With that he went to the beach and walked along the water's edge till he found a bunch of clean, wet sea-weed. Returning to the fire, he carefully wrapped the mullets in this, and placed them in the hot ashes, covering them with live coals to a depth of several inches. Half an hour later he took them carefully out of their wrappings, and placed them on the log that did duty for a table.
The fish were beautifully done, and looked as tempting as possible, but, upon tasting them, a look of consternation came over Jack's countenance.
"I never thought of that," said Jack, "but we are out of salt! What shall we do? We can't live altogether on shrimps and oysters; and fish without salt is a difficult dish to eat."
"We must make some salt," said Ned.
"Out of the sea-water?" asked Charley.
"Yes. It is slow work, and without clarifying materials we'll get a rather black product, but it will be salt for all that."
"What will make it black?" asked Jack.
"Impurities. The sea-water is filled with various things—common salt, mostly, of course, but there are Glauber's salts, Epsom salts, magnesia, and many other things, including salts of silver and iron. In making salt out of sea-water, these impurities must be got rid of, or the salt will be of a dirty brownish color. We can't clarify it, but we can use it very well for all our purposes. We'll have to put up with a poor breakfast, but we'll do better by night. I'll start our salt-works immediately after breakfast, and then I'll leave Charley in charge of the business, because I have an idea of my own that I want to carry out. We must devote ourselves to-day exclusively to the business of getting food, I suppose."
"Yes, that is the first thing to be done. We are at the starvation point and must get something to eat before we begin on the boat. What is the plan that you speak of?"
"I shan't tell you, because it may come to nothing, though I'm hopeful."