Page:Ballinger Price--Us and the Bottle Man.djvu/154

Rh 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 136