"What are they?" asked Joe laughing;--"not whales?"
"Oh, nothin' like that. Flowery kind of things, awful pretty, that shut up if you look at 'em very hard, or leastways if you poke 'em ever so easy."
"Those are sea-anemones," said Mr. Bernard.
"Then there are crowds of little things with pricks all over their backs, and if you turn them over they stick out those splinters sideways, and make 'em long-like, and pull themselves right side up again," said John, trying to imitate, with his own arms, the sea-urchin's movements with his spines.
"There's more than that there, too," piped Jerry. "There's five-fingers, plenty of 'em--big ones, and baby-fellers, too, no bigger than your finger-nail; nor so big."
"Sometimes fish get in there, too," said John. "I tell you it's an awful pretty puddle."
"I should think so, indeed," said Mr. Andrews. "It certainly is a 'puddle' worth seeing.--When will the tide be low, Jonas?"
"About five o'clock, I reckon, though the fog has been too thick to tell whether there has been any tide or not," answered the cook, who had come with the others to see the "spouting-horn."
"Very little doubt of that, I should judge from appearances," said Mr. Lane, one of the teachers.
"I am too tired to come over again to-day, boys," said Mr. Bernard, turning to take little Max's hand. "But you can come at low tide, if you like. I suppose John and his brother will be willing to meet you."