“Wonderfully beautiful!” he exclaimed. “What a prize!” And as if he were handling the most delicate piece of mechanism, he carefully lifted the basket into the boat.
“What is it?” I asked. “What can it be?”
“What is it!” exclaimed my uncle. “It is worth coming all the way from England to obtain, and living out here many years. Why, this is a perfect nautilus!” With the greatest care he drew out the fragile shell with the creature inside. “See,” he said, “it belongs to the genus Cephalapoda. It is one of the Polythalamous, or many-chambered shells.”
“Well, I should call it a big snail of rather a curious shape,” observed Roger Trew.
However, as far as the shape was concerned, it more approached a horn with the end curled up and placed in the mouth. My uncle said he was rather doubtful that, when alive, the nautilus did float on the water. However, he confessed that many naturalists assert that it does so, as do certainly the people of the coast near which it is found. He told me that possibly this idea had arisen because the shell, when empty, swims on the surface. The creature, when at the bottom, crawls along like any other snail. Sometimes it dies and falls out, when the shell rises to the surface by means of the gases generated in its chambers; and thus they are seen floating on the waves. Others say, however, that the animal itself with the shell, putting out its head and all its tentacles, spreads them upon the water with the poop of the shell above it. The light part of the shell rising above the waves is taken for the sail with which it is said to move over the surface. Numbers are seen together after a storm, by which it is supposed that they congregate also at the bottom in troops. They certainly do not sail for any length of time; but having taken in all their tentacles, they turn over their boat, and thus once more descend to the bottom.
Chapter Twenty Seven.
Our hill-fort.
It was amusing to see the two naturalists eagerly examining the nautilus when we brought it in.