Page:The Swiss Family Robinson, In Words of One Syllable.djvu/54

42 When we got to the shore, my wife and the three boys were there to greet us. My first care was to send for the sledge, and with this we took most of our new wealth up to The Nest.

Fritz told Frank that he had seen a chest of gold coin on the wreck.

"Oh, I wish you had brought it with you," said he.

"And what would you have done with it when you had got it?" said I.

"I would buy some nice sweet cakes, for the bread we have is so hard."

This made us all laugh, and Frank with the rest, for he soon saw that the coin would be of no use in a place where there were no shops.

The next day I told my sons that they must now learn to run, to leap, to climb, and to throw stones straight at a mark, as all these things would be of great use to them in their new mode of life.

I next taught them to use the, by means of which men catch the wild horse on the vast plains of the New World. I tied two stones to the ends of a cord some yards in length, and flung off one of them at the trunk of a young tree; the cord went round and round it in a coil, and bound it so tight that I could have drawn it to me had it not been fast in the ground. This trick the boys were not slow to learn; and Fritz, in a short time,