To counteract, if he might, this innate lust for slaughter Eager took to explaining to them some of the more simple wonders and beauties of seashore life. He brought down a small pocket microscope and showed them things they had never dreamed of. This appealed to Jack immensely. He became a devoted slave of the wonderful glasses, and never tired of poring over and peering into things. Jim, however, drew a double satisfaction from them. He smashed things first and then delighted in the examination of the pieces, and many a pitched battle they fought over the destruction and defence of flotsam and jetsam which formerly they would both have destroyed with equal zest. It was all education, however, and Eager rejoiced in them greatly. He found them, in varying degrees and with notable exceptions, fairly easy to lead, but almost impossible to drive. He led them step by step from darkness towards the light, and meanwhile studied them with as microscopic a care as that with which he endeavoured to get them to study the tiny things of the shore. Their wild free life about the sand-hills had trained their powers of observation to an unusual degree. True, the observation had generally tended to destruction, but the faculty was good, and the end and aim of it was a matter to be slowly brought within control. They could tell him many strange things about the manners and customs of rabbits, and gulls, and peewits, and sandpipers, and bull-frogs, and tadpoles, and so on. They could forecast the weather from the look of the sky and the smell of the wind, with the accuracy of a barometer. They could run as fast and farther than he could, for they had been breathing God's sweetest air all their lives, while he had been travelling alley-ways, with tightened lips and compressed nostrils. And they could fling their little stone clubs with an aim that was deadly. Jim indeed vaunted himself on having once brought down a seagull on the wing, but the actual fact rested on his sole testimony and Jack cast doubts on it, and thereupon they fought each time it was mentioned, but proved nothing thereby. Eager told them of the wonders of the black man's boomerang; and they laboured long and practised much, but could not compass it. It was their ideal weapon, a thing to dream of and strive after, but it always lay beyond them. One day he brought home under his arm, from the shop in Wyvveloe, a small parcel which he took up into his own room. He borrowed Mrs. Jex's scissors, and spent a very much longer time planning and cutting than the result seemed to warrant. Then he got Mrs. Jex, who would have shaved her scanty locks to please him, to do some hemming and stitching and to sew on some bits of tape, and next day he astonished his little savages by attiring himself and them in bright-red loin-cloths, before they started for their mile sprint to the water.