“No,” sobbed Limberleg. “We’ll have to stay here till we die.”
Firefly whimpered a little and crept close to her mother on the log, but Firetop noticed that his father wasn’t crying, so he swallowed several large lumps in his throat and sat up straight. For some time they stayed on the bluff and looked down the steep banks of broken earth and rocks into the deep water below.
Great logs were floating about and huge trees, uprooted from the banks, were lying with their tops in the water.
At last Limberleg said in a discouraged voice, “Well, what shall we do?”
“The first thing to do,” said Hawk-Eye, “is to go down to the beach and see what we can find to eat.”
Beyond the steep cliffs on which they stood there was a bay with a wide beach. Beyond the bay great rocks extended in a chain out into the water. If you have been to England, you may have passed those very rocks. They are called “The Needles.”
Hawk-Eye and Limberleg and the Twins climbed down to the beach. They were so hungry that they were almost ready to eat sand and pebbles, like chickens, if they could find nothing else.
But there was plenty of seaweed on the
beach and they found little mussels clinging to it. They ate both the seaweed and the mussels, as they walked along.