Presently Jack came back, shouting loudly:
`Father! Mother! Do come and look. There is an enormous skeleton lying here; the skeleton of some fearful great beast—a mammoth, I should think.'
`Why Jack!' returned I laughing, `have you forgot our old acquaintance, the whale? What else could it be?'
`Oh no, father, it is not the whale. This thing has not fish bones, but real good, honest, huge, beast bones. I don't know what can have become of the whale—floated out to sea most likely. This mammoth is ever so much bigger. Come and see!'
As I was about to follow the boy, a voice from another direction suddenly cried:
`Father! Father! A great enormous turtle! Please make haste. It is waddling back to the sea as hard as it can go, and we can't stop it.'
This appeal being more pressing, as well as more important, than
Jack's, I snatched up an oar and hastened to their assistance.
Sure enough a large turtle was scrambling quickly towards the water, and was within a few paces of it, although Ernest was valiantly holding on by one of its hind legs.
I sprang down the bank, and making use of the oar as a lever, we succeeded with some difficulty in turning the creature on its back.
It was a huge specimen, fully eight feet long, and being now quite helpless, we left it sprawling, and went to inspect Jack's mammoth skeleton, which, of course, proved to be neither more nor less than that of the whale. I convinced him of the fact by pointing out the marks of our feet on the ground, and the broken jaws where we had hacked out the whalebone.