'How did the sea get carried away?' Robert asked.

'Not in a pail, silly,' said his brother. 'Father says the earth
got too hot underneath, like you do in bed sometimes, so it just
hunched up its shoulders, and the sea had to slip off, like the
blankets do off us, and the shoulder was left sticking out, and
turned into dry land. Let's go and look for shells; I think that
little cave looks likely, and I see something sticking out there
like a bit of wrecked ship's anchor, and it's beastly hot in the
Australian hole.'

The others agreed, but Anthea went on digging. She always liked to
finish a thing when she had once begun it. She felt it would be a
disgrace to leave that hole without getting through to Australia.

The cave was disappointing, because there were no shells, and the
wrecked ship's anchor turned out to be only the broken end of a
pickaxe handle, and the cave party were just making up their minds
that the sand makes you thirstier when it is not by the seaside,
and someone had suggested going home for lemonade, when Anthea
suddenly screamed:

'Cyril! Come here! Oh, come quick! It's alive! It'll get away!
Quick!'

They all hurried back.

'It's a rat, I shouldn't wonder,' said Robert. 'Father says they
infest old places - and this must be pretty old if the sea was here
thousands of years ago.'