o thick,
but had to be poked forth with a fork. Everything was delicious, down
to the lemonade in the big bottle, although it had grown rather warm
through standing in the sun. Altogether it was a glorious repast, eaten
as it was on that delightful day, the dimpling sea spreading out before
them as far as the eye could reach, with here and there a white sail
like a speck upon the vast expanse.

At last the lunch or dinner was ended, and then there was plenty more to
do and see. There was the old man sitting in his donkey-cart, very
stupidly as Fred thought, driving it along in the shallow water; but
when they came nearer they could see there were a couple of ropes
dragging behind; and just as they came up, out drove the old man very
slowly, and the two ropes at the tail of the cart dragged forth a long
shrimping-net, in which, for the first time, Fred saw hundreds upon
hundreds of the curious-looking crustaceans crawling about, black and
ugly, and in company with numbers of little silvery fish, which the old
man threw out, whereupon they shuffled their little bodies down out of
sight in the wet sand. Fred was about to rake them out again, but a
word of warning restrained him, for they were the little sticklebacks of
the sea, only their prickles made wounds of a poisonous nature that were
a long time getting well.

Mr Inglis bought a basketful of the shrimps, although Fred said they
were black ones and not good; but he changed his mind when they came up
for tea, hot and red, and steaming from cook's saucepan.

Then the old man drove in again to his shrimping, and our party stopped
to examine the jelly-fish, like glass paper-weights, which were left
upon the sand, while Mr Inglis pointed out two or three which had been
left by the morning tide, and were now dried up to a thin, filmy skin.
There was plenty to see. On the cliffs there was samphire in abundance,
which they could easily gather, without hanging half-way down like
Shakespeare's samphire-gatherer. They picked a good bunch for cook to
pickle; and collected so many things of all sorts and kinds that Papa at
last cried, "Hold, enough!" for poor Tom would never be able to get
everything home. Pockets, baskets, handkerchiefs, even thing was full.
There were perforated stones; shells of all kinds; sea-weeds; dry
star-fish; pieces of jet; bright pebbles; smooth pearly pieces of
oyster-shell; tiny pebbles bright and glistening; in short, such a
collection of t