I examined it again. ‘I tell you what, Wilfrid; that it is corked should signify there is something in it. Who troubles himself to plug an empty bottle when it is flung overboard unless it is intended as a messenger?’
He was instantly excited. ‘Why, by all means then——,’ he broke off, looking round. The mate had charge; he was sulkily pacing the deck to leeward with a lift of his askew eye aloft and then a stare over the rail, all as regular as the recurrence of rhymes in poetry. ‘Mr. Crimp,’ called Wilfrid. The man came over to us. ‘Do you see that bottle?’
Crimp shaded his eyes and took a steady view of the water towards which my cousin pointed, and then said, ‘Is that there thing flashing a bottle?’
‘Yes, man; yes.’
‘Well, I see it right enough.’
‘Get it picked up, Mr. Crimp,’ said Wilfrid.
The mate walked aft. ‘Down hellum,’ he exclaimed to the fellow who was steering. The wheel was put over and the bottle was brought almost directly in a line with the yacht. The topgallant-sail ‘lifted,’ but what air blew was abaft the beam and the distance was too short to render necessary the handling of the braces and sheets. Crimp went a little way forward and hailed the forecastle, and presently a man stood ready at the gangway with a canvas bucket slung at the end of a line. A very small matter will create a great deal of interest at sea. Had the approaching bottle been a mermaid the group of sailors could not have observed it with livelier attention nor awaited its arrival with brisker expectations. Presently splash! the bottle was cleverly caught, hauled up, dried and brought aft.
‘It’s not been in the water long,’ said I; ‘the wooden plug in the mouth looks fresh.’
‘Mr. Crimp, sing out for a corkscrew,’ cried Wilfrid.
‘No good in that,’ cried I; ‘break the thing. That will be the speediest way to come at its contents.’