The Campbell's seaside cottage stood behind the sandhills. It had been built by a retired sea-captain, who had planned it to look as like a ship inside as a house could be made to look. The walls were panelled in wood, painted bird's-egg blue, and decorated with pictures of ships. The windows were round like portholes; the table stood across one end of the room and was screwed to the floor, as were also the benches on either side. In the children's rooms were bunks, in rows one above the other, and the washing-stands were fixtures. It was altogether very charming and romantic.
Tea was of the kind called high, and the hungry children disposed of cold ham, an extraordinary number of boiled eggs, several loaves of smoking hot new bread, and at least a pound of butter and two or three pounds of jam.
"May we go for a walk to the rocks?" asked Prudence, when tea was over. "We will go very quietly along the beach and not get wet, and be home before dark."
Papa said he would walk that way a little later on and meet them; so Mamma gave permission, and soon a party of six were wandering by the shore towards the rocks, carrying their boots and stockings slung round their necks. It did not take them long to cover the two miles which lay between their beach and the rocks. Mollie found it hard to pass by all the lovely shells with which the beach was strewn, but the rest were impatient. The sun was dropping down the sky and they had not too much time for their search.
It did not promise to be a very successful search, for nowhere was there anything even remotely like a duke's nose to be seen—nor indeed any sort of nose. The rocks were low and for the most part jagged, with pools of water in the hollows between them for unwary or careless people to slip into. Many of them were covered with periwinkles, which Grizzel could not resist gathering. She filled her boots with them.
"Papa likes them," she said, when Prudence and Mollie remonstrated with her for lingering; "he says they taste like a sea-breeze, and if we aren't going to take back a duke's nose I may as well take a periwinkle's nose; it will be better than nothing."
The cliffs were high and precipitous, but they were no particular shape, being, as Hugh said, merely the edge of Australia. The children scrambled along till they reached the turn of the coast-line, beyond which were more rocks and cliffs, much the same as those about them.
"Perhaps it isn't here at all," Prudence said, as they seated themselves in a row on the edge of a big boulder; "the message didn't say it was. It might be anywhere. Perhaps that bottle came hundreds of miles, and the Duke's Nose is at the South Pole."
"More likely Kangaroo Island or Yorke's Peninsula," Hugh said. "We might sail the raft across—it's only about fifty miles to the Peninsula."
"How'd you get her to go?" asked Jerry. "We couldn't swim fifty miles; half a mile is my limit at a stretch; Dick can do three-quarters."