sins, and cold apple dumplings. It was all very decent, but Oswald
could not help feeling that the source of the Nile (or North Pole) was a
long way off, and perhaps nothing much when you got there.

So he was not wholly displeased when Denny said, as he lay kicking into
the bank when the things to eat were all gone--

'I believe this is clay: did you ever make huge platters and bowls out
of clay and dry them in the sun? Some people did in a book called Foul
Play, and I believe they baked turtles, or oysters, or something, at the
same time.'

He took up a bit of clay and began to mess it about, like you do putty
when you get hold of a bit. And at once the heavy gloom that had hung
over the explorers became expelled, and we all got under the shadow of
the bridge and messed about with clay.

'It will be jolly!' Alice said, 'and we can give the huge platters to
poor cottagers who are short of the usual sorts of crockery. That would
really be a very golden deed.'

It is harder than you would think when you read about it, to make huge
platters with clay. It flops about as soon as you get it any size,
unless you keep it much too thick, and then when you turn up the edges
they crack. Yet we did not mind the trouble. And we had all got our
shoes and stockings off. It is impossible to go on being cross when your
feet are in cold water; and there is something in the smooth messiness
of clay, and not minding how dirty you get, that would soothe the
savagest breast that ever beat.

After a bit, though, we gave up the idea of the huge platter and tried
little things. We made some platters--they were like flower-pot saucers;
and Alice made a bowl by doubling up her fists and getting Noel to slab
the clay on outside. Then they smoothed the thing inside and out with
wet fingers, and it was a bowl--at least they said it was. When we'd
made a lot of things we set them in the sun to dry, and then it seemed
a pity not to do the thing thoroughly. So we made a bonfire, and when it
had burnt down we put our pots on the soft, white, hot ashes among the
little red sparks, and kicked the ashes over them and heaped more fuel
over the top. It was a fine fire.

Then tea-time seemed as if it ought to be near, and we decided to come
back next day and get our pots.

As we went home across the fields Dicky looked back and said--

'The bonfire's going pretty strong.'

We looked. It was. Great flames were rising to heaven against the
evening