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.

It was the queerest topsy-turvy morning I ever spent. After Mother came down and told us that Gregs was fixed and that Doctor Topham had given him something to make him sleep, we all went in and had lots of breakfast.—Mother and the Bottle Man, too, for neither of them had had any. You would never have thought we’d eaten the bread and potted beef there on the Monster, if you’d seen the way we devoured the eggs and bacon and honey and toast that Katy and Lena kept bringing in. They both brought the things, because they were so glad to see us and so afraid that it had been their fault that we went to Wecanicut. But we told Mother that it wasn’t.

While we ate. Mother told us everything that had happened at home. She and Father came in on the six o’clock train and found Katy and Lena quite worried because we hadn’t come back yet, but no one got really frightened until later. Father thought of Wecanicut and went to the ferry to ask, but Captain Lewis wasn’t there, and of course the cross new captain that we’d seen looking at the book hadn’t even noticed us and wouldn’t have known us if he had. Our nice Portuguese man remembered our going over and was perfectly certain that he’d seen us come back, too, which of course he hadn’t. So, after setting the policeman and every one else to search town, Father and Captain Moss went to Wecanicut on the chance. They reached the point at a quarter after nine, which was when we saw the lights, and they never for a moment thought of the Sea Monster, because no one had missed the old dinghy from the ferry-slip and they didn’t imagine that we could get there. They didn’t find any trace of us at the usual picnic place on Wecanicut, because we had everything with us, and though some of the Fort soldiers searched, too, nothing could be found. Father had been up all night and was still out, telephoning to all sorts of places.

If I deserved any punishment for its being my fault, I think I had it when I thought of how hard Father had been working and how wretched and anxious they all were. I hadn’t quite realized that before.

Strangely enough, right after breakfast Jerry and I began to yawn tremendously, and Mother bundled us off to bed. We hadn’t had time to think of it, but of course we hadn’t slept particularly well on the Sea Monster. Just as we were going upstairs, Aunt Ailsa came running in with her hat on, crying:

“Is Katy telling the truth?”

And then we both leaped on her from the stairs. When she ducked her head up from our hugs, the Bottle Man was standing in the doorway, looking queer.

“Ailsa!” he said; and that really did floor us, because we knew we’d never even mentioned her existence to him. She stood staring, and then put her hand up against her throat, exactly like somebody in a book.

“Andrew!” she said, in a faint little voice.

Mother looked at them, and then said:

“Bedtime, chicks! Come along!” and went up with us.

It was quite weird, going to bed at nine o’clock in the morning. We pulled down all the shades so we could sleep, though I don’t really think we needed to, because I know that as soon as I shut my eyes I was sound asleep.

When I woke up the room was quite dim, and Mother and Father were standing at the door talking. Father looked awfully tired, but dear and glad, and he wouldn’t let me tell him how sorry I was about it all. Mother said that even more surprising things had been happening, and that if I’d slept enough for a time, I’d better come down to supper. That was queer, too,—dressing in the twilight and coming down to supper, instead of to breakfast.

We all talked a lot at supper, of course, and people kept asking questions. I had to do most of the answering, because Jerry always left out the parts about himself, and yet it was he who did all the wonderful things. We had bottles of ginger-pop, because it was a sort of feast, and Father got up and proposed toasts, just like a real banquet. First he said:

“Jerry! I’m glad to have a son with a level head.”

Then he said:

“Christine!” and looked at me very hard, till I wanted to turn away. But they all drank it just the same as Jerry’s, though I didn’t deserve it at all. Then Father held up his glass and said very gently:

“Greg!” And when I tried to drink it, the ginger-pop choked me, and Jerry banged me between the shoulders, which, of course, only made it worse, because it wasn’t that sort of choke.

Then Jerry jumped up and said:

“We ought to drink to the Bottle Man, I think. And, by the way, ‘Bottle Man’ looks all right in a letter, but it’s queer, rather, to say to you. Haven’t you really a real name?”

Our man and Aunt Ailsa looked at each other as if they were going to say something, and then the Bottle Man twinkled, and said:

“Very soon you’ll be able to call me Uncle Andrew.”

This part seems to be nothing but explanations, which are horrid, but there were lots, and I can’t help it. Of course Jerry and I sat staring in surprise, and there had to be explanations. And what do you think! Our own Bottle Man was that “Somebody Westland” that Aunt Ailsa had wept so about. The casualty list was perfectly right in saying that he was wounded and missing (though it came very late, because by that time he was in America), and she thought, of course, that he was dead, because she didn’t hear from him. And he’d written to her from the French hospital and the letter never came. When he came back, all sick and wounded, to America, somebody who didn’t know anything about it told him that Aunt Ailsa was going to marry Mr. Something-or-other, so our poor man went off sadly to his island and didn’t write to her any more. He’d never heard of us, because of course her name isn’t Holford. And she’d never heard of his aunt, nor Blue Harbor, nor the island, so of course she didn’t know anything about it when we read his letters to her. Oh, it was very tangly and bewildering and it took lots of explaining, but at the end of supper there was just enough ginger-pop left to drink to both of them.

Afterwards she and Father played the ’cello and piano, because we asked them to, and the Bottle Man sat with his arm over Jerry’s shoulders, watching, with the light on his nice, brown, kind face. And Father sat with his head tucked down over the ’cello, just the way I remembered there on the Sea Monster, and the candles shone on Aunt Ailsa’s amberish-colored hair, and I thought she was the beautifullest person in the world, except Mother. I thought about a lot of things while the music went on, and wondered whether we’d ever want to picnic on Wecanicut again. But I knew we would, because Wecanicut is a kind, friendly, safe place (and we do go there now lots, only we don’t look at the Sea Monster much). I thought, too, that perhaps if we’d never thrown the message in the bottle into the harbor, Aunt Ailsa and Uncle Andrew would never have been married and lived happily ever after,—that is, they’ve lived happily so far and I think they’ll keep on. Because if we hadn’t, the Bottle Man would never have come sailing down to see us, and he might still be thinking Aunt Ailsa had married the Mr. Thingummy, when she hadn’t at all.

He was such a nice Bottle Man! I sat there on the couch and thought how splendid it would be when he was our own uncle, and I laughed when I remembered how we’d imagined that he was an ancient old gentleman. The wind began to rise outside. I could hear it whisking around and bumping in the chimney, and I thought how glad I was—oh, how glad, glad I was—that we were all at home, and I listened hard to the ’cello and tried not to remember the horrible old Sea Monster.

Mother slipped in and sat down beside me, and when the music ended, she said: “Greg wants to see the ‘Bottle Man’.” We asked if we might come, too, because we hadn’t seen Greg since they carried him up to the house, all bloody and rumpled and dirty. So we all went up, and Mother tip-toed in first with the lamp. He looked almost quite like himself, with clean pajamas and his hair brushed and all the frightened, hurt look gone out of his face.

The Bottle Man (I almost forget to call him that, because we’ve been calling him Uncle Andrew for months) leaned over and said:

“Lots better now, old man?”

Greg said “Lots,” and then, “But what I did want to ask you is, how you sailed all the way from the Mid-Equator to here in such a little boat?”

The Bottle Man laughed, and then said very soberly:

“But are you sure you measured it right? To-morrow I’ll show you on the map.”

We only stayed a minute, and then said good-night and went out. I was the last one, and just as I was going through the door, Greg said:

“Chris! Come back!”

So I went and sat on the edge of the bed in the dark, and Greg put his good arm around my neck when I bent down.

“Do you know, Chris,” he said, “sometimes that night I think I thought you were Mother. Oh, Chris, I do love you awfully much!”

And I was happier then than I’d been since—oh, it seemed centuries ago.