Read Online The Castaways of the Flag by Jules Verne - Free Book Online Page B

had
better not land," Mrs. Wolston agreed. "We will do our best while you
are away."
     
                "The
great thing," Fritz remarked, "is to keep what little biscuit we have
left, in case we are obliged to put to sea again."
     
                "Now,
Mrs. Fritz," John Block said, "get the stove going. We are not the
kind of people to be satisfied with lichen soup or boiled pebbles, and we
promise to bring you something solid and substantial."
     
                The weather
was fairly fine. Through the clouds in the east a few sun-rays filtered.
     
                Fritz, Frank,
James, and the boatswain trudged together along the edge of the shore, over sand
still wet from the last high tide.
     
                Ten feet or
so higher the sea-weeds lay in zig-zag lines.
     
                Some were of
kinds which contain nutritive substances, and John Block exclaimed:
     
                "Why,
people eat that—when they haven't got anything else! In my country, in Irish
sea-ports, a sort of jam is made of that!"
     
                After walking
three or four hundred yards in this direction, Fritz and his companions came to
the foot of the bastion to the west. Formed of enormous rocks with slippery
surfaces, and almost perpendicular, it plunged straight down into the clear and
limpid water which the slight surf scarcely disturbed. Its foundations could be
seen seven or eight fathoms below.
     
                To climb
along this bastion was quite impossible for it rose perpendicularly. It would
be necessary to scale the cliff in order to find out if the upper plateau
displayed a less arid surface. Moreover, if they had to abandon the idea of
climbing this bastion it meant that they could only get round it by means of
the boat. The matter of present urgency, however, was to look for some cavity
in the cliff wherein they could take shelter.
     
                So all went
up to the top of the beach, along the base of the bastion.
     
                When they
reached the corner of the cliff, they came upon thick layers of sea-weeds,
absolutely dry. As the last water-marks of the high tide were visible more than
two hundred yards lower down, this meant—the steep pitch of the shore being
taken into account—that these plants had been thrown up so far, not by the sea,
but by the winds from the south, which are very violent in these waters.
     
                "If we
were obliged to spend the winter here," Fritz remarked, "these
sea-weeds would supply us with fuel for a long time, if we could not find any
wood."
     
                "Fuel
that burns fast," the boatswain added. "Before we came to the end of
heaps like that, of course            . But we have still got something to boil
the pot with to-day. Now we must find something to put in it!"
     
                "Let's
look about," Frank answered.
     
                The cliff was
formed by irregular strata. It was easy to recognise the crystalline nature of
these rocks, where feldspar and gneiss were mixed, an enormous mass of granite,
of plutonic origin and extreme hardness.
     
                This
formation recalled in no respect to Fritz and Frank the walls of their own
island from Deliverance Bay to False Hope Point, where limestone only was
found, easily broken by pick or hammer. It was thus that the grotto of Rock
Castle had been fashioned. Out of solid granite, any such work would have been
impossible.
     
                Fortunately
there was no need to make any such attempt. A hundred yards from the bastion,
behind the piles of sea-wrack, they found a number of openings in the rock.
They resembled the cells of a gigantic hive, and possibly gave access to the
inside of the rock.
     
                There were
indeed several cavities at the foot of this cliff.
     
                While some
provided