by Donald Hancock

Created on: July 11, 2010   Last Updated: February 05, 2011

"A message found"

Excerpt from the novel "A Message for All Time" Chap. 1 "A Message Found"

 It was 1954. Richard had just celebrated his 17th birthday. He and his mother, Gloria, were staying for the week end at a cottage, owned by a friend, at Brighton Beach on the southern coast of England.  On this marvelous afternoon He could hardly contain himself as he rowed his little boat to shore. He had found the proverbial "message in a bottle". He was afraid to try to open it in the boat for fear that he might damage the message. The bottle seemed obviously very old. The cork and sealing materials also seemed somewhat primitive by modern standards. 

 When he had secured his boat he put the bottle in his back pack, jumped on his bike, and headed for home. As he ran into the house he yelled, "Mom! Mom! Wait 'til you see what I found!" Richard went to the kitchen table, the center of all things important in his family's tradition. He put down some newspapers and placed the bottle under the strong table light.   He had difficulty with the cork at first but found a cork screw and got it free in a few minutes. He tried to "dump" the message but it, being rolled up, had unrolled and expanded. It would not come out without persuasion. He gingerly fished it out with some long eyebrow tweezers and carefully unrolled the brittle paper onto the table.

 He read the following note to his mother.   "I write these words to no one special. I have no family, except for one. But somehow it makes dying easier if you say some sort of last words. I don't expect anybody to find this so I write it as a statement to the 'cloud of witnesses' that the Bible says is watching me. I am floating in a little rubber life raft. The supplies aboard have long ago been used up, except for this bit of paper and pencil and a bottle that I saved.   My ship went down from a German sub. Most of my buddies went down with the ship."

" Three of us found this dinghy. The other two Bob Swithers and Melvin Dorster have already died from exposure and, I think, loss of hope. We have counted twenty days. I am Jim Stark of London. I am very weak and feel that my time can be a matter of minutes or hours at the most." 

" I want to say that I hope that what we are trying to do to turn Hitler around will work. I hope that peace will some day come back to the England that I love. But I want the world to know that, no matter who wins this war, I, Jim Stark, believe that freedom

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