`Why not use the sea-water itself?' asked Jack.
`Because,' said Ernest, `it is not only salt, but bitter too.
Just try it.'
`Now,' said my wife, tasting the soup with the stick with which
she had been stirring it, `dinner is ready, but where can Fritz
be?' she continued, a little anxiously. `And how are we to eat
our soup when he does come?' she continued. `We have neither
plates nor spoons. Why did we not remember to bring some from
the ship?'
"Because, my dear, one cannot think of everything at once. We
shall be fortunate if we do not find even more things we have
forgotten."
"But we can scarcely lift the boiling pot to our mouths," she said.
I was forced to agree. We all looked upon the pot with perplexity,
rather like the fox in the fable, to whom the stork served up a
dinner in a jug with a long neck. Silence was at length broken,
when all of us burst into hearty laughter at our own folly in
not remembering that spoons and forks were things of absolute
necessity.
`Oh, for a few cocoanut shells!' sighed Ernest.
`Oh, for half a dozen plates and as many silver spoons!' rejoined
I, smiling.
`Really though, oyster-shells would do,' said he, after a
moment's thought.
`True, that is an idea worth having! Off with you, my boys, get
the oysters and clean out a few shells.
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