o have a specimen of each kind."

He succeeded in breaking off a piece, which was of a deep orange-colour
inside; he collected also, and deposited in his bag, some other pieces,
of various forms and colours. These greatly enriched his collection;
and, idle as he was, he did not complain of any difficulty in obtaining
them. He had given his gun to Jack, who complained much of the
ruggedness of our road. Our march was truly painful, and I repented more
than once of having yielded to the idea; besides the misery of walking
along these shelly rocks, which presented points like the sharp teeth of
a saw, tearing our shoes and even our skin, the sea, in some of the
lower places, was so high as to bar our passage, and we were obliged, in
the interval between two waves, to rush across, with the water to our
chins. We had some difficulty to avoid being carried away. I trembled
especially for Jack; though small and light, he preferred facing the
wave to avoiding it. I was several times obliged to catch hold of him,
and narrowly escaped destruction along with him. Happily, our march was
not above half a mile, and we gained the shore at last without any
serious accident, but much fatigued and foot-sore; and we made a
resolution never more to cross the coral reefs.

After dressing ourselves, resting, and taking a slight refreshment on
the beach, we resumed our march more at our ease into the interior of
the island; but though the long grass was not so sharp as the coral, it
was almost as troublesome, twisting round our legs, and threatening to
throw us down every step we took. Ernest, loaded with his bag of
fragments of rock, coral, and zoophytes, had given his gun to Jack; and,
fearing an accident among the long grass, I thought it prudent to
discharge it. In order to profit by it, I fired at a little quadruped,
about the size of a squirrel, and killed it. It appeared to me to be the
animal called by naturalists the palm-squirrel, because it climbs the
cocoa and date-palms, hooks itself by its tail, which is very long and
flexible, to the upper branches, and feeds at pleasure on the fruit, of
which it is very fond. We amused ourselves by details of the habits of
this animal, occasionally separating to make more discoveries, but
agreeing on a particular call, which was to assemble us when
necessary,--a precaution by no means useless, as it turned out.

Fritz, with his head raised, went on examining all the trees, and
occasionally g