CHAPTER III
The envelope was a square, thinnish one, addressed in very small, black handwriting.
“It must be from The Bottle,” Jerry said; “otherwise they wouldn’t have thought you were a boy and put Christopher.”
I had been thinking just the same thing while I was trying to open the envelope. It was one of the very tightly stuck kind that scrumples up when you try to rip it with your finger, and we had to slit it with a fruit-knife before we could get at the letter. There were sheets of thin paper all covered with writing, and when Jerry and Greg saw that, they both fell upon it so that none of us could read it at all. I persuaded them that the quickest thing to do would be to let me read it aloud, and as we’d finished breakfast anyway, we each took our last piece of toast in our hands and went out and sat on the bottom step of the porch. I read:
Fellow Adventurers and Mariners in Distress:
By this time there may be naught left of you but a whitening huddle of bones, surf bleached on the end of Wecanicut,—for I know well what meager fare are eiligugs’ eggs and barnacles. However, I take the chance of finding at least one of you alive, and address you fraternally as a companion in distress.
I am myself stranded on a cheerless island where, against my will, I am kept captive—for how long a time I cannot guess. I was brought here at night, only forty-eight hours ago, and landed from a vessel which almost immediately departed whence it had come, into the darkness. My captors left me to go with the vessel, the chief of them threatening to return every week to torment me unless I obeyed his slightest command. I stand in great fear of this man, who is tall and bearded, for he brings with him instruments of torture and bottles containing, without doubt, poison.
Can you imagine my joy when, tottering down the beach this morning, supporting my frame upon two sticks, I beheld your bottle cast up on the sands? Now, thought I, I can unburden myself to these three unfortunate men, obviously in even greater distress than my own, and we can, perhaps, ease each other’s monotonous maroonity. Scholars, too, I perceive you to be,—witness the Latin following your signatures. Ah well, Grata superveniet quae non sperabitur hora, as the poet so truly says, and I cannot express to you how eager, how happy I am, in the thought of communicating with some one other than the natives of this desolate isle. These inhabitants, though friendly on the whole, are uncouth and barbaric. They spend their entire time fishing from boats which they build themselves, or squatting beside their huts mending their fishing implements.
The good soul with whom I am lodging is calling me to my scanty repast. In the rude language of the place she tells me that there is “Krabss al ad an dunny.” How can I live long, I ask, on such fare?
Hopefully, your
CASTAWAY COMRADE.
P.S. My address—mail reaches me from time to time, by aforesaid vessel—is P.O. Box 14, Blue Harbor, Me. ME stands for Mid Equator, but the abbreviation is sufficient. Blue Harbor is my own literal translation of the native Bluar Boor. Box 14 refers to the native system of delivering messages. P.O. has, I think, something to do with the P. & O. steamers, which, however, do not very often touch here.
“I told you it would go around the world!” Greg said, when I had finished, and Jerry and I were staring at each other.
“Well!” Jerry said at last. “What luck!”
“I should rather say so,” I said; “suppose a fisherman had found it, or no one at all.”
“Bless his old heart,” said Jerry, taking the letter.
I wanted to know why “old.”