"I see them sticking." He leaned over, and, with some difficulty, detached one, and held it up.
It was not a barnacle, but a curious oblong shell-fish, open at one end.
At sight of this, the wounded forgot their wounds, and leaned over the boat's side, detaching the shell-fish with their knives.

They broke them with the handles of their knives, and devoured the fish.

They were as thick as a man's finger and about an inch long, and as sweet as a nut.

It seems that in the long calm these shellfish had fastened on the boat.
More than a hundred of them were taken off her weather-side, and evenly divided.
Miss Rolleston, at Hazel's earnest request, ate only six, and these very slowly, and laid the rest by.

But the sailors could not restrain themselves; and Prince, in particular, gorged himself so fiercely that he turned purple in the face, and began to breathe very hard.
That black speck on the horizon had grown by noon to a beetle, and by three o'clock to something more like an elephant, and it now diffused itself into a huge black cloud, that gradually overspread the heavens; and at last, about half an hour before sunset, came a peculiar chill, and then, in due course, a drop or two fell upon the parched wretches.