Then a shoal of some smaller kind rippled the surface as they played about, silvering the blue water with their armoured sides.
Small the boatswain and Billy Widgeon rigged up tackle for the lad to fish; and he fished, but caught nothing.
"But then, you know, you might have ketched real big fish," said the little sailor encouragingly, "because, you see, you know they are there." It was a consolation, but not much, to one who has tried for days to capture something or another worthy of being placed by the cook upon the captain's table.
And so three days of slow progress passed on, after which the progress grew more slow, and ended in a complete calm, just as they were a few miles north of a verdant-looking island, whose waving palms, seen above and beyond a broad belt of dingy mangroves, looked particularly tempting to those who had been cooped up so long on shipboard, where, now that the breeze had sunk, it seemed insufferably hot.
"I suppose it can't be hotter than this, Mr Gregory, can it ?" asked Mark, soon after noontide on the second day of the calm.
"Hotter than this ?" said the first-mate with an assumed look of astonishment.

"Do you hear him, Morgan?
He calls it hot!" "I say, captain," said the major, "how long's this calm going to last ?" "Impossible to say," said the captain.

"I am hoping for a fresh breeze at sundown, but I dare not prophesy." "Well, then, let's have the boat out and manned, and two or three of us go ashore with our guns, to see if we can't shoot something." The captain hesitated, looked at the sky, at the offing, studied his glass, and then said that there was no prospect of wind before night, and if the major liked, they would make up a little party and go.
"We can get some handsome birds for specimens if we get none for food," said the major, "and perhaps we may get hold of a snake, or a big lizard, to make into a stew." "Stewed lizard! Ugh!" ejaculated Mark.
"And why not, young fellow ?" cried the major.

"Once upon a time, as the geologists tell us, the lizard and the fowl were very much alike, only they divided, and while one went on growing more like a bird, the other lost his wings and the feathers in his tail, and ran more upon the ground.

Now, I'll be bound to say, sir, that if I shot a lizard, an iguana, or something of that kind, and made it into a curry, you would not be able to tell the difference.