Part 3

“And now,” said Mr. Miller, “that we have made room in our basket, let us search for curiosities.”

High up on the sands, and close to the late dining-room, lay a number of white, flat substances, which puzzled Henry as much as the purse of the skate had done. They were oval in shape, and about the size of his foot. One side was hard and rough, the other smoother, and soft enough to be scratched by the finger-nail. Whether they were bones or shells he could not tell. “This,” said Mr. Miller, “is the backbone of a cuttle-fish. The animal, when alive, is soft, and nearly transparent. It has a large head, on which there are a number of long arms stretching out. It lives on small fish, which it chases, and then catches hold of by the help of many small suckers on its arms. When chased itself, it spurts out a quantity of black fluid, like ink, making the water so thick and dark that its enemy loses sight of it, and is obliged to give up the chase. Often, when I have been fishing from a boat, a cuttle-fish has followed a fish which I have caught, up to the very surface of the water, and sometimes I have caught the cuttle-fish itself, by darting into it a hook fastened to the end of a stick.

“I was once fishing, when the man in the boat with me caught a cuttle-fish in this way, and having lifted it into the boat too soon, it spurted its ink with such force as to spatter us all over. It is not used as food in this country, but it makes excellent bait.”

Scattered along the coast were a number of scarlet berries, which Mr. Miller looked at very closely, and said they were cranberries.

“But do cranberries grow on sea-weeds?” said Henry.

“No,” replied Mr. Miller, “certainly not; and I can only account for their being here by supposing that some ship from America must have been lost at sea during the late gale, and that these berries must have formed part of her cargo. You remember how dreadfully we heard the wind howling on Christmas Eve. It was a sad Christmas to many a poor sailor, who hoped, perhaps, to spend it among his friends on shore; friends, alas! whom he will now never meet again. See, here is something else which must have come from a ship.”

This was a small lump of spermaceti, a substance which is obtained from a kind of whale found in the Arctic regions. It had neither taste nor smell, and looked exactly like a piece of camphor.

“Look!” said Henry, as he picked up something; “here is a curious piece of wood full of holes, like the stone which we found the other day.”

“This,” said Mr. Miller, “is a piece of wood, which was once, perhaps, part of a ship that has been wrecked; at all events, it has been a long time in the water. The holes were made by a kind of worm, called Teredo, which eats its way into the hardest timber, making it so weak that a slight blow will crush it. In some seas the Teredo is so abundant, that no vessel is safe unless its bottom is entirely coated with copper. The worm is very small when first it gets into the wood, but grows larger as it eats its way, making a passage through the whole length of a plank, but never coming to the surface; so that a beam of timber may appear to be solid, and yet all the while be within as full of holes as a sponge. As it goes on, it lines its passage with a white shell, which it has the power of making.” In one of the holes a portion of the white shell was still remaining.

“Is it not,” continued Mr. Miller, “a wonderful little animal? It can work its way in the dark, through solid wood, taking care never to turn a quarter of an inch too much towards the right or towards the left. It is taught by God to line its house with shell, but no one knows how it works, or what materials it employs; and, worm as it is, the boldest sailor would refuse to go to sea in a ship which it had taken hold of. It may lead us, too, to despise nothing that God has made, however trifling it may appear.”

The next thing picked up was a piece of cork, covered with barnacles. Barnacles are small shell-fish, growing on long leathery stems, by which they fasten themselves to floating wood, or the bottoms of vessels. They are not so mischievous as the worms mentioned before, as they do not actually eat the wood; but when, as is sometimes the case, they thickly cover the bottom of a ship, they prevent it from going quickly through the water. It is sometimes found necessary to take a ship into a dock, in order to scrape off the barnacles.

A piece of stone picked up by Henry, looking like a coal-cinder, but white, Mr. Miller said was pumice-stone. It is one of the kinds of stone thrown up by volcanoes, or burning mountains. It is so light that it floats on water. He thought that this piece might, perhaps, have been thrown from a burning mountain into the sea, or that it might have been thrown overboard from a ship. It is used on board ships to scrub the decks with, and on land painters use it in scraping off paint from wood which is to be coated afresh.

“On the whole,” said he, “most probably it came direct from a volcano, for I scarcely ever came to this part of the coast without finding some, and it could scarcely happen that pumice-stone would always be falling overboard by accident.”

The number of shells which lay scattered along the beach was very great. Some were like snail-shells, but more solid. Mr. Miller knew the names, but as he thought that Henry would not be able to recollect them, he only told him that they crawled about rocks and sea-weeds, very much as snails do on land, some living on sea-weed, and others on dead fish, or any animal substance they can find. Those which are named periwinkles and whelks are gathered by people who live near the sea, and sold for food, but they are neither nice nor wholesome. Others were what Mr. Miller called bivalves; that is, each animal had two shells, fastened together by a hinge. There were a great many large white cockle-shells, deeply furrowed, and having rows of sharp points on the outside. Some were yet larger, brown outside and white within, and strong enough to scoop up sand with; others, which were flatter, were scarcely thicker than paper. Most of these were single, and had no fish in them; but many smaller kinds were found which had been washed in without injury. These were stowed away very carefully. The most singular of all was a white one, four or five inches long, shaped something like the pod of a pea, but open at both ends. This Mr. Miller called a razor-shell, and said that the animal lived in the sand, burrowing in it like an earth-worm, and, perhaps, living on the small sea-insects which it finds.

Yet more curious than any of the bivalves, was a fish shaped like the axle and spokes of a wheel. It was dead; but Mr. Miller said that each of its five arms was covered with holes, through which, when the animal was alive, it sent out small suckers, and with them caught hold of its food. Fishermen often find these star-fishes, as they are called, very troublesome, as they are very abundant in some places, and eat the bait intended for crabs and lobsters.

Henry had now found so many strange things, which turned out to be quite different from what he expected, that when he picked up what looked like a wax-candle, he thought he held in his hand some very wonderful sea-monster. But a wax-candle it really was, and had been a long time in the sea, as there were young barnacles attached to one end of it. This, like the cranberries, no doubt came from a wreck, and was carefully stored away in the basket, though one could not look at it without sad thoughts.

They had now walked nearly to the end of the long sands, and Mr. Miller wished to pass round a rocky point, in order to see what it was that drew together a large flock of gulls beyond, some of which were flying round in circles, now and then dipping into the water, some swimming, and some perched on the dark rocks.

The tide had gone down a good deal, but had not left the rock. Mr. Miller managed to climb round, and told Henry to wait for him, as this work required longer and stronger arms than his. He soon came back; and, after waiting a little while longer, the tide went out so far that, watching for an opportunity, when a great wave went out, they were able to run round the point before another came in.

The gulls all rose and flew away as they drew near, but they found, on the spot where they had been gamboling, an immense number of shells, with the fish still in them, and had little doubt that the quick eyes of the gulls had discovered these, and that they had been making a plentiful feast.

They had now reached another winding path, by which the people who live near the coast were in the habit of driving mules and donkeys laden with sea-weed, to be used as manure. After a storm, in summer and autumn, the coast has a very busy appearance, from the number of people who gain their living in this way. The weed is first collected into heaps on the sand, then carried to the top of the cliff, where it is thrown into a large heap, and allowed to stay until it rots, after which it is spread on the fields, and is a very useful manure.

Four o’clock having now nearly arrived, they said good-bye to the sea, with its blue waves, its yellow sands, its shells, its pebbles, and its many strange things, and found the carriage waiting for them.

In a few days Henry was at home again; but as you may like to know what he did with his treasures, I will tell you. Some were placed in his little museum, or collection of curiosities. The larger shells and pebbles, together with some pieces of spar, which were brought, another day, from a limestone quarry, were applied to a different purpose.

A round zinc saucer was procured, about fourteen inches across, and three deep. About six or eight holes were bored in the bottom with a gimlet, and a number of pieces of broken tiles and flower-pots were placed in it, with a small pot turned upside down in the middle. Over the potsherds was placed a layer of moss, and the saucer was filled up with earth. Round the pot in the middle, the shells and stones were built up to the height of six or eight inches, and the ferns planted in some more earth between. The whole was well watered, and then covered with a large glass dome. A prettier little rockery you never saw. Its only fault is that, when once made, it scarcely ever requires anything to be done to it. You cannot give it too much water, for what it does not want drains away through the holes in the bottom, and the earth is not washed away with it, for the moss stops it. And you can scarcely make a mistake in giving it too little water, for, as long as it is covered with a glass, the water, which rises in vapour, strikes against the dome, and trickles down again into the saucer. Henry has not yet watered it once since the day it was made, but he will do so as soon as he sees it beginning to look dry, for ferns grow best in a moist soil and damp air.

And now I have reached the end of my story. There is little in it but an account of what Henry and his father saw in the course of a few hours, on the sea-shore. You too, if you like, may pick up shells and pebbles, and see in them some of the wondrous works of God’s creation. If you do not live near the sea, look for curious things by the river’s side, in the woods, or in the hedges. They are everywhere, all differing one from another, but alike leading us to admire the wisdom and goodness of God.

R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, BREAD STREET HILL.