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 spunky, 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
anchored. 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 bumping 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 ashore 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."
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 snatched 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'."