being up so late the night before, Greg was the first
one down to breakfast next morning. Our postman always brings the
mail just before the end of breakfast, and we can hear him click the
gate as he comes in. This morning Jerry and Greg dashed for the mail
together, and Greg squeezed through where Jerry thought he couldn't
and got there first. When they came back, Jerry was saying:

"Let me have it, won't you; it'll take you all day!" and dodging his
arm over Greg's shoulder.

"Messrs. Christopher, Gerald, and Gregory Holford; 17 Luke Street,"
Greg read slowly. Then he tripped over the threshold and floundered
on to me, flourishing the big envelope and shouting:

"It's funny paper, and it's funny writing, and I _know_ it's from
The Bottle!"

"My stars!" said Jerry, with a final snatch.

But I had the envelope, and I looked at it very carefully.

"Boys," I said, "I truly believe that it is."

CHAPTER III

The envelope was a square, thinnish one, addressed in very small,
black handwriting.

"It _must_ be from The Bottle," Jerry said; "otherwise they wouldn't
have thought you were a boy and put Christopher."

I had been thinking just the same thing while I was trying to open
the envelope. It was one of the very tightly stuck kind that
scrumples up when you try to rip it with your finger, and we had to
slit it with a fruit-knife before we could get at the letter. There
were sheets of thin paper all covered with writing, and when Jerry
and Greg saw that, they both fell upon it so that none of us could
read it at all. I persuaded them that the quickest thing to do would
be to let me read it aloud, and as we'd finished breakfast anyway,
we each took our last piece of toast in our hands and went out and
sat on the bottom step of the porch. I read:

_Fellow Adventurers and Mariners in Distress:_

By this time there may be naught left of you but a whitening
huddle of bones, surf bleached on the end of Wecanicut,--for
I know well what meager fare are eiligugs' eggs and barnacles.
However, I take the chance of finding at least one of you
alive, and address you fraternally as a companion in distress.

I am myself stranded on a cheerless island where, against my
will, I am kept captive--for how long a time I cannot guess.
I was brought here at night, only forty-eight hours ago, and
landed from a vessel which almost immediately departed whence
it had come, into the darkness. My captors