To this, however, I would not consent, assuring him that our fate, as a solitary family, gave him quite sufficient idea of shipwreck on an uninhabited island, and that his lively imagination must supply the rest.
The boys found it hard work to row back, and began to beg of me to exert my wonderful inventive powers in contriving some kind of rowing-machine.
"You lazy fellows!" returned I; "give me the great clockwork out of a church tower, perhaps I might be able to relieve your labors."
"Oh, father!" cried Fritz, "don't you know there are iron wheels in the clockwork of the large kitchen-jacks? I'm sure mother would give them up, and you could make something out of them, could you not?"
"By the time I have manufactured a rowing-machine out of a roasting-jack, I think your arms will be pretty well inured to the use of your oars! However, I am far from despising the hint, my dear Fritz."
"Is coral of any use?" demanded Jack suddenly.
"In former times it was pounded and used by chemists; but it is now chiefly used for various ornaments, and made into beads for necklaces, etc. As such, it is greatly prized by savages, and were we to fall in with natives, we might very possibly find a store of coral useful in bartering with them.
"For the present, we will arrange these treasures of the deep in our library, and make them the beginning of a Museum of Natural History, which will afford us equal pleasure and instruction."
"One might almost say that coral belongs at once to the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms," remarked Fritz; "it is hard like stone, it has stems and branches like a shrub, and I believe tiny insects inhabit the cells, do they not, father?"
"You are right, Fritz; coral consists of the calcareous cells of minute animals, so built up as to form a tree-like structure.