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Then the world interrupts in some way, and, just as a hermit-crab draws down its shell with a comically rapid movement, so Derrick suddenly retires into himself. Thus much for his outer man.
The interior arrangements of the frigate corresponded to its nautical qualities. I was well satisfied with my cabin, which was in the after part, opening upon the gunroom. "We shall be well off here," said I to Conseil. "As well, by your honour's leave, as a hermit-crab in the shell of a whelk," said Conseil.
The hermit-crab is in fact a sea-gentleman, who is so unfortunate as to be born naked, and quite unable to make his own clothes, and who goes nervously about the world, trying on other people's cast-off coats till he finds one to fit him.
"And did the Pilot really take good care of Sammy?" asked Bob, anxiously, as he and Eleanor took their places on the little balcony with grandma, and eagerly awaited the continuation of the ocean story. "I don't believe he did," said his sister positively. "I just know that old Pilot was a hypocrite like the Hermit-Crab and ate up poor Sammy the first chance he got."
The Hermit-crab perhaps knows best how to take advantage of old clothes. But his inveterate habit during so many generations of sheltering his abdomen in a shell prevents this part from being encrusted with lime and becoming hard.
The Hermit-crab cannot do this, and when his dwelling has become too narrow he abandons it for one that is more comfortable. At first enclosed in the remains of a Trochus, he changes into that of a Purpura; a little later he seeks asylum in a Whelk.
Is a hermit-crab, slipping his tail out of one strange shell into another, in the hopes of its fitting him a little better, either a dignified, safe, or graceful animal? No; George Riddler was a true philosopher. 'Let vules go sarching vur and nigh, We bides at Whum, my dog and I;
The Hermit-crab dresses himself: he selects to fit him, from the discarded wardrobe of the Sea-snail, an empty shell, damaged by the waves; he slips his poor abdomen, which is incapable of hardening, inside it and leaves outside his great fists of unequal size, clad in stone boxing-gloves. This is yet another example rarely followed.
She would have proposed going on somewhere else, as there was so "little to see in Orange," but that rain came sweeping down, cold from the east, when I had followed the pair a quarter of a mile from the motor. They fled into their mackintoshes as a hermit-crab flees into his borrowed shell, and I was the only one the worse for wear when we reached the car.
The Hermit-Crab seemed particularly proud of some of his relations who live on land, and told Sammy marvelous tales of their strange habits. Some of these land-crabs will suffocate if dipped in the water. They live in the shades of the deep forest, often a long way from the sea, but come to the seashore at certain seasons to lay their eggs in the sand.
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