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.”