
370 
KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL. 

which the vessel holds its course, is becoming 
strangely warm. Surely it begins to simmer ! 
It looks and smells not like salt water—but 
it grows decidedly hot. Forty-six thousand 
knots a minute is the rate of progress; and 
in another quarter of an hour it is scalding 
work. Then the sea boils! Tremendous and 
unfathomable aqueous masses roll up and 
fali, and rise again, bursting in joint-stock 
bubbles. Captain Spoon and his freight are 
down a million of miles in a boiling Pacific. 
He is cooked; and his cargo is a mash, a 
mixture—a mere pudding! 
Worse was behind; and it came in the 
form of a convulsion that seemed to blow 
the steamer out of the world, and himself out 
of the steamer. Now lay he floating many 
a rood in the boiling water, done toa bubble ; 
till helpless, lost, and nigh to the condition 
called in cplinary language “rags,’’ he cast 
about his boiled arms in despair, and touched 
a kind of land. Land! —Yes, some odd 
shore soon rose above the surface, and offered 
substance to his feet, as, dashed by the hot 
waves against its slippery side, he strove to 
climb it. The hapless voyager among the 
Christmas Islands was now washed upwards, 
and lay insensible on the high shore... . 
Spoon did not know the day of the month 
when he awoke; but he looked about him 
nevertheless. He was out of the hot- 
bath, but reduced to “rags; a reward not 
common to prime ministers, though heroic 
explorers may often have experienced it. 
But the land, the country! Well: there it 
lay before him, flat enough. It was a large 
barren Island —unpeopled of course, for it 
was unproductive. There was nothing on 
it, living or dead—no verdure on its brown 
speckled sides, no ruggedness of surface. 
Everywhere it was quite smooth, and in- 
clining to rotundity ; everywhere alike. It 
seemed indeed less an island than a planet— 
a huge, round, lifeless world—still hot and 
steaming, as if flung up from the boiling 
depths below. 
‘fo say that nothing was found on it is 
incorrect. As Captain Spoon reached the 
exact centre, he saw sticking up in it alarge 
sprig of hoily ; and he identified this as part 
of the prodigious bunch he had brought from 
Holly-mount. It must have been washed on 
shore; and he accepted it as an omen that 
he should one day return to be a Knight 
Grand Sprig! Exhausted, he. dropt upon 
the ground under the red berries, and again 
slept. The earth was still warm—and there 
was an odd exhalation rising from it. 
He woke up ravenously hungry. What 
distress! what misery! There was nothing 
but the clay under his feet to devour. Clay 
it was wherever he went, but curiously and 
thickly speckled all over with deeper richer 
hues, which half shone through the dullish 



brown surface. Here was a Christmas time! 
To be alone with famine on that desolate 
globe ! 
He flung himself on the ground, and des- 
perately tore up the very earth with his 
fingers. His nails, as he clawed, brought 
away particles of that strange hot soil, which 
in these places gave forth a peculiar ex- 
halation indeed! He must die or feed; and 
he at length in his anguish and despair began 
(horrible!) to eat the very earth! Yea, 
with his burnt fingers he scratched up pieces, 
and hurried them eagerly to his mouth. 
And his teeth had an easy task, but the 
burning clay was hot to his lips; however, 
he drew a long breath, and swallowed it. 
And his eyes sparkled with rapturous ex- 
citement, as he now looked down and 
stooped to pick out the speckled parts, and 
to dig up rich mysterious little pieces that 
were surpassingly delicious to the taste ; and 
then, too hungry for these exclusive deli- 
cacies, broke off larger bits of the ground, 
and fed with ecstasy.— He had discovered 
Plum- pudding ! 
He now stuck the slip of holly more 
firmly in the soil, and took possession of the 
prize-globe in the name of the King of the 
Christmas Islands. 
The sea was soon calm and cool; when, 
floating towards him, Captain Spoon espied 
his sometime spifflicated steamer, into which 
he now sprang. Here, though his crew had 
all been boiled to an undiscoverable pulp, he 
found tools and implements, and speedily 
with spade and pickaxe he is at work on 
the rich shore. Huge lumps of earth are 
dug up—broad thick slices of the variegated 
soil—blocks of clay resembling in some 
degree the plum-pudding-stone of the natu- 
ralist ; and all are safely stored m the ship. 
Then, too happy in his discovery, away he 
steamed for the Christmas palace of the King! 
That monarch listened intently—with 
wonder and terror too, until the story told 
of the choice clay and nice bits of mud which 
his Captain had regaled himself with; where- 
upon he cried, ‘Give me, O Spoon of my 
soul, to partake of that strange earth, lest 
it be said I have a minister who eats dirt !” 
And the King ate!—fainting, after full three 
hours—not with repletion, but with pride, 
astonishment, and rapture. 
A fleet of steamers started—carrying out 
knives, hatchets, saws, spades, shovels; and 
every implement of a cutting, hewing, 
digging or scraping nature ; and to work the 
court went, with a royal laborer at their 
head. The good King did more than all his 
people: he contrived to eat more than two 
able hands could dig up. All dug and 
devoured ; no; some, too eager to dig or to 
cut, cast them down on their faces, and bit ~ 
what elsewhere is the dust ! 
