"We may happen on a shepherd or see a village," suggested Michali, cheerfully. "Many people live along this northern coast of the island." So they returned again to the bit of sandy beach where they had landed. By this time it was ten o'clock. "Hello! What's this?" cried Curtis, who was walking nearer the sea than the others. They looked. He was holding between his finger and thumb a small, spherical object, that looked like a bluish-black apple, stuck full of pins of the same color. "Bravo!" shouted Michali. "Bravo! I think it will be our breakfast. It is an _achinoos_." "Eat that?" asked Lindbohm, regarding the object doubtfully. "I would yust as soon bite into a live hedgehog." Michali produced a large pocket knife and cut the creature in two. It contained about a spoonful of yellow eggs and a quantity of dark, muddy substance. Carefully collecting the contents upon the point of his knife, he offered the dainty morsel to Lindbohm and Curtis, who each took a little on the tip of his finger and tasted. "Tastes like salt mud," said the Swede. "Nevertheless, if it will sustain life, and if more of them can be found"--suggested the American. Removing their shoes and arming themselves with sticks, the three adventurers waded out a little way from shore and began to poke among the rocks for sea urchins. In a short time a pile of living pincushions rewarded their efforts. The spines moved continually, as though rooted in loose skin, and occasionally one of the queer creatures rolled slowly seaward, walking on the tips. "Kind of a globular centipede, with the legs sticking in all directions, isn't he?" observed Curtis, regarding one in motion. "You would have thought so had you on one stepped!" replied Michali; "the spines are sometimes--what you call him, poisonous. You would not have put on your boot for many days." "They are slow eating," said the Swede, sucking the contents from the half of one noisily, as though it were a teacup. "Nevertheless, with bread they are delicious," persisted Michali. "Anything would be delicious with bread yust now," observed the Lieutenant. At the end of the sandy beach a steep, rocky hill uprose. By the time the three comrades reached the top of this, the sun was pouring down his fiercest rays upon them, and the _echini_ were tormenting their vitals with an avenging thirst. At their right soared the majestic and inaccessible mountains of Crete, at the left and far below stretched the winsome sea, strewn with islands and flecked with flitting sails. They walked for half an hour over volcanic rock, through spiteful, thorny shrubs that clutched at their ankles and tore their clothing, and came at last to the brink of a ravine whose walls were as perpendicular as though they had been cut with a giant saw. In the bed, far below, a mountain torrent dashed eagerly to sea, making sheer leaps over smoothly worn rocks or swirling about in hollow basins.