“Maybe it’s Snow White!” she exclaimed. “Is there a leg band with a number, Jamie?”
Carrying the pigeon, the boy waded ashore. “It has a number, but it’s smeared with oil and I can’t read the figures,” he announced. “The bird’s feathers are soaked with oil. I’m getting it all over me.”
Vevi was certain the moment she saw the bird that it was the missing Snow White. Captain Tarwell wiped oil from the pigeon’s wings and the leg band. With the metal plate clean again, he could read the numerals. They were 68971.
“It’s the same pigeon all right,” the captain confirmed. “Dash my binnacles, if it isn’t!”
“The bird’s been in a fight, maybe with a hawk,” guessed Jamie. “See, there’s a bloody mark on his head. He doesn’t seem much hurt though.”
Captain Tarwell examined the pigeon carefully. Except for a slight head wound, he could find no injury.
“It was the oil on his feathers that kept him from rising into the air again,” he told the children. “When he fell or lighted on the pond, he must have settled into a patch of oil. He’d have starved to death if we hadn’t come along.”
Vevi was very pleased to have found Snow White again. She wanted to take the pigeon to Starfish Cottage.
Captain Tarwell said they would carry the bird instead to Mr. Green’s loft. “It won’t be much out of our way,” he declared.
When the children and Captain Tarwell arrived at the pigeon loft twenty minutes later, Mr. Green was very busy. He was working on his records which he said were not being kept up properly.