“By the way, what’s your name, sir?”
“You’ll have to row, Jerry,” said our man, “because I must keep the wounded just the way he is.” Then he said:
“Some people call me Andrew, but my intimate friends call me ‘The Bottle Man’.”
CHAPTER XI
I thought that perhaps it might be a dream after all, because that’s the way things happen in dreams, and that I would wake up and find it still night and the rain splashing down and poor Greg crying. But the dinghy was real and so were the slippy slidy wet rocks, and I had to watch what I was about and not go staring in astonishment at our man. We all had to be careful about the rocks, and that’s why none of us said anything till we were in the dinghy, except for one gasp of astonishment.
“But how could you be?” Jerry and I asked together when we all were safely aboard, with our man in the stern holding Greg carefully.
“But how did you get un-oldened?” Greg asked.
“We thought you were a very old gentleman,” I explained giddily.
“I am,” said the Bottle Man. “Ancient.”