Us and the Bottle Man Part 9

The man was looking at us very hard, particularly at me, and he said:

"The 'Sea Monster'!" Then he looked again and said "Oh!"

He was a nice tall man, with a brown, squarish face, quite thin, and twinkly blue eyes and a lot of dark hair that blew around like Jerry's. He looked from one to the other of us and nodded his head to himself. I suppose we did look very queer,--quite dirty, and Jerry with the tin-foil-buckled belt still around him and no shirt; and my bloomers dangling down like a Turkish person's because of the elastics having burst when I fell down.

"It seems," said our man, "that I have arrived in the nick of time to perform a daring rescue."

He said it in a funny make-believe way, as if he were doing one of our plays, and then suddenly the twinklyness went out of his eyes and he said:

"But take me to Gregory."

If we hadn't been so perfectly bursting with thankfulness and so tired of shouting and the cold and the whole hideous place, we should have wondered how on earth he knew Greg's name, because neither of us had mentioned it. But we didn't think of it then, and just s.n.a.t.c.hed his hands and pulled him over the rocks, trying to tell him a little how glad we were to see him.

When he saw Greg, his face grew quite different--very sorry, and not twinkly at all and he went down on his knees (he couldn't have stood up in the back of the cave) and he said:

"Poor old man!" And then, "I wonder who had the worst night of it?"

We said, "Greg, of course." But our man said, "I wonder." Then he changed again, and instead of being all sorry and gentle, he got quite commanding and very quick.

"Chris, you stay here," he said. "Gerald, come with me,--and here, put this on."

He pulled off his gray flannel coat and tossed it to Jerry, and Jerry did put it on and ran after him, tucking up the sleeves. I saw them get into the dinghy and row back to the boat, and I said:

"Oh, Gregs, we're going home, we're going home!" and we both cried a little.

They came back after what seemed a long time, and our man said:

"While I'm fixing Gregory, you and Gerald tackle this."

It was half a loaf of bread and some potted beef done up in oiled paper, and I'm sure Jerry ate the oiled paper, too. I'd heard of starving people falling on food and rending it savagely, but I never knew exactly what rending was until we did it to the bread. We gave some of it to Greg, too, while our man was fixing him.

I never saw any one before who could do things so fast and so gently. He had nice, brown, quick hands, and he looked so grown up and useful. He'd brought a roll of bandage stuff--the kind with a blue wrapper that you keep in First Aid kits--and a book that had "Coast Pilot Guide and Harbor Entrances of New England" on the cover. I didn't see what he could want that for, except on the boat, till he put it under Greg's armpit and bandaged his arm across it to keep it steady. The white waistcoat was in our man's way, so he ripped it down the side and got it off entirely.

"I was an explorer," Greg explained shakily.

"He was Baroo, the Madagascar cabin-boy," Jerry said, gnawing the loaf, and I thought it seemed years ago that we had _trekked_ across Wecanicut.

"I see," said our man, in his nice, kind, reliable way, and then he said to Greg, "I didn't hurt you much, did I, old fellow?"

And Greg shook his head, and said:

"Thank you for coming."

That was what we all felt, but none of us had put it so simply before.

"What's this?" the man said, as he was gathering up the rest of the bandages.

It was the Simpson-thing, and it did look very funny by daylight, I must say,--just a wob of blue flannel tied with a string. I was going to explain, but Jerry said, with his mouth full:

"Oh, just something we had," and stuffed it away in the kit-bag. He was quite red. Boys are funny sometimes.

"Now," said our man, "comes the embarkation, and I'm afraid I'll have to hurt you a little, Greg."

He picked Greg up in one swinging swoop, and I wished that Jerry and I had been strong enough to do that last night. Greg had only time for one gasp before he was quite comfortable against our man's shoulder. But he _was_ brave, because it must have hurt like anything, even then, and I could see his jaw set hard. Jerry and I gathered up the kit-bag and the jersey and what was left of the skirt and followed along. Just beside the dinghy our man paused and looked all around at the ugly blackness of the Sea Monster and up to the jaggedy top of it. Then he looked down at Greg and smiled a little sorry smile, and said very slowly and gently:

"Ye be Three Poore Mariners."

Jerry and I stared at each other, and I said:

"You must know that song, too. We used to pretend being marooned, but we never thought it would really happen."

Then Jerry said suddenly:

"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."

"But what about your gray hairs?" Jerry demanded, tugging away at the oars.

"If you've more than one gray hair you've gray hairs," said our man.

"I have eleven."

He ducked down his nice, dark, rumpled-up head for us to look, but I must say I couldn't see more than one little one all buried among the black.

"You're grown up, but you're not old at all," I said. "We've been imagining you as an aged old man with a long white beard."

"I never mentioned a long white beard," the Bottle Man said.

"Yes; but what about your tottering along on two sticks?" Jerry said suddenly.