United States or Laos ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Pencroft and Herbert, after having taken the precaution of collecting an ample supply of lithodomes, with which they filled their pockets and handkerchiefs, regained the foot of the cliff. Two hundred paces farther they arrived at the cutting, through which, as Pencroft had guessed, ran a stream of water, whether fresh or not was to be ascertained.
This same morning, the 26th of March, at daybreak, Neb had set out on the shore in a northerly direction, and he had returned to the spot where the sea, no doubt, had closed over the unfortunate Harding. That day's breakfast was composed solely of pigeon's eggs and lithodomes. Herbert had found some salt deposited by evaporation in the hollows of the rocks, and this mineral was very welcome.
The reporter and his companions, after having eaten a quantity of lithodomes, sucked the sargassum, of which the taste was very tolerable. It is used in parts of the East very considerably by the natives. "Never mind!" said the sailor, "the captain will help us soon." Meanwhile the cold became very severe, and unhappily they had no means of defending themselves from it.
And his turn for natural history was, more than once in the course of time, of great use, and he was not mistaken in this instance. These lithodomes were oblong shells, suspended in clusters and adhering very tightly to the rocks.
They belong to that species of molluscous perforators which excavate holes in the hardest stone; their shell is rounded at both ends, a feature which is not remarked in the common mussel. Pencroft and Herbert made a good meal of the lithodomes, which were then half opened to the sun.
"Here are mussels!" cried the sailor; "these will do instead of eggs!" "They are not mussels," replied Herbert, who was attentively examining the molluscs attached to the rocks; "they are lithodomes." "Are they good to eat?" asked Pencroft. "Perfectly so." "Then let us eat some lithodomes."
The engineer's condition would, therefore, have been bad enough, if his companions had not carefully covered him with their coats and waistcoats. Supper, this evening, was of course composed of the inevitable lithodomes, of which Herbert and Neb picked up a plentiful supply on the beach.
Word Of The Day