Us and the Bottle Man Part 7

"Are you hungry, Chris?"

I said that I wasn't, and asked him if he was. But he said:

"No, not very."

There were real waves on the Wecanicut side of the Monster now, and the wind was still blowing from that direction harder than ever. Now and then a drop of spray would flick my cheek, and I think the sound of the wind around the rock was really more horrid than the noise the water made. It seemed like midnight, but it was really quite early in the evening, when Jerry saw the lights bobbing along the sh.o.r.e of Wecanicut. They were lanterns, two of them, and they stopped quite often, as if the people were looking for something.

For a minute I couldn't even move. Then I scrambled and slid after Jerry to the place on the Monster that most nearly faced the Wecanicut point. I don't think Greg really knew we'd left him; at least he didn't make a sound.

The lanterns swung and bobbed nearer till they almost reached the point, and we could hear faint shouts. Jerry and I braced our feet against the slimy rocks and shrieked into the dark, and the wind rushed down our throats and burned them. We could hear the people quite clearly now.

"It's Father's voice," Jerry said. "Oh, Chris, the wind is dead against us. _Now_ for it!"

I'd always thought Jerry could shout louder than any boy I ever heard, but you can't imagine how high and thin both our voices sounded out there on the Sea Monster. We heard Father's voice quite distinctly:

"Chris-ti-ine ... Jer-r-r-y ... ti-in-e!"

We shouted till our chests felt sc.r.a.ped raw, the way you feel when you've run too hard, and the wind tore our voices straight out to sea, away from Wecanicut. The lanterns stood quite still for a minute more, and then they bobbed away. At first I didn't believe that they were really growing smaller and smaller. But they were, and at last they were gone entirely, far down the sh.o.r.e.

"Are you crying, Chris?" Jerry said suddenly, in a queer, wheezy voice. He'd been shouting even harder than I had.

"I think not," I said, and my own voice was very strange indeed.

Jerry whacked me hard on the back, and said:

"Good old Chris! _Good_ old Chris!"

The sh.o.r.e of Wecanicut was so black that we might have dreamed the lanterns, but I still could hear the way Father's own voice had sounded, calling "Chris-ti-ine!" We almost stumbled over Greg when we crawled back to him, and he said: "Can we go home now, Chris?"

The wind gnashed around in a spiteful kind of way, and Jerry touched my hand suddenly and said: "Chris, it's raining."

CHAPTER IX

It _was_ raining,--big cold splashes that came faster and faster. I felt my blouse stick coldly to my shoulder in the places where it was wet.

"We _can't_ let Greg lie there and have it rain on him," I said.

Jerry and I thought of the pirate cave at the same moment, but we didn't see how we could possibly carry Greg to it in the dark. We thought that as it wasn't his legs that were hurt he might be able to walk there, if we helped him. He was very brave and quite willing to try, though a little dazed about why we wanted him to, but when we stood him carefully on his feet, he said, "Chris--no--" and we had to lay him down again. By this time it was really raining, and I put the skirt over Greg, instead of under him, while we tried to think.

"It might work if we made a chair," Jerry suggested.

So we stooped down and clasped each other's wrists criss-cross, the way you do to make a human chair, and got Greg on to it, with the arm that wasn't hurt around my neck. The darkness was perfectly pitchy, and we had to feel for every step to be sure that it was a solid place and not the slippery edge that went straight down into the sea. Greg cried a little and said, "_Please--_stop." I could feel his hair against my face. It was all wet, and his cheek was wet, too, and cold.

The rain blew a little way into the cave, but not much, and we put Greg as far back as we could. The bottom of the cave was very jaggy and not comfortable to lie on, but we made it as soft as we could with the skirt and the jersey. I tripped and stumbled against Jerry, and when I caught him I felt that he was s.h.i.+vering. His s.h.i.+rt was quite wet. When I asked him if he was cold, he said "Not very," and we crawled into the cave place beside Greg, and sat as close together as possible to keep warm. We couldn't see the Headland light, and I was rather glad, because it had made me almost crazy, flas.h.i.+ng and flas.h.i.+ng so steadily and not caring a bit.

The rain went _plop_ into the pools, and made a flattish, spattery sound on the rock. I don't know why I thought of the "Air Religieux"

just then, but I suppose it was because of the rain. I could see the straight yellow candle-flames all blue around the wick, and Father's head tucked down looking at the 'cello, and his hands, nice and strong, playing it; then I got a little mixed and heard him calling "Christi-ine," fainter and fainter. I think I must have been almost asleep, because I know the real rain surprised me, like something I'd forgotten, and a very sharp, cornery rock was poking into my back.

It was then that Greg said:

"Want--Simpson."

That frightened me more than anything almost, for Simpson was a sort of stuffed flannel duck-thing that he'd had when he was very little, and he hadn't thought of it for years. None of us ever knew why he called it "Simpson," but he adored the thing and made it sleep beside him in the crib every night. But that was when he was three, and "Simpson" had been for ages on the top shelf where we keep the toys that we think we'll play with again sometime before we're really grown up. We never have done it yet, but there are certain ones that we couldn't possibly give away, not even to the Deservingest poor children.

So when Greg said that, in a tired, far-off sort of way, it did frighten me, because I _had_ heard of people dying when they were ravingly delirious. Greg wasn't raving exactly, but it was almost worse, because his voice was so small and different from his own dear usual one. When I told him I couldn't get Simpson I tried to make my voice sound soft and cooey like Mother's when she's sorry, but it went up into a queer squeak instead, and I couldn't finish somehow. Greg kept saying, "Simpson;--please--" and crying to himself.

I heard Jerry feeling around in the dark and then the click of his knife opening. I couldn't think what he was doing, but after quite a long time he pushed something into my hand and said:

"Does that feel anything like it?"

"Like what?" I said, but the next minute I knew.

It _did_ feel like Simpson--soft and flannelly, with a round, b.u.mpy sort of head at one end.

"Oh, how did you do it!" I said. "Oh, Jerry, you brick!"

"I chopped a big piece out of your skirt," he said. "I hope you don't mind. I happened to have the string off the sandwich bundle in my pocket, and I squeezed up a head and tied it."

Greg was a little frightened when Jerry leaned over him suddenly.

"It's just me, Greg," Jerry said; "just Jerry-o. Here's Simpson, old lamb."

I'd never heard Jerry's voice at all like that before. I don't know whether Greg really thought it was Simpson, but he took it and sighed--a long, quivery sort of sigh, the way very little children do when they're asleep sometimes.

Then there was no sound at all but the different horrid noises that the Monster made.

Presently I felt Jerry start, and then he shuffled back a little so that he was quite tight against my knees. I asked him what was the matter, and he said "Nothing." After a while, though, he said:

"Chris, I'd better tell you."

"What? Oh, what _is_ it?" I said.

"Do you remember how the tide was when we came out?" he asked.

"Yes," I said; "on the ebb. Don't you remember the rocks at Wecanicut, with bushels of wet sea-weed hanging off?"

"Well?" Jerry said.

I didn't understand for a minute, then I whispered:

"Do--you mean--"

"A wave just hit my foot," said Jerry in a low voice.

The first thing that we did was a lot of quick figuring. We thought fearfully hard and remembered that Turkshead Rock was just coming out of water when we left Wecanicut at four o'clock, so that the tide must have been within about an hour of ebb. Therefore full flood would be at eleven o'clock. But we hadn't any idea of whether it was ten or eleven or twelve, because there was no light to see Jerry's watch by. He had just an ordinary Ingersoll, not the grand Radiolite kind that you can see in the dark and it was perfectly maddening to hear it ticking away cheerfully, and no good to us at all. Just then something cold wrapped itself around my ankle. It was the edge of another wavelet.