He's always doing
things like that, when everyone else has given up.

I spread his paper out on top of the other letter, and he sprawled
down beside me, all ready to explain with his finger. What with his
dreadfully bad writing and the sunlight moving off the paper all the
time as the branches swayed, it took me ever so long to read the
thing. This is what it was:

Dear Bottle Man:

To-day we got your leter wich surprised us very much.
Although I kept hopeing and hopeing some body would find the
bottle. We are not so distresed now because we were picked up
and now have toast and other things beter than barnicles. I
mesured from here to the equater on the big map and it is an
aufuly far way for the bottle to go. Only I thought it would.
I am sorry you are so imprisined on the iland and please dont
let the cheif with the beard poisen you because we would like
to hear from you agan. If there is tresure on that iland I
should think you could look for it and it would be exiting.
But prehaps there is none. We hope there is some on Wecanicut.
But it is hard to know sirtainly. Chris and Jerry are going to
do a leter. But I thought I would first. I hope the saviges will
be frendly allways.

Your respecfull comrade,

GREGORY HOLFORD.

P.S. None of us are Bones yet.

"Will it do?" Greg asked anxiously, when I folded it up. His eyes
grow very dark when he's anxious, and they were perfectly inky now.
You never would have guessed that they were really blue.

"It'll do splendidly," I said, for I did think the Castaway man
would like Greg's letter tremendously.

"Better let me see it, my lad," said Jerry, rolling over among the
pine-cones and sitting up.

Greg got his precious letter with a snatch and a squeak, and
scurried off with it. I pitched Jerry back on to the pine-needles,
because I knew he'd never let the thing go if he saw it.

"Oh, _let_ him send it," I said. "It's perfectly all right, and it
will do the Bottle Man heaps of good."

But Jerry growled about "beastly scrawls" and wasn't pleased with me
until supper-time.

Somehow we all began calling our island person the "Bottle Man"
after Greg did, for it seemed as good a name as any for him, seeing
that we didn't know his real one. We read the letter from him after
supper to Aunt Ailsa, and she laughed and liked it, and so did
Father. We also asked Father what the Latin meant, and he made a
funny face and said he'd