two casks which were floating alongside our boat, but on attempting to do so, I found that I could not get them up the bank on which we had landed, and was therefore obliged to look for a more convenient spot. As I did so, I was startled by hearing Jack shouting for help, as though in great danger. He was at some distance, and I hurried towards him with a hatchet in my hand. The little fellow stood screaming in a deep pool, and as I approached, I saw that a huge lobster had caught his leg in its powerful claw. Poor Jack was in a terrible fright; kick as he would, his enemy still clung on. I waded into the water, and seizing the lobster firmly by the back, managed to make it loosen its hold, and we brought it safe to land. Jack, having speedily recovered his spirits, and anxious to take such a prize to his mother, caught the lobster in both hands, but instantly received such a severe blow from its tail, that he flung it down, and passionately hit the creature with a large stone. This display of temper vexed me. ‘You are acting in a very childish way, my son,’ said I. ‘Never strike an enemy in a revengeful spirit.’ Once more lifting the lobster, Jack ran triumphantly towards the tent.
‘Mother, mother! A lobster! A lobster, Ernest! Look here, Franz! Mind, he’ll bite you! Where’s Fritz?’ All came crowding round Jack and his prize, wondering at its unusual size, and Ernest wanted his mother to make lobster soup directly, by adding it to what she was now boiling.
She, however, begged to decline making any such experiment, and said she preferred cooking one dish at a time. Having remarked that the scene of Jack’s adventure afforded a convenient place for getting my casks on shore, I returned thither and succeeded in drawing them up on the beach, where I set them on end, and for the present left them.
On my return I resumed the subject of Jack’s lobster, and told him he should have the offending claw all to himself when it was ready to be eaten, congratulating him on being the first to discover anything useful.
‘As to that,’ said Ernest, ‘I found something very good to eat, as well as Jack, only I could not get at them without wetting my feet.’
‘Pooh!’ cried Jack, ‘I know what he saw – nothing but some nasty mussels – I saw them too. Who wants to eat trash like that! Lobster for me!’
‘I believe them to be oysters, not mussels,’ returned Ernest calmly.
‘Be good enough, my philosophical young friend, to fetch a few specimens of these oysters in time for our next meal,’ said I. ‘We must all exert ourselves, Ernest, for the common good, and pray never let me hear you object to wetting your feet. See how quickly the sun has dried Jack and me.’
‘I can bring some salt at the same time,’ said Ernest, ‘I remarked a good deal lying in the crevices of the rocks; it tasted very pure and good, and I concluded it was produced by the evaporation of sea water in the sun.’
‘Extremely probable, learned sir,’ cried I, ‘but if you had brought a bag full of this good salt instead of merely speculating so profoundly on the subject, it would have been more to the purpose. Run and fetch some directly.’
It proved to be salt sure enough, although so impure that it seemed useless, till my wife dissolved and strained it, when it became fit to put in the soup.
‘Why not use the sea-water itself?’ asked Jack.
‘Because,’ said Ernest, ‘it is not only salt, but bitter too. Just try it.’
‘Now,’ said my wife, tasting the soup with the stick with which she had been stirring it, ‘dinner is ready, but where can Fritz be?’ she continued, a little anxiously.
‘How are we to eat our soup when he does come?’ I asked. ‘We have neither plates nor spoons, and we can scarcely lift the boiling pot to our mouths. We are in as uncomfortable a position as was the fox to whom the stork served up a dinner in a jug with a long neck.’
‘Oh, for a few coconut shells!’ sighed Ernest.
‘Oh, for half a dozen plates and as many silver spoons!’ rejoined I, smiling.
‘Really though, oyster-shells would do,’ said he, after a moment’s thought.
‘True, that is an idea worth having! Off with you, my boys, get the oysters and clean out a few shells. What though our spoons have no handles, and we do burn our fingers a little in baling the soup out.’
Jack was away and up to his knees in the water in a moment detaching the oysters. Ernest followed more leisurely, and still unwilling to wet his feet, stood by the margin of the pool and gathered in his handkerchief the oysters his brother threw him; as he thus stood he picked up and pocketed a large mussel shell for his own use. As they returned with a good supply we heard a shout from Fritz in the distance; we returned it joyfully, and he presently appeared before us, his hands behind his back, and a look of disappointment upon his countenance.
‘Unsuccessful!’ said he.
‘Really!’ I replied. ‘Never mind, my boy, better luck next time.’
‘Oh, Fritz!’ exclaimed his brothers who had looked behind him. ‘A sucking-pig, a little sucking-pig. Where did you get it? How did you shoot it? Do let us see it!’
Fritz then with sparkling eyes exhibited his prize.
‘I am glad to see the result of your prowess, my boy,’ said I; ‘but I cannot approve of deceit, even as a joke; stick to the truth in jest and earnest.’
Fritz then told us how he had been to the other side of the stream. ‘So different from this,’ he said, ‘it is really a beautiful country, and the shore, which runs down to the sea in a gentle slope, is covered with all sorts of useful things from the wreck. Do let us go and collect them. And, father, why should we not return to the wreck and bring off some of the animals? Just think of what value the cow would be to us, and what a pity it would be to lose her. Let us get her on shore, and we will move over the stream, where she will have good pasturage, and we shall be in the shade instead of on this desert, and, father, I do wish –’
‘Stop, stop, my boy!’ cried I. ‘All will be done in good time. Tomorrow and the day after will bring work of their own. And tell me, did you see no traces of our ship-mates?’
‘Not a sign of them, either on land or sea, living or dead,’ he replied.
‘But the sucking-pig,’ said Jack, ‘where did you get it?’
‘It was one of several,’ said Fritz, ‘which I found on the shore; most curious animals they are, they hopped rather than walked, and every now and then would squat down on their hind legs and rub their snouts with their fore-paws. Had not I been afraid of losing them all, I would have tried to catch one alive, they seemed so tame.’
Meanwhile, Ernest had been carefully examining the animal in question.
‘This is no pig,’ he said, ‘and except for its bristly skin, does not look like one. See its teeth are not like those of a pig, but rather those of a squirrel. In fact,’ he continued, looking at Fritz, ‘your sucking-pig is an agouti.’
‘Dear me,’ said Fritz, ‘listen to the great professor lecturing! He is going to prove that a pig is not a pig!’
‘You need not be so quick to laugh at your brother,’ said I, in my turn, ‘he is quite right. I, too, know the agouti by descriptions and pictures, and there is little doubt that this is a specimen. The little animal is a native of North America, where it makes its nest under the roots of trees, and lives upon fruit. But, Ernest, the agouti not only looks something like a pig, but most decidedly grunts like a porker.’
While we were thus talking, Jack had been vainly endeavouring to open an oyster with his large knife. ‘Here is a simpler way,’ said I, placing an oyster on the fire; it immediately opened. ‘Now,’ I continued, ‘who will try this delicacy?’ All at first hesitated to partake of them, so unattractive did they appear. Jack, however, tightly closing his eyes and making a face as though about to take medicine, gulped one down. We followed his example, one after the other, each doing so rather to provide himself with a spoon than with any hope of cultivating a taste for oysters.