Page:The Swiss Family Robinson (Kingston).djvu/340

 “Oh no, father, it is not the whale. This thing has not fish bones, but real good honest huge beast bones. I don't know what can have become of the whale—floated out to sea most likely. This mammoth is ever so much bigger. Come and see!”

As I was about to follow the boy, a voice from another direction suddenly cried,

“Father! father! a great enormous turtle! Please make haste. It is waddling back to the sea as hard as it can go, and we can't stop it.”

This appeal being more pressing, as well as more important than Jack's, I snatched up an oar and hastened to their assistance.

Sure enough a large turtle was scrambling quickly towards the water, and was within a few paces of it, although Ernest was valiantly holding on by one of its hind legs. I sprang down the bank, and making use of the oar as a lever, we succeeded with some difficulty in turning the creature on its back.

It was a huge specimen, fully eight feet long, and being now quite helpless, we left it sprawling, and went to inspect Jack's mammoth skeleton, which, of course, proved to be neither more nor less than that of the whale. I convinced him of the fact by pointing out the marks of our feet on the ground, and the broken jaws where we had hacked out the whalebone.

“What can have made you take up that fancy about a mammoth, my boy?”

“Ernest put it into my head, father. He said there seemed to be the skeleton of an antediluvian monster there, so I ran to look closer, and I never thought of the whale, when I saw no fish bones. I suppose Ernest was joking.”

“Whales are generally considered as fishes by those little acquainted with the animal kingdom, but they belong to the class of mammals, which comprises man, the monkey tribes, the