried to tell him a story, the way I did when we all had the measles and he was so much sicker than the rest of us, but he couldn’t listen. So we just sat there in the dark—it was perfectly dark now and we couldn’t see one another at all—and I began to count the flashes of the Headland light—two long and two short, two long and two short—till I thought I should scream. Suddenly Jerry said:“Are you hungry, Chris?”I said that I wasn’t, and asked him if he was. But he said:“No, not very.”There were real waves on the Wecanicut side of the Monster now, and the wind was still blowing from that direction harder than ever. Now and then a drop of spray would flick my cheek, and I think the sound of the wind around the rock was really more horrid than the noise the water made. It seemed like midnight, but it was really quite early in the evening, when Jerry saw the lights bobbing along the shore of Wecanicut. They were lanterns, two of them, and they stopped quite often, as if the people were looking for something. For a minute I couldn’t even move. Then I scrambled and slid after Jerry to the place on the Monster that most nearly faced the Wecanicut point. I don’t think Greg really knew we’d left him; at least he didn’t make a sound.The lanterns swung and bobbed nearer till they almost reached the point, and we could hear faint shouts. Jerry and I braced our feet against the slimy rocks and shrieked into the dark, and the wind rushed down our throats and burned them. We could hear the people quite clearly now.“It’s Father’s voice,” Jerry said. “Oh, Chris, the wind is dead against us.Nowfor it!”I’d always thought Jerry could shout louder than any boy I ever heard, but you can’t imagine how high and thin both our voices sounded out there on the Sea Monster. We heard Father’s voice quite distinctly:“Chris-ti-ine ... Jer-r-r-y ... ti-in-e!”We shouted till our chests felt scraped raw, the way you feel when you’ve run too hard, and the wind tore our voices straight out to sea, away from Wecanicut. The lanterns stood quite still for a minute more, and then they bobbed away. At first I didn’t believe that they were really growing smaller and smaller. But they were, and at last they were gone entirely, far down the shore.“Are you crying, Chris?” Jerry said suddenly, in a queer, wheezy voice. He’d been shouting even harder than I had.“I think not,” I said, and my own voice was very strange indeed.Jerry whacked me hard on the back, and said:“Good old Chris!Goodold Chris!”The shore of Wecanicut was so black that we might have dreamed the lanterns, but I still could hear the way Father’s own voice had sounded, calling “Chris-ti-ine!” We almost stumbled over Greg when we crawled back to him, and he said: “Can we go home now, Chris?”The wind gnashed around in a spiteful kind of way, and Jerry touched my hand suddenly and said: “Chris, it’s raining.”
Presently Wecanicut began to drop further away, and then the Sea Monster loomed up suddenly right over us, and Jerry had to fend the boat off with an oar. We had never guessed how big the thing really was,—not big at all for an island, but very large for a bare, off-shore rock. I should say that it was just about the bigness of an ordinary house, and very black and beetling, with not a spear of grass or anything on it. When Jerry said, “My stars,whata weird place!” his voice went booming and rumbling in among the rocks, and a lot of gulls flew up suddenly, flapping and shrieking. He held the boat up against the edge of a rock while Greg and I got out. We took the kit-bag ashore, and Jerry made the boat fast by putting a big piece of stone on top of the rope. There was nothing like a beach or even a shelving rock to pull it up on, so that was the best we could do. The boat backed away as far as it could, but the rope was firmly wedged between the rock and the stone so it couldn’t get away.
Of course we went first to look at the black cave-entrance. Sure enough, a great flat slab had fallen down from it and lay half in the water,—we could see scratchy marks and broken places where it had slid. The cave itself was about six feet deep, and very dank and dismal-looking. There was no sign of there ever having been treasure, for nobody could possibly have buried it, unless they’d hewn places in the living rock, like ancient Egyptians. We might have thought of that before, but of course we didn’t honestly believe that there was treasure. Somehow the Sea Monster didn’t seem nearly so jolly and exciting as it had from Wecanicut. It was so real and big, and whenever a wave came in, it boomed and echoed under the hanging-over rocks. We climbed around to the other side and went up on top of the highest place, which was about three times as high as I am. From there we could see the Headland, very far away and blue, and Wecanicut behind us, safe and green and friendly-looking, but a long way off; and nothing else but a smeary line of smoke from a steamer at sea.
“We named this place well,” I said; “itisa Monster.”
“Brrrr, hear it roar!” Jerry said. “The waves must be bigger, or something. There weren’t any when we came out.”
We looked down and saw that the water was behaving differently. Instead of being smooth and rolling, there was a skitter of sharp ripples all over it, and the waves wentslapand frothed white when they hit the rock. The sky had changed, too. It was not so blue, and there were switchy mares’ tails across it, and the wind was blowing from Wecanicut, instead of toward it.
“We’d better start back,” I said. “I’m afraid we’ll be late for the next ferry, as it is, and Father and Mother will be home on the six o’clock train.”
“Whew!” said Jerry, “I’d forgotten that. It’s latish already, judging by the sun. Come along, Greg, and loop up your sash so you won’t fall off this beast.”
Itwaslatish. The sun was quite low, and we saw that the Sea Monster threw a long, queer shadow on the water, as if the sea had been land. We hurried along to the boat, Jerry ahead.
“She’s all right,” he shouted, turning around.
When he turned back he made a sort of wild spring that I didn’t understand at first. Then I saw the stone we had put over the rope rolling off the rock,—joggled off by the boat’s pulling harder when a wave lifted it. The stone rolled in cornery bounces, with a dull noise, and the rope slipped after it slowly. I thought Jerry would be in time. I couldn’t believe that I really saw the rope floating its whole length on the water, dry at first, then darkening wetly.
“Hang on, Chris!” Jerry said. “I can get it.”
“Hang on, Chris!” Jerry said.
I caught his hand, and he snatched after the rope. But he plunged wildly, nearly pulling me in, and scrambled up at once with one leg wet to the hip.
“There’s no bottom at all,” he said queerly. “I believe the thing rises straight out of the sea.”
By that time the boat was ten feet away from the Monster. It circled once, very quietly, as if it were trying to decide which way to go, and then it drifted gently away toward the sea, with the rope trailing along like a snake swimming beside it.
We stood there looking at the boat until it faded to a hazy speck, and by that time the sun was really low. I don’t think Greg altogether realized what had happened. We’d played at being marooned so often that I suppose he didn’t quite see that this was different.
I hope that I shall never, never forget, as long as I live, what a brick Jerry was through the whole of that nightmarish thing. I know I never shall.
“Chris,” he said, “you stay on this side. I’ll go around to the Headland side. Greg, you climb up on top. If any of us sees a boat near enough to do any good, call the others, and we’ll all yell and wave things.”
I’d never heard his voice so commanding, even in plays. He still had on the cocked hat, and it looked very strange indeed. We scattered as he ordered, and when the others had gone, I remembered that Greg had on slippery-soled shoes instead of sneakers, which we usually wear. I thought of calling after him to be careful, but he never was a falling-down sort of person, even as a baby. I hoped, too, that he would have sense enough to loop up that sash or take it off entirely.
I sat on the Wecanicut side and stared at the shore and the water till my eyes ached. More and more wind was blowing all the time, straight from Wecanicut. It blew so hard in my face that my eyes watered and I couldn’t be sure whether or not I did see boats. In books, people think of all their past sins when they’re in perilous positions, but all I could think of was that a boatmustcome before dark. I did think of how much it all was my fault, but that was not far enough in the past to count. Presently Jerry came back and said that if we moved a little toward each other we could see just as much of the bay and consult at the same time. So we did, and sat down not very far apart.Isaid that I supposed we ought to change off with Greg, because it was horrid lonely up there, but Jerry said:
“Nonsense; he likes to be alone. He’s probably pretending he’s the King of the Cannibal Isle, or something, and not worrying a bit.”
“I was looking us up in the dictionary the other day,” I said, trying to forget the Sea Monster for a minute, “andGregorymeans ‘watchful, vigilant’.”
“Now’s the first time he’s ever lived up to his name, then,” said Jerry. “Keep looking, Chris, and don’t moon about.”
We sat there for quite a long time without saying anything, and the last little golden sliver of sun disappeared behind the point, and the lighthouse on the Headland came out suddenly, though it was still quite light, and began to wink—two long flashes and two short ones.
“Isn’t it queer,” Jerry said, “to think that people are there and we can’t possibly tell them.”
“It’s worse than queer,” I said.
Then we were still again, till presently Jerry said:
“Do you hear that funny noise, Chris?”
I had been listening to it just then, and said “Yes” and that I supposed it was the horrid noise the water made around on the other side. For quite a time we didn’t hear it, and then Jerry said:
“There it is again! The water must suck into those echoey hollows. It sounds almost like a person groaning.”
“Don’t!” I said.
All at once he turned toward me and said in a queer, quick voice:
“Do you suppose it could possibly be Greg?”
I can’t describe the way I felt when he said it, but if you’ve ever felt the same you know what I mean. It was a little as though something heavy dropped from my throat down to my toes, through me, leaving me all empty, with cold, tingly things rushing up again to my head. They were still rushing as we flew around the rock, and I kept saying:
“It can’t be Greg.... Itcan’tbe....”
But it was.
He was lying doubled up, just below the high place where Jerry had told him to keep watch. We didn’t dare to touch him, because we didn’t know how badly he was hurt, and he couldn’t seem to tell us. But when I tried to put my arm under him, he pushed me a little and said, “No, no,” so I stopped. Then I saw that his right arm was twisted under him horridly and that his shoulder looked all wrong. I touched it very gently and asked him if it was that, and he said, “Yes; don’t!” We had to get him out somehow from that jaggedy place in the rocks where he was lying. So Jerry got him under the arm that wasn’t hurt, and I took his legs, and we hauled him to a flattish part of the rock.
I pulled off the football jersey and put it under him, and Jerry ran back to get my skirt, which I’d put in the kit-bag when we fixed our costumes. Just after Jerry had gone something dreadful happened. Quite suddenly Greg seemed to shrink smaller, and his face grew rather greenish and not at all like his, and his hand was perfectly cold when I snatched it. I suppose he’d fainted from our carrying him so stupidly, but I’d never seen anybody do it before and I didn’t know that was the way it looked. I’d never heard of people dying from hurting their arms, but I thought that perhaps he was hurt somewhere else that we didn’t know about. But by the time Jerry came back with the skirt Greg had opened his eyes and looked at me a little like himself. There is a book in our medicine cupboard at home called, “Hints on First Aid.” Jerry and I used to like to look at it, and Father said:
“Go ahead; you may need it some day.” But neither of us could remember anything that was at all useful now. I could plainly see the picture of some queerly-drawn hands doing a “Spanish Windlass,” but that wouldn’t have done poor Greg any good at all. Jerry did remember that you ought to cut people’s clothes and not try to take them off in the ordinary way, so he took out his knife and ripped up the sleeve of Greg’s jumper and the shoulder-seam of the white brocaded waistcoat. I don’t see how people can stand being Red Cross nurses in France, for I’m sure I never could be one. Greg’s shoulder was quite awful,—what we could see, for it was almost dark now. There was nothing at all we dared to do. We couldn’t even bathe it, for there was only sea-water, so I just sat and held Greg’s other hand and patted it. He didn’t cry,—I think the hurting was too bad for that,—but he moaned a little, and sometimes he said, “Hurts, Chris.”
I tried to tell him a story, the way I did when we all had the measles and he was so much sicker than the rest of us, but he couldn’t listen. So we just sat there in the dark—it was perfectly dark now and we couldn’t see one another at all—and I began to count the flashes of the Headland light—two long and two short, two long and two short—till I thought I should scream. Suddenly Jerry said:
“Are you hungry, Chris?”
I said that I wasn’t, and asked him if he was. But he said:
“No, not very.”
There were real waves on the Wecanicut side of the Monster now, and the wind was still blowing from that direction harder than ever. Now and then a drop of spray would flick my cheek, and I think the sound of the wind around the rock was really more horrid than the noise the water made. It seemed like midnight, but it was really quite early in the evening, when Jerry saw the lights bobbing along the shore of Wecanicut. They were lanterns, two of them, and they stopped quite often, as if the people were looking for something. For a minute I couldn’t even move. Then I scrambled and slid after Jerry to the place on the Monster that most nearly faced the Wecanicut point. I don’t think Greg really knew we’d left him; at least he didn’t make a sound.
The lanterns swung and bobbed nearer till they almost reached the point, and we could hear faint shouts. Jerry and I braced our feet against the slimy rocks and shrieked into the dark, and the wind rushed down our throats and burned them. We could hear the people quite clearly now.
“It’s Father’s voice,” Jerry said. “Oh, Chris, the wind is dead against us.Nowfor it!”
I’d always thought Jerry could shout louder than any boy I ever heard, but you can’t imagine how high and thin both our voices sounded out there on the Sea Monster. We heard Father’s voice quite distinctly:
“Chris-ti-ine ... Jer-r-r-y ... ti-in-e!”
We shouted till our chests felt scraped raw, the way you feel when you’ve run too hard, and the wind tore our voices straight out to sea, away from Wecanicut. The lanterns stood quite still for a minute more, and then they bobbed away. At first I didn’t believe that they were really growing smaller and smaller. But they were, and at last they were gone entirely, far down the shore.
“Are you crying, Chris?” Jerry said suddenly, in a queer, wheezy voice. He’d been shouting even harder than I had.
“I think not,” I said, and my own voice was very strange indeed.
Jerry whacked me hard on the back, and said:
“Good old Chris!Goodold Chris!”
The shore of Wecanicut was so black that we might have dreamed the lanterns, but I still could hear the way Father’s own voice had sounded, calling “Chris-ti-ine!” We almost stumbled over Greg when we crawled back to him, and he said: “Can we go home now, Chris?”
The wind gnashed around in a spiteful kind of way, and Jerry touched my hand suddenly and said: “Chris, it’s raining.”
Itwasraining,—big cold splashes that came faster and faster. I felt my blouse stick coldly to my shoulder in the places where it was wet.“Wecan’tlet Greg lie there and have it rain on him,” I said.Jerry and I thought of the pirate cave at the same moment, but we didn’t see how we could possibly carry Greg to it in the dark. We thought that as it wasn’t his legs that were hurt he might be able to walk there, if we helped him. He was very brave and quite willing to try, though a little dazed about why we wanted him to, but when we stood him carefully on his feet, he said, “Chris—no—” and we had to lay him down again. By this time it was really raining, and I put the skirt over Greg, instead of under him, while we tried to think.“It might work if we made a chair,” Jerry suggested.So we stooped down and clasped each other’s wrists criss-cross, the way you do to make a human chair, and got Greg on to it, with the arm that wasn’t hurt around my neck. The darkness was perfectly pitchy, and we had to feel for every step to be sure that it was a solid place and not the slippery edge that went straight down into the sea. Greg cried a little and said, “Please—stop.” I could feel his hair against my face. It was all wet, and his cheek was wet, too, and cold.The rain blew a little way into the cave, but not much, and we put Greg as far back as we could. The bottom of the cave was very jaggy and not comfortable to lie on, but we made it as soft as we could with the skirt and the jersey. I tripped and stumbled against Jerry, and when I caught him I felt that he was shivering. His shirt was quite wet. When I asked him if he was cold, he said “Not very,” and we crawled into the cave place beside Greg, and sat as close together as possible to keep warm. We couldn’t see the Headland light, and I was rather glad, because it had made me almost crazy, flashing and flashing so steadily and not caring a bit.The rain wentplopinto the pools, and made a flattish, spattery sound on the rock. I don’t know why I thought of the “Air Religieux” just then, but I suppose it was because of the rain. I could see the straight yellow candle-flames all blue around the wick, and Father’s head tucked down looking at the ’cello, and his hands, nice and strong, playing it; then I got a little mixed and heard him calling “Christi-ine,” fainter and fainter. I think I must have been almost asleep, because I know the real rain surprised me, like something I’d forgotten, and a very sharp, cornery rock was poking into my back.It was then that Greg said:“Want—Simpson.”That frightened me more than anything almost, for Simpson was a sort of stuffed flannel duck-thing that he’d had when he was very little, and he hadn’t thought of it for years. None of us ever knew why he called it “Simpson,” but he adored the thing and made it sleep beside him in the crib every night. But that was when he was three, and “Simpson” had been for ages on the top shelf where we keep the toys that we think we’ll play with again sometime before we’re really grown up. We never have done it yet, but there are certain ones that we couldn’t possibly give away, not even to the Deservingest poor children.So when Greg said that, in a tired, far-off sort of way, it did frighten me, because Ihadheard of people dying when they were ravingly delirious. Greg wasn’t raving exactly, but it was almost worse, because his voice was so small and different from his own dear usual one. When I told him I couldn’t get Simpson I tried to make my voice sound soft and cooey like Mother’s when she’s sorry, but it went up into a queer squeak instead, and I couldn’t finish somehow. Greg kept saying, “Simpson;—please—” and crying to himself.I heard Jerry feeling around in the dark and then the click of his knife opening. I couldn’t think what he was doing, but after quite a long time he pushed something into my hand and said:“Does that feel anything like it?”“Like what?” I said, but the next minute I knew.Itdidfeel like Simpson—soft and flannelly, with a round, bumpy sort of head at one end.“Oh, how did you do it!” I said. “Oh, Jerry, you brick!”“I chopped a big piece out of your skirt,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind. I happened to have the string off the sandwich bundle in my pocket, and I squeezed up a head and tied it.”Greg was a little frightened when Jerry leaned over him suddenly.“It’s just me, Greg,” Jerry said; “just Jerry-o. Here’s Simpson, old lamb.”I’d never heard Jerry’s voice at all like that before. I don’t know whether Greg really thought it was Simpson, but he took it and sighed—a long, quivery sort of sigh, the way very little children do when they’re asleep sometimes.Then there was no sound at all but the different horrid noises that the Monster made.Presently I felt Jerry start, and then he shuffled back a little so that he was quite tight against my knees. I asked him what was the matter, and he said “Nothing.” After a while, though, he said:“Chris, I’d better tell you.”“What? Oh, whatisit?” I said.“Do you remember how the tide was when we came out?” he asked.“Yes,” I said; “on the ebb. Don’t you remember the rocks at Wecanicut, with bushels of wet sea-weed hanging off?”“Well?” Jerry said.I didn’t understand for a minute, then I whispered:“Do—you mean—”“A wave just hit my foot,” said Jerry in a low voice.The first thing that we did was a lot of quick figuring. We thought fearfully hard and remembered that Turkshead Rock was just coming out of water when we left Wecanicut at four o’clock, so that the tide must have been within about an hour of ebb. Therefore full flood would be at eleven o’clock. But we hadn’t any idea of whether it was ten or eleven or twelve, because there was no light to see Jerry’s watch by. He had just an ordinary Ingersoll, not the grand Radiolite kind that you can see in the dark and it was perfectly maddening to hear it ticking away cheerfully, and no good to us at all. Just then something cold wrapped itself around my ankle. It was the edge of another wavelet.We knew that if the cave was going to be flooded we must get Greg out of it before the water came much higher, but it was still raining pitch-forks outside, and we didn’t know whether to risk waiting a bit longer or not.“Perhaps there’s sea-weed and we can feel high watermark,” I said. “Try, Jerry.”We felt all the way around the sides of the cave toward the bottom, but as far as we could tell there was no sea-weed at all.“That doesn’t help us much,” Jerry said, “because we don’t know whether the tide is really full now and has covered it, or whether it just doesn’t grow here.”We curled our feet under us and waited. We could hear the water sloshing around very close to us. Once when I put out my hand it went right into a cold pool. It was then that Jerry had a most wonderful idea. I heard his knife snap open again and asked him what it was this time.“If I take the crystal off my watch,” he said, “I can feel where the hands are.”I heard the little clicking pop that the front of a watch makes when you pry it off, and I knew he was feeling the hands very gently.“The little one’s in line with the winder stem thing,” he said, “and the big one—Chris, it’s about twenty minutes of twelve. The watercan’tcome any higher. We must have had the worst of it.”It was queer that I cried then, because I hadn’t felt at all like crying when we thought that the cave would be flooded.Greg had been quiet for so long that it frightened me suddenly, and I groped after him to be sure that he was all right. I found his hand, and I couldn’t believe that it was really hot when ours were so cold. His forehead was hot, too, and dry, in spite of his hair being damp still from the rain. He curled his hand into mine and said very clearly:“Will you please bring me a drink of water?”It was perfectly awful, because he said it so politely and very carefully, as if he were trying not to bother somebody. And there was no drink to give him. I thought of the people in stories who lie on deserts and battle-fields burning in agonies of fever, but I couldn’t remember reading about anybody dying of fever on a rock in the middle of the sea. I dipped my handkerchief in the pool just beside me and laid it, all dripping, on Greg’s forehead. I didn’t know whether it was a proper First Aid thing to do, but he seemed to like it and was still again, holding my hand. Presently he said:“Mother, why isn’t there a drink?”“This is awful, Chris,” Jerry said.Then I thought of the rain-pools. There were lots, of course, in the hollows of the Monster, but we had nothing to scoop up the water with. Greg’s forehead was just as hot as ever, and he thrashed about and hurt his shoulder and cried miserably.I don’t know how Jerry could have thought of so many things; for it was he who thought of very carefully breaking the bottom off the root-beer bottle and using it for a cup. Of course the bottom might have cracked all to pieces, but it was quite heavy and Jerry was very careful. It came off wonderfully well, though rather jaggy. Jerry tried to grind the cutty edges off by rubbing them against the rock, but it didn’t work. Then we remembered being very thirsty once on a long picnic-walk ages ago, and Father wrapping his handkerchief around the top of the tin can the soup had come in and giving us a drink at a pump. So we knew that we could do that with the broken bottle. Jerry dodged out into the rain through the tide-pools and came back after a while with some water.“I couldn’t get much,” he said, “because the place I found was very shallow, but I can go again.”I remembered reading in books that you mustn’t give much water to fever-stricken people in any case. We lifted Greg’s head up,—that is, Jerry did, while I held the root-beer bottle glass, and said:“Here’s the drink, Gregs, dear.”It was very hard to tell what I was doing, and some of the water trickled over the handkerchief and down the front of Greg’s jumper. But he drank the rest, and said: “Thank you very much” in the same careful voice.“Oh, I wish he wouldn’t be so blooming polite!” Jerry said sharply, as we were laying Greg back again, and I felt something wet and warm splash down on my wrist. But I didn’t tell Jerry I’d felt it.
Itwasraining,—big cold splashes that came faster and faster. I felt my blouse stick coldly to my shoulder in the places where it was wet.
“Wecan’tlet Greg lie there and have it rain on him,” I said.
Jerry and I thought of the pirate cave at the same moment, but we didn’t see how we could possibly carry Greg to it in the dark. We thought that as it wasn’t his legs that were hurt he might be able to walk there, if we helped him. He was very brave and quite willing to try, though a little dazed about why we wanted him to, but when we stood him carefully on his feet, he said, “Chris—no—” and we had to lay him down again. By this time it was really raining, and I put the skirt over Greg, instead of under him, while we tried to think.
“It might work if we made a chair,” Jerry suggested.
So we stooped down and clasped each other’s wrists criss-cross, the way you do to make a human chair, and got Greg on to it, with the arm that wasn’t hurt around my neck. The darkness was perfectly pitchy, and we had to feel for every step to be sure that it was a solid place and not the slippery edge that went straight down into the sea. Greg cried a little and said, “Please—stop.” I could feel his hair against my face. It was all wet, and his cheek was wet, too, and cold.
The rain blew a little way into the cave, but not much, and we put Greg as far back as we could. The bottom of the cave was very jaggy and not comfortable to lie on, but we made it as soft as we could with the skirt and the jersey. I tripped and stumbled against Jerry, and when I caught him I felt that he was shivering. His shirt was quite wet. When I asked him if he was cold, he said “Not very,” and we crawled into the cave place beside Greg, and sat as close together as possible to keep warm. We couldn’t see the Headland light, and I was rather glad, because it had made me almost crazy, flashing and flashing so steadily and not caring a bit.
The rain wentplopinto the pools, and made a flattish, spattery sound on the rock. I don’t know why I thought of the “Air Religieux” just then, but I suppose it was because of the rain. I could see the straight yellow candle-flames all blue around the wick, and Father’s head tucked down looking at the ’cello, and his hands, nice and strong, playing it; then I got a little mixed and heard him calling “Christi-ine,” fainter and fainter. I think I must have been almost asleep, because I know the real rain surprised me, like something I’d forgotten, and a very sharp, cornery rock was poking into my back.
It was then that Greg said:
“Want—Simpson.”
That frightened me more than anything almost, for Simpson was a sort of stuffed flannel duck-thing that he’d had when he was very little, and he hadn’t thought of it for years. None of us ever knew why he called it “Simpson,” but he adored the thing and made it sleep beside him in the crib every night. But that was when he was three, and “Simpson” had been for ages on the top shelf where we keep the toys that we think we’ll play with again sometime before we’re really grown up. We never have done it yet, but there are certain ones that we couldn’t possibly give away, not even to the Deservingest poor children.
So when Greg said that, in a tired, far-off sort of way, it did frighten me, because Ihadheard of people dying when they were ravingly delirious. Greg wasn’t raving exactly, but it was almost worse, because his voice was so small and different from his own dear usual one. When I told him I couldn’t get Simpson I tried to make my voice sound soft and cooey like Mother’s when she’s sorry, but it went up into a queer squeak instead, and I couldn’t finish somehow. Greg kept saying, “Simpson;—please—” and crying to himself.
I heard Jerry feeling around in the dark and then the click of his knife opening. I couldn’t think what he was doing, but after quite a long time he pushed something into my hand and said:
“Does that feel anything like it?”
“Like what?” I said, but the next minute I knew.
Itdidfeel like Simpson—soft and flannelly, with a round, bumpy sort of head at one end.
“Oh, how did you do it!” I said. “Oh, Jerry, you brick!”
“I chopped a big piece out of your skirt,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind. I happened to have the string off the sandwich bundle in my pocket, and I squeezed up a head and tied it.”
Greg was a little frightened when Jerry leaned over him suddenly.
“It’s just me, Greg,” Jerry said; “just Jerry-o. Here’s Simpson, old lamb.”
I’d never heard Jerry’s voice at all like that before. I don’t know whether Greg really thought it was Simpson, but he took it and sighed—a long, quivery sort of sigh, the way very little children do when they’re asleep sometimes.
Then there was no sound at all but the different horrid noises that the Monster made.
Presently I felt Jerry start, and then he shuffled back a little so that he was quite tight against my knees. I asked him what was the matter, and he said “Nothing.” After a while, though, he said:
“Chris, I’d better tell you.”
“What? Oh, whatisit?” I said.
“Do you remember how the tide was when we came out?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said; “on the ebb. Don’t you remember the rocks at Wecanicut, with bushels of wet sea-weed hanging off?”
“Well?” Jerry said.
I didn’t understand for a minute, then I whispered:
“Do—you mean—”
“A wave just hit my foot,” said Jerry in a low voice.
The first thing that we did was a lot of quick figuring. We thought fearfully hard and remembered that Turkshead Rock was just coming out of water when we left Wecanicut at four o’clock, so that the tide must have been within about an hour of ebb. Therefore full flood would be at eleven o’clock. But we hadn’t any idea of whether it was ten or eleven or twelve, because there was no light to see Jerry’s watch by. He had just an ordinary Ingersoll, not the grand Radiolite kind that you can see in the dark and it was perfectly maddening to hear it ticking away cheerfully, and no good to us at all. Just then something cold wrapped itself around my ankle. It was the edge of another wavelet.
We knew that if the cave was going to be flooded we must get Greg out of it before the water came much higher, but it was still raining pitch-forks outside, and we didn’t know whether to risk waiting a bit longer or not.
“Perhaps there’s sea-weed and we can feel high watermark,” I said. “Try, Jerry.”
We felt all the way around the sides of the cave toward the bottom, but as far as we could tell there was no sea-weed at all.
“That doesn’t help us much,” Jerry said, “because we don’t know whether the tide is really full now and has covered it, or whether it just doesn’t grow here.”
We curled our feet under us and waited. We could hear the water sloshing around very close to us. Once when I put out my hand it went right into a cold pool. It was then that Jerry had a most wonderful idea. I heard his knife snap open again and asked him what it was this time.
“If I take the crystal off my watch,” he said, “I can feel where the hands are.”
I heard the little clicking pop that the front of a watch makes when you pry it off, and I knew he was feeling the hands very gently.
“The little one’s in line with the winder stem thing,” he said, “and the big one—Chris, it’s about twenty minutes of twelve. The watercan’tcome any higher. We must have had the worst of it.”
It was queer that I cried then, because I hadn’t felt at all like crying when we thought that the cave would be flooded.
Greg had been quiet for so long that it frightened me suddenly, and I groped after him to be sure that he was all right. I found his hand, and I couldn’t believe that it was really hot when ours were so cold. His forehead was hot, too, and dry, in spite of his hair being damp still from the rain. He curled his hand into mine and said very clearly:
“Will you please bring me a drink of water?”
It was perfectly awful, because he said it so politely and very carefully, as if he were trying not to bother somebody. And there was no drink to give him. I thought of the people in stories who lie on deserts and battle-fields burning in agonies of fever, but I couldn’t remember reading about anybody dying of fever on a rock in the middle of the sea. I dipped my handkerchief in the pool just beside me and laid it, all dripping, on Greg’s forehead. I didn’t know whether it was a proper First Aid thing to do, but he seemed to like it and was still again, holding my hand. Presently he said:
“Mother, why isn’t there a drink?”
“This is awful, Chris,” Jerry said.
Then I thought of the rain-pools. There were lots, of course, in the hollows of the Monster, but we had nothing to scoop up the water with. Greg’s forehead was just as hot as ever, and he thrashed about and hurt his shoulder and cried miserably.
I don’t know how Jerry could have thought of so many things; for it was he who thought of very carefully breaking the bottom off the root-beer bottle and using it for a cup. Of course the bottom might have cracked all to pieces, but it was quite heavy and Jerry was very careful. It came off wonderfully well, though rather jaggy. Jerry tried to grind the cutty edges off by rubbing them against the rock, but it didn’t work. Then we remembered being very thirsty once on a long picnic-walk ages ago, and Father wrapping his handkerchief around the top of the tin can the soup had come in and giving us a drink at a pump. So we knew that we could do that with the broken bottle. Jerry dodged out into the rain through the tide-pools and came back after a while with some water.
“I couldn’t get much,” he said, “because the place I found was very shallow, but I can go again.”
I remembered reading in books that you mustn’t give much water to fever-stricken people in any case. We lifted Greg’s head up,—that is, Jerry did, while I held the root-beer bottle glass, and said:
“Here’s the drink, Gregs, dear.”
It was very hard to tell what I was doing, and some of the water trickled over the handkerchief and down the front of Greg’s jumper. But he drank the rest, and said: “Thank you very much” in the same careful voice.
“Oh, I wish he wouldn’t be so blooming polite!” Jerry said sharply, as we were laying Greg back again, and I felt something wet and warm splash down on my wrist. But I didn’t tell Jerry I’d felt it.