“It is a bottle!” Jim cried, in intense excitement. “A bottle! A floating bottle! Isn’t that very strange, boys?”
“Yes, it’s rather curious, but it isn’t a natural phenomenon, so don’t make so much stir about it,” Will said, fearing that Jim might overdo the matter. “I’ll strip off my clothes and swim after it, boys, unless some of you would like to take a plunge into the water.”
“Let us go out on our raft; that would be the proper way to get it!” declared ceremonious Marmaduke, not knowing that the raft had been turned to better account. “Come; the raft isn’t much farther up; let us get it out, and we can soon overtake the bottle.”
Ah, plotters! your troubles were beginning already!
“Pshaw!” cried Stephen, in seeming disgust. “It would be a loss of time to go up stream to sail after a wayfaring bottle like that. But we must get it, of course.——Now, hello, who is this fellow whistling and paddling on a home-made punt across over from the other shore down towards us? ’Pon my word, it’s Charley, without his clothes on! No; they’re strapped over his shoulders. Well, this is funnier than Jim’s wonderful bottle!”
Stephen’s astonishment was not feigned, for the boys had not planned how Charles was to rejoin them after setting the bottle afloat, and his sudden appearance in this guise was a great surprise to them all.
On Marmaduke’s arrival, Charles had paddled across the river on a stout plank, launching the bottled letter on his way, and drifted down by the opposite bank till abreast of the boys. Then, having turned his rude canoe, he struck out for them boldly; and the inference was that the boy, being on the right bank of the river and seeing his comrades on the left bank, had hit upon this semi-savage means to join them. Thus Marmaduke never suspected that there was any connection between Charley and the floating bottle.
But Jim felt insulted at Stephen’s last words, and he muttered sullenly: “’Taint my bottle! I never put it there!”
“You look like an alligator, Charley;” Marmaduke hallooed. “Where do you come from?”
“Oh, I’ve been prowling around,” Charles shouted back.