Us and the Bottle Man Part 8

We knew that if the cave was going to be flooded we must get Greg out of it before the water came much higher, but it was still raining pitch-forks outside, and we didn't know whether to risk waiting a bit longer or not.

"Perhaps there's sea-weed and we can feel high watermark," I said.

"Try, Jerry."

We felt all the way around the sides of the cave toward the bottom, but as far as we could tell there was no sea-weed at all.

"That doesn't help us much," Jerry said, "because we don't know whether the tide is really full now and has covered it, or whether it just doesn't grow here."

We curled our feet under us and waited. We could hear the water sloshing around very close to us. Once when I put out my hand it went right into a cold pool. It was then that Jerry had a most wonderful idea. I heard his knife snap open again and asked him what it was this time.

"If I take the crystal off my watch," he said, "I can feel where the hands are."

I heard the little clicking pop that the front of a watch makes when you pry it off, and I knew he was feeling the hands very gently.

"The little one's in line with the winder stem thing," he said, "and the big one--Chris, it's about twenty minutes of twelve. The water _can't_ come any higher. We must have had the worst of it."

It was queer that I cried then, because I hadn't felt at all like crying when we thought that the cave would be flooded.

Greg had been quiet for so long that it frightened me suddenly, and I groped after him to be sure that he was all right. I found his hand, and I couldn't believe that it was really hot when ours were so cold. His forehead was hot, too, and dry, in spite of his hair being damp still from the rain. He curled his hand into mine and said very clearly:

"Will you please bring me a drink of water?"

It was perfectly awful, because he said it so politely and very carefully, as if he were trying not to bother somebody. And there was no drink to give him. I thought of the people in stories who lie on deserts and battle-fields burning in agonies of fever, but I couldn't remember reading about anybody dying of fever on a rock in the middle of the sea. I dipped my handkerchief in the pool just beside me and laid it, all dripping, on Greg's forehead. I didn't know whether it was a proper First Aid thing to do, but he seemed to like it and was still again, holding my hand. Presently he said:

"Mother, why isn't there a drink?"

"This is awful, Chris," Jerry said.

Then I thought of the rain-pools. There were lots, of course, in the hollows of the Monster, but we had nothing to scoop up the water with. Greg's forehead was just as hot as ever, and he thrashed about and hurt his shoulder and cried miserably.

I don't know how Jerry could have thought of so many things; for it was he who thought of very carefully breaking the bottom off the root-beer bottle and using it for a cup. Of course the bottom might have cracked all to pieces, but it was quite heavy and Jerry was very careful. It came off wonderfully well, though rather jaggy.

Jerry tried to grind the cutty edges off by rubbing them against the rock, but it didn't work. Then we remembered being very thirsty once on a long picnic-walk ages ago, and Father wrapping his handkerchief around the top of the tin can the soup had come in and giving us a drink at a pump. So we knew that we could do that with the broken bottle. Jerry dodged out into the rain through the tide-pools and came back after a while with some water.

"I couldn't get much," he said, "because the place I found was very shallow, but I can go again."

I remembered reading in books that you mustn't give much water to fever-stricken people in any case. We lifted Greg's head up,--that is, Jerry did, while I held the root-beer bottle gla.s.s, and said:

"Here's the drink, Gregs, dear."

It was very hard to tell what I was doing, and some of the water trickled over the handkerchief and down the front of Greg's jumper.

But he drank the rest, and said: "Thank you very much" in the same careful voice.

"Oh, I wish he wouldn't be so blooming polite!" Jerry said sharply, as we were laying Greg back again, and I felt something wet and warm splash down on my wrist. But I didn't tell Jerry I'd felt it.

CHAPTER X

If I wrote volumes and volumes I couldn't begin to tell how long that night seemed. It was longer than years and years in prison; it was as long as a century. I think Jerry slept a little, and perhaps I did, too, for when I peered out at the cave entrance again there were two or three bluish, wet stars in the piece of sky I could see, and the rain-sound had stopped. Jerry was huddled up at my feet with his dear old head propped uncomfortably against me. He was snoring a little, and somehow it was the nicest sound I'd ever heard. Greg's hand was still in mine, and it was not very hot.

Dawn always disappoints me a little. You think it's going to be perfectly gorgeous, and then it's usually nothing but one cold, pinkish streak, and the shadows all going the wrong way. But when I saw a faint wet grayness beginning to creep along the horizon beyond the Headland, I thought it was the most wonderful thing I'd ever seen in my life. The gray spread till the whole sky was the color of zinc, with the sea a little darker, and then one spikey yellow strip began to show on the sky-line. I could see Greg at last, with the jersey under his head, and the white brocade waistcoat all dark and stained at the shoulder, and his poor dear face ghastly white. And Jerry asleep, with the ruffle still pinned to his wet shirt and a big hole torn in the knee of his knickerbockers. And I saw the slimy pools that the tide had left beside us--it was on the ebb again--and the pieces of the root-beer bottle that Jerry had broken off, and the horrible, high, black head of the Sea Monster above us.

There was no boat of any sort to be seen, near or far away, but I woke Jerry so that we could both keep watch in case one came. Just as Jerry crawled out of the cave and stretched himself stiffly, Greg took his hand away from mine and blinked out at the sky, and said in almost his own voice:

"Have we been here all the time?"

"Yes, all the time, ducky," I said, and then I cried, "Don't try to move, Gregs!" for I saw him trying to squirm over.

He lay back and said "Why?" but then in an instant he knew why. I couldn't do anything but cuddle my cheek down against his, and he sobbed:

"Make me stop crying, Chris."

The light grew stronger and stronger till there were shadows among the rocks and Wecanicut came out green and brown. Jerry came back presently, and I wondered if he'd seen anything, but he said:

"Chris, I just wanted to ask you. How long does it take for a person to starve?"

I said days, I thought, and Jerry sighed a little and went back to his watching-place. Somehow I didn't feel very hungry, myself,--that is, not the kind of hungry you are when you've played tennis all morning and then gone in swimming. There was a sharp, sickish feeling inside me and my head felt a little queer, but it was not exactly like being hungry.

I think Greg's arm must have stopped hurting quite so badly, or else he was being tremendously s.p.u.n.ky, because we talked a lot and I told him that Father would come for us pretty soon. I didn't feel at all sure of this, because I knew that Father would never have given up the Sea Monster the night before if he'd had any idea we were there.

But it was so perfectly blessed to have Greg talking sensibly at all, even with such a wobbly sort of voice, that I didn't much care what I said.

All at once Jerry came tumbling around the corner, shouting:

"Oh, Chris, come quick! _Hurry!_"

I left Greg and ran after Jerry, and I'd been sitting so long humped up on the rocks that my knees gave way and I barked my shins against a sharp ledge. I didn't even know it until ever so long afterwards, when I found a bruise as big as a saucer and remembered then. Jerry didn't need to point so wildly out across the water; I saw the boat before he could say a word. It was a catboat, quite far off, tacking down from the Headland. The sail was orange, and we'd never seen an orange sail in our harbor or anywhere, in fact, so we knew it must be a strange boat.

Jerry pulled off his shirt like winking and stood there in his bare arms waving it madly. We both began to shout before the catboat people could possibly have heard us, but we thought that they might see the white shirt flying up and down. The boat was tacking a long leg and a short one. The long one carried it so far out that we thought it was going to cross the mouth of the bay and not come near enough to see us. Jerry stopped shouting just long enough to gasp:

"When she's all ready to go about on the short tack is the time to yell loudest."

But the next short tack seemed to bring the boat no nearer than before, and the long leg carried it so far away that it was no more use shouting to the orange sail than to a stupid old herring-gull.

"Could you wave for a bit, Chris?" Jerry said. "My arms are off."

So I took the shirt and waved it by its sleeves, and the catboat began another short tack. It was just then that we saw something black flap-flapping against the sail.

"They've tied a coat or something to the flag halyard, and they're running it up and down," Jerry said. "They're trying to get here, but they _have_ to tack. Don't you _see_, Chris?"

Of course I saw, but I didn't blame Jerry for being snappy at the last minute.

The next tack showed very plainly that the boat was really coming to the Sea Monster, and somebody stood up in the stern and shouted. We shouted back--one last howl--and then stood there panting, because there was no use in wasting any more breath and our throats were quite split as it was. When the catboat came a little nearer we saw that there was only one man in it, and, sure enough, an old blue jersey was tied to the flag halyard. The man turned the boat around very neatly--I don't know the right sailing word for it--and anch.o.r.ed. Then he climbed into the dinghy that was trailing along behind and began rowing to the Sea Monster.

I sat down on the rock and I had to keep swallowing, because I felt as if my heart were b.u.mping up against my throat. To save time, before the man landed, Jerry started to shout what had happened.

There wasn't much left of his voice, but he managed to do it somehow.

"We've been here all night," he called huskily. "We came out to explore this thing, and our boat got away, and our little brother fell off the top and is hurt awfully, and" (this was just as the man climbed ash.o.r.e on the sea-weedy rocks) "and we'd always called this place the 'Sea Monster' because it looked like one, but now we know it _is_ one."