Таинственный остров / Mysterious Island

Gideon Spilett, Pencroff, and Herbert looked earnestly upon this land where they were to live, perhaps for long years.

“Well,” demanded Herbert, “what do you think of it, Pencroff?”

“Well,” replied the sailor, “there’s good and bad in it, as with everything else. But we will soon see. In three hours we can reach that shore, and we will see what we can do to find Mr. Smith.”

Pencroff was not wrong in his predictions. Three hours later, at low tide, Spilett and his two companions waded through the water, which was nowhere more than five feet deep.

Herbert, where the water was too deep, swam like a fish; and all arrived without difficulty at the other shore.

Chapter IV

The reporter walked along the coast in the direction which Neb had taken some hours before, and disappeared quickly around a turn in the shore. Herbert wished to go with him.

“Stay, my boy,” said the sailor. “We must pitch our camp for the night, and try to find something more satisfying to eat than shellfish.

Our friends will need food when they come back.”

“I am ready, Pencroff,” said Herbert.

“Good,” said the sailor. “We are tired, cold, and hungry; we need shelter, fire, and food. There is plenty of wood in the forest, and we can get eggs from the nests; but we must find a house.”

“Well,” said Herbert, “I will look for a cave in these rocks.”

“Right,” said Pencroff. “Let us start at once.”

They walked along the base of the rocky wall.

But instead of going northwards, they turned to the south. Pencroff had noticed a narrow inlet in the coast. Now it was important to pitch the camp near the fresh water; in that part of the island, too, Smith could be found.

The rock rose 300 feet, smooth and massive. It was a sturdy wall of the hardest granite. About the summit hovered a host of aquatic birds, with long, narrow, pointed beaks.

Meanwhile Herbert noticed some rocks. On them lay hosts of bivalves.

Herbert called to Pencroff, who came running to him.

“Ah, they are mussels,” said the sailor.

“They are not mussels,” said Herbert, examining the mollusks carefully, “they are lithodomes[24 - lithodomes – литодомы].”

“Can we eat them?” said Pencroff.

“Certainly.”

“Then let us eat some lithodomes.”

These lithodomes were oblong shell-fish[25 - shell-fish – ракушки], adhering in clusters to the rocks.