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It was a very strange-looking creature, for while the fore part of it had legs and claws like an ordinary crab, the rear part was concealed in the shell of a large sea-snail. As Sammy gazed the crab slowly crept out from the mud, still keeping a watchful eye on the intruder. "Fine day," said Sammy, pleasantly. "Charming," replied the Crab. "Water's a little cool, though," said Sammy.
It is a sort of sea-snail, as the name helix implies, is perfectly smooth, "very delicate and fragile, and not more than about three-quarters of an inch in diameter." All these shell-fish contain a sac or bag full of colouring matter, which is capable of being used as a dye.
"If we do succeed in making him take this holiday, our next step will be to get the sea-snail to promise to take us all in his shell and carry us to the mouth of Puddleby River.
"That," whispered Polynesia, "is what sailors for hundreds of years have called the Sea-serpent. I've seen it myself more than once from the decks of ships, at long range, curving in and out of the water. But now that I see it close and still, I very strongly suspect that the Sea-serpent of history is no other than the Great Glass Sea-snail that the fidgit told us of.
In our Natica heros, for instance, the common large gray Sea-Snail of our coast, this change takes place when the yolk has subdivided into eight parts.
The name is not a bad one, with the exception that the saucer lacks a bottom; but the form of these circular bands of sand is certainly very like a saucer with the bottom knocked out. Hold one of them against the light and you will see that it is composed of countless transparent spheres, each of the size of a small pin's head. These are the eggs of our common Natica or Sea-Snail.
"How quaint it would be if one could carry it about like a lantern, or have little sprats for candles. Some of the seabeasts would really be very pretty like lampshades; the blue sea-snail that glitters all over like starlight; and some of the red starfish really shine like red stars. But, naturally, I'm not looking for them here."
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.
Until that hour, he had found nothing but laughter for this same mount, likening the spectacle of it, with its castle and cottages, now to a senile monarch with moth-eaten ermine about his toes and a lop-sided crown on his head, now to a monstrous sea-snail creeping shoreward.
At least eighty per cent of the possible oyster crop is destroyed by this sea-snail. This creature, usually about half an inch long, crawls on an oyster usually a young one and with a rasp-like tongue files a hole in the shell, through which it sucks the juices out of the oyster.
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