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.
But we had come alongside the catboat, and no one could talk for a
little while until we were all arranged in the boat and our man had
told Jerry and me to pull a mattressy thing out of the tiny little
cabin and had laid Greg on it in the bottom of the boat. He gave him
some stuff out of a little flasky bottle, too, and Greg sputtered
over it and said "Ugh!" but afterward he said:
"It's nice and hot inside when I thought it had gone."
And we couldn't talk, either, when our man was hoisting the
orange-painted sail and hauling up the anchor and running back and
forth to pull ropes and things. But when he was settled at the
tiller and all of us were cosy with sweaters and coats, Jerry asked
him again.
"Why, you see," the Bottle Man said, "something had hit me very hard
and for a long time all that I was able to do was to totter along on
the two sticks."
"But what hit you?" I asked.
He dropped his voice, because Greg was actually asleep.
"An inconsiderate shell," he said.
For a minute, because I was so used to thinking of him on the lonely
island, I imagined a big conch-shell being hurled at him from
somewhere. Then Jerry and I both gasped:
"You mean you were in the war?"
"Exactly," said our man.
"And the bearded man was a doctor?" Jerry asked.
"That he was!" the Bottle Man said.
We both asked him questions at once, but he was dreadfully vague,
and kept looking at Greg and the sail and the shore, but we managed
to piece together that he'd been wounded twice and left for dead in
No-Man's-Land (after doing all sorts of heroic things, we know) and
finally sent home to America from a French hospital. We found out,
too, that his aunt was the "good soul" he talked about in his
letters, and that she half-owned the island and had a beautiful big
old house on it where she made him come while he convalesced. It was
very hard to find out all these things, because he _would_ be so
mysterious and kept saying "Ah!" and "That's another story!" He also
wanted to hear all of our adventures, but we wouldn't tell him those
until we'd heard some of his.
Jerry asked him suddenly about the scar where the sea-thing bit him,
or stabbed him, or whatever it did, and our man twinkled and pulled
up his sleeve. And there, just above his right elbow where the tan
stopped, was a little white three-cornered scar, sure enough. Jerry
looked and said "Oh!" and our man said "Ah-ha!"
And at the end of all the stories we realized that we didn't know,
even now, how he happened to be sailing along just in time to rescue
us.
"_I_ sailed all the way from Bluar Boor," he said, "on purpose to
see you. To tell the truth, I had designs on the 'Sea Monster' which
will not be carried out now. I laid up last night inside the
Headland breakwater and made an early start this morning for the
last leg of the trip. I recognized the 'Sea Monster' a long way off,
but I must say I was surprised when I saw Jerry's shirt signaling so
distressfully. Of course I knew who you were at once, when you
called the place the 'Sea Monster,' but Christine did stagger me for
a minute."
"Stagger you?" I said. "Why?"
"I've been thinking you were 'Christopher' all this time, you see,"
he said, "but, being a man of infinite resource and unparalleled
sagacity, I immediately perceived the true state of affairs."
"_Are_ you a professor?" Jerry asked.
"Heavens, no!" our man laughed. "Why do you ask?"
"On account of your style," Jerry said. "It's so grand and stately.
So are your letters, sometimes."
"I am but a poor bridge-builder," the Bottle Man said, "but I can
turn words on or off as I want 'em, like a hose."
By this time the boat was almost in, and our man brought it up
neatly to the float beside the ferry-slip, and some men came over
and helped him to moor it. Then he got out and came back in a minute
with the man who always meets the ferry in an automobile to hire.
The man looked as if he were in a dazy dream, which I don't blame
him for at all, because we did look quite weird. He and the Bottle
Man lifted Gregg, mattress and all, and stowed him in on the back
seat of the automobile. The rest of us perched on the front seat and
the running-board, trying to conceal our strange appearance from the
staring of quite a crowd which was gathering, as it was just
ferry-time.
Our man said, "17 Luke Street, and go carefully." It surprised us
for a second to hear him say our address as if he'd known it always,
but then we realized that he _had_ known it for quite a long time.
I think none of us will ever forget the way the house looked as we
swung around the corner and came up Luke Street. Just the end of the
gable first, behind the two big beeches in the front garden,--oh, we
hadn't seen it for years and centuries,--and then the living-room
windows open, with the curtains blowing, and the little box-bush
that grows in a fat jar on the porch-steps. Mother was coming out at
the front door, and she looked just the way she did when we got a
telegram once saying that Grannie was very ill. Jerry jumped off the
running-board before the automobile stopped, and he let Mother hug
him right there in the middle of the path, which is a thing he
generally hates. By that time our man and the chauffeur were lifting
Greg and the mattress out, and Mother let go of Jerry and stood
quite still, with her face all white and hollow-looking. We all
began talking at once, and the Bottle Man managed to tell Mother
more about everything in a few minutes than you would think
possible.
He and the automobile man, who still looked flabbergasted, put Greg
on the big bed in mother's room while she was telephoning to Dr.
Topham. We all felt fidgetty and unsettled until Dr. Topham came,
which was really very soon. I think he must have broken all the
speed rules. Jerry and I, who had put on some other clothes, sat in
the living-room with the Bottle Man while the doctor set Greg's arm,
which was fractured. Mother stayed with Greg. The Bottle Man told us
things about the war and his island, and he played soft, wonderful
music on the piano to make us forget about Greg and the Sea Monster
and all the awful things that had happened.