Scrambling among ashes and black pumice-stone, he reached, and drew it forth.
It was a stone jar, shaped like a ginger-beer bottle, tightly corked, and covered over the mouth and neck by thin sheet-lead, which was paid over with old tarred spunyarn; but it was so thickly encrusted with lichens and dust, which the sun and dew had baked upon it, that it had quite the colour and aspect of the stones that lay around it.
"Now, what the deuce is this?" asked Captain Baylis.
"A bottle," said Hartly, turning it over.
"It must have lain here a long time, if we judge by its outside," said I.
"Letters have never been deposited here since 1816," observed Baylis, "when the British built the town and battery yonder."
"So if it has lain here one year, it must have lain fifty."
"Letters, probably; but few folks can care about them now."
"Faith! the man's head does not ache that untwisted this spunyarn; it is at least seventy years old!" said Captain Baylis, fraying the strands with his fingers; "but we'll crack the bottle when we get on board, and see what the contents are."
We joined Mrs. Baylis at the landing-place. She was reclining in the stern of the gig with a large white umbrella over her head, and could scarcely repress her curiosity to discover the contents of the old stone jug, or bottle, till we got on board.
Then we broke it by a blow of a hammer, and there fell out, not letters, as we expected, but a roll of paper, consisting of leaves stitched together, and closely covered with writing, containing a narrative, or something of the kind, which had been deposited in that strange mode and strange place by some waggish or eccentric person, in the hope, perhaps, that if ever discovered, by the mystery enveloping their literary production, it would assuredly be given to the public.
It was without date; but fortunately the handwriting was plain and legible, though the ink was dim and faded, for the stone bottle being porous, the paper had become damp, almost wet, and had to be carefully dried in the sunshine, which curled it up like crisped leaves in autumn, so the preparation of it for perusal was consigned to my care by Captain Baylis, who had discovered that I was, as he said, "a regular-built bookworm."