Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/106

94 castaway. In an exuberance of spirits, a woman guest hurled a half-emptied champagne bottle into the waves. Favouring winds carried it to the shore of Rainbow Bay, and a week later, Ben, while walking along the sands, discovered it, cast up by the receding tide, and now clutched in the embrace of a landcrab which crawled awkwardly away at his approach. The champagne in the bottle was stale—anyway Ben had no stomach for it. But an old, old idea occurred to him, and he decided to try the thousand-in-one, forlorn, last chance it offered.

"If that bottle has taken a trip all the way from civilization—if you call it that—why, maybe it can find its way back."

So on a piece of bark, he cut the message:

"Shipwrecked on island—about Lat. 18 N. Long. 62 W. Alive. Well. Notify Capt. H. Brent & Miss Sally Fell at Salthaven, Mass., U. S. A.

Benj. Boltwood, form, mate Bark Provincetown."

"Landlubber's calculation," he grumbled to himself, "but maybe it won't miss it by more 'n a hundred miles."

The old cork was too swollen to be replaced, so he fashioned a new one from a bit he found in the flotsam on the beach, then very carefully fitted it in the mouth, walked to the end of the southern Horn and swam out to sea. To the westward-moving current he gave the bottle with a wish