After this, and when their own clothes were dried by the kitchen fire, they walked back to the Berney Arms by road, reached the yacht about three o'clock in the morning, to the great relief of d.i.c.k, who had been very anxious at their protracted absence.

The next day they sailed down to Yarmouth in the _Swan_, picked up the punt, and went up the Bure with sheets eased out and a following wind.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

The Bread Frozen.--Skating.--Fish Frozen in Ice.-- Birds Frozen to the Ice.--Ice-Ships.

It was dark when they sailed up the d.y.k.e leading to the broad, and the wind had fallen, so that their progress was slow. As they moved out of the d.y.k.e, where there was a gentle current, into the open broad, there was a sound of crashing and splintering at their bows, and the way of the yacht was stopped. Jimmy and d.i.c.k rushed out of the cabin, where they had been preparing supper, and said to Frank, who was at the helm,--

"What is the matter?"

"Why the broad is frozen over, and we can't get any further."

"Can't we break a pa.s.sage through?" said d.i.c.k.

"We might, but it would be a pity to spoil so much ice for skating. Let us stay here until the morning, and then we can walk across for our skates. The yacht will be as safe here as by the boat-house."

They were already sufficiently wedged in by the ice to be able to dispense with the lowering of their anchor, and after supper--(which by the way consisted of, first broiled bacon, next tinned salmon, then some gooseberry-jam, followed by cheese, and finally a tin of American preserved strawberries, which they had bought at Yarmouth, the whole washed down by coffee and beer)--they turned in for a snooze. The silence of the night was broken by continual sharp, tinkling noises. It was some little time before they discovered that these arose from the ice crystals as they formed along the surface of the water, shooting out in long needles and crossing each other, until every inch of the water was covered.

In the morning the ice was strong enough to bear their weight, although it bent in long waves beneath them as they hurried over it.

The frost continued. The ice was smooth, and black, and hard, and perfectly free from snow. Early and late, the boys sped lightly over it on their skates, enjoying to the full this most invigorating and healthy exercise.

Frank and Jimmy practised threes and eights and the spread-eagle, and the other now old-fashioned figures, with great a.s.siduity; and d.i.c.k, having soon mastered the inside edge, tumbled about most indefatigably in his efforts to master the outside edge.

The frost continued with unabated severity, and soon the ice was two feet thick, and the shallower portions of the broad were frozen to the bottom. One day d.i.c.k was skating at a good pace before the wind, when something beneath his feet in the transparent ice attracted his attention, and in his haste to stop he came down very heavily. He shouted to Frank and Jimmy to come up, and when they did so, he pointed to the ice at his feet. Midway in the water, where it was about two feet deep, was a shoal of a dozen perch, most of them good sized ones, frozen into the ice in various att.i.tudes, betokening their last struggle to escape. The reason of their being so caught was explained by the fact that they were in a slight depression surrounded by shallower and weedy water, which had frozen so as to shut them in, and give them no means of escape before the water in which they swam became solid.

"That fellow is fully two pounds weight. I wonder if they are dead,"

said Frank.

"Of course they must be," answered Jimmy; "they cannot be frozen stiff like that and live."

"I am not so sure about that," observed d.i.c.k; "caterpillars have been known to be frozen quite stiff, and to all appearance lifeless, yet they revive when they are warmed."

"Well," said Frank, "I tell you what we will do. We will dig them out, and put them into water in the house, and give them a chance."

They did so, and five of the perch, including the biggest and the smallest, came to life, and were subsequently restored to the broad.

One day a rapid thaw set in, and the ice was covered with a thin layer of water. During the night, however, the wind suddenly changed, and this layer of water froze so quickly, that it held fast by the feet many water-fowl which had been resting on the ice.

When the boys went down to the ice in the morning, they saw here and there a dead or dying water-hen or coot thus made captive, and surrounded by a group of the hooded crows, those grey-backed crows which in the winter-time are so common in Norfolk, and the rapacious birds were attacking and eating the poor held-fast water-fowl.

The crowning achievement of the winter was this: They broke the _Swan_ free, and got her on to the ice; then they supported her on some runners, like large skate irons, made by the village blacksmith, and put on ordinary skates on each rudder to get steerage power, and so constructed with great ease an ice-ship after the fashion of those used in some parts of Canada. With this they sped over the ice at a far quicker rate than they had ever sailed upon the water, and they could steer her tolerably close to the wind. This amus.e.m.e.nt superseded the skating until the ice melted away, and the _Swan_ once more floated on the water and sailed in her legitimate manner.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

The Thaw.--Cromer.--Prehistoric Remains.

The thaw was accompanied by torrents of rain for more than a week. At the end of that time the boys were sitting in the boat-house making up their Note-book, when Mr. Meredith entered and said to them,--

"Will you drive with me to Cromer? I hear that a large portion of the cliff has fallen away and exposed a bed containing the bones and remains of prehistoric elephants and other mammalia, and all the geologists of the country are going there. I thought we might as well see these wonderful relics of the past. What do you say?"

"We should like it above all things," said Frank for the others; and Mr.

Merivale's horses were forthwith harnessed to the waggonette, and they started. The rain had ceased, and a cold, white sun shone out of a white s.p.a.ce in the leaden sky.

The town of Cromer is the easternmost part of England, and it is built on the summit of a gravel-hill, which the sidelong sweeping tides eat away little by little and year by year. It is said that the church of old Cromer lies buried under the sea half a mile from the present sh.o.r.e.

Immediately in front of the village the cliff is plated and faced with flints and protected by breakwaters, but on either side the soft earth is loosened by the frosts and rains, and undermined by the tidal currents, which, running nearly north and south, sweep the debris away instead of piling it at the foot of the cliff.

Putting the horses up at the princ.i.p.al inn, they walked to the cliff below the lighthouse, where a portion of the high cliff had slid into the sea. In one place a recent storm had swept the fallen ma.s.s of gravel away and exposed at the bottom a portion of the "forest bed." Here three or four gentlemen, presumably geologists, were freely engaged in poking and digging. One man was tugging hard at a huge bone which projected out of the cliff; another was carefully unveiling the stump of a fossil tree. Here and there were the stumps of trees--oaks and firs, and others, with their spreading roots intact, just as ages ago they had stood and flourished; and between these ancient stumps were the bones and the teeth of elephant, hippopotamus, and rhinoceros, deer of ten different sorts, bears, tigers, and many another animal, the like, or the prototype of which, are now found in tropical regions alone. The boys were very much struck with the sight of these remains of the animals which lived before the Flood, and as they wandered about, finding here a tooth and there a bone, and then the stem of a strange tree, they amused themselves by reconstructing in imagination the luxuriant woods teeming with savage monsters which once stood on a level with the sh.o.r.e, and speculating upon the causes which led to the piling up of the gravel strata which now cover them to such a depth.

"Are these animal deposits peculiar to Cromer, Mr. Meredith?" asked d.i.c.k.

"No. You can scarcely dig anywhere in Norfolk in similar deposits without coming upon these remains; this is the case in Holland and Belgium also, so that there is positive evidence that the German Ocean is of comparatively recent origin, the two countries having once been connected by a great plain, a portion of which is now covered with water. From the bottom of the sea the fishermen often dredge up bones and fragments of trees similar to those in the base of this cliff."

The short winter day soon drew on to dusk, and they strolled on to the pier to see the sun set in the sea on this the east coast of England.

The land so juts out, and to the northward the water so bites into the land, that not only does the sun rise from the sea, but it also sets in it.

The surf-crested waves which broke heavily against the black breakwater were red and lurid with the sunset light, and in fantastic ma.s.ses, flooded with red and orange, the clouds gathering about the descending sun. And then, as the strange glare faded away and the grey dusk settled over the chafing sea, a white light shot out from the lighthouse tower, and traced a gleaming pathway over sea, pier, houses, and woods, as it revolved with steady purpose.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

The Boys' Note-Book.

A Note-book was incidentally mentioned in the last chapter. Properly speaking, it should have been mentioned long before.

On the table in the boat-house lay a large folio ma.n.u.script book, in which the boys noted down whatever, in their reading or observation, struck them as noticeable or worth remembering, or of which they wished to be reminded at some future time, when they should have leisure to look up what they wished to know concerning the matter noted. Before therefore I close this "strange eventful history," I shall quote a few pages at random out of their Note-book, just to show how it was kept up.

In the left-hand margin of each sheet the date of the entry was written opposite each note, and each jotting was signed by the one making it. So that the book ran after this fashion:--

"They have a novel mode of netting sh.o.r.e birds at Lynn. They have long nets stretched on poles about six feet high, on the sands towards dusk, one line below high water mark and the other upon the ridge."--F. M.

"All grain-eating birds feed their young on insects--as a matter of course because there is no grain in the spring--so they make up for the damage they may do to the grain. I shall write a letter to this effect to the Secretary of the Sparrow Club here. The fellows in that club are as proud of their sparrow heads as a red Indian of his scalps."--F. M.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOLE CRICKET.]

"Crickets are the thirstiest of all thirsty creatures."