when I
seed you grab it. But you must 'a' give a powerful heave to come up with
all that stone."

"I don't think you ought to have tried to do that," said Rectus, who
looked as if he hadn't enjoyed himself. "I didn't know you were so
obstinate."

"Well," said I, "the truth of the matter is that I am a fool, sometimes,
and I might as well admit it. But now let's see what we've got on this
stone."

There was a lot of curious things on the piece of rock which had come up
with the sea-feather. There were small shells, of different shapes and
colors, with the living creatures inside of them, and there were mosses,
and sea-weed, and little sponges, and small sea-plants, tipped with red
and yellow, and more things of the kind than I can remember. It was the
handsomest and most interesting piece of coral-rock that I had seen yet.

As for the big purple sea-feather, it was a whopper, but too big for me
to do anything with it. When we got home, Rectus showed it around to
the Chippertons, and some of the people at the hotel, and told them that
I dived down and brought it up, myself, but I couldn't take it away with
me, for it was much too long to go in my trunk. So I gave it next day to
Captain Chris, to sell, if he chose, but I believe he took it back and
planted it again in the submarine garden, so that his passengers could
see how tall a sea-feather could grow, when it tried. I chipped off a
piece of the rock, however, to carry home as a memento. I was told that
the things growing on it--I picked off all the shells--would make the
clothes in my trunk smell badly, but I thought I'd risk it.

"After all," said Rectus, that night, "what was the good of it? That
little piece of stone don't amount to anything, and you might have been
drowned."

"I don't think I could have been drowned," said I, "for I should have
dropped the old thing, and floated, if I had felt myself giving out. But
the good of it was this: It showed me what a disagreeable sort of place
a sea-garden is, when you go down into it to pick things."

"Which you wont do again, in a hurry, I reckon," said Rectus.

"You're right there, my boy," I answered.

The next day, the Chippertons and ourselves took a two-horse barouche,
and rode to the "caves," some six or seven miles from the town. We had a
long walk through the pineapple fields before we came to the biggest
cave, and found it wasn't very much of a cave, after all, though there
was a sort of a room, on