“There’s one in the pantry,” said Bruce.
“I’ll go and get it,” said Phil.
“Pooh!” said Tom; “break the bottle. You’ll never get at the paper if you don’t.”
“Sure enough,” said Bart; and the next instant he struck the bottle against an iron belaying-pin, and shivered it to atoms. The paper fell on the deck.
Bart snatched it up, and opened it. It was a piece of coarse paper, that looked as though it had been hastily torn from some book. On it some writing was hurriedly scrawled with a pencil. It was as follows:—
Ship Petrel, of Liverpool, from Quebec, with timeber. Fog for two weeks, and violent gales. Lost reckoning. Took an observation last in lat. 46° 5’ 22”, long. 59° 8’ 2”. Ship waterlogged, on beam-ends, and going to pieces. Taking to boats.
Henry Hall, Master.
There was another scrawl that seemed intended for a date, but the boys could not make it out. It looked like “Tuesday, March,” but it might have been anything else.
Such, then, was the writing. The captain had believed that the ship was actually going to pieces, and had hurried off evidently in the greatest possible haste, and had probably thrown into the boats a few of the barest necessaries of life.
But Bart suggested another theory. It was that the captain had put this writing in the bottle, and had got it all ready to throw over, when perhaps a sail had hove in sight, and thus the bottle had been left in the cabin.