A flat board which had served as a shelf supplied him with an easy way
of turning up the sand. Occupation was pleasant, and in an hour or two
he had scooped out a place large enough for the purpose which he had in
view. He then went back into the inner cabin.

Taking his board he removed carefully the sand which had covered the
skeleton. The clothes came away with it. As he moved his board along it
struck something hard. He could not see in that dim light what it was,
so he reached down his hand and grasped it.

It was something which the fingers of the skeleton also encircled, for
his own hand as he grasped it touched those fingers. Drawing it forth he
perceived that it was a common junk bottle tightly corked.

There seemed a ghastly comicality in such a thing as this, that this
lately dreaded Being should be nothing more than a common skeleton, and
that he should be discovered in this bed of horror doing nothing more
dignified than clutching a junk bottle like a sleeping drunkard. Brandon
smiled faintly at the idea; and then thinking that, if the liquor were
good, it at least would be welcome to him in his present situation. He
walked out upon the deck, intending to open it and test its contents. So
he sat down, and, taking his knife, he pushed the cork in. Then he
smelled the supposed liquor to see what it might be. There was only a
musty odor. He looked in. The bottle appeared to be filled with paper.
Then the whole truth flashed upon his mind. He struck the bottle upon
the deck. It broke to atoms, and there lay a scroll of paper covered
with writing.

He seized it eagerly, and was about opening it to read what was written
when he noticed something else that also had fallen from the bottle.