And this is the way their families
increased: after the first comers were fairly settled, and pretty
thoroughly turned to stone, little buds, looking somewhat like the
smallest leaf-buds of the spring-time, began to grow out of their edges.
These were their children, at least one kind of their children; for they
had yet another kind also, coming from eggs, and floating off in the
water like the first settlers. These latter we might call the free
children or wanderers, while the former could be named the fixed
children. But even the wanderers come back after a short time, and
settle beside their parents, as you remember the one who met the star-
fish was about to do.
It was not very easy for you or me to think back so many thousand years
to the very beginning of Coraltown, nor is it less difficult to realize
how many, many years were passing while the little town grew, even as
far as I have told you.
The old great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers had died, but they
left their stone bodies still standing, as a support and assistance to
their descendants who had built above them; and the walls had risen, not
like walls of common stone or brick, but all alive and busy building
themselves, day after day, and year after year, until now, at the time
of the star-fish's visit, the topmost towers could sometimes catch a
gleam of sunlight when the tide was low; and when storms rolled the
great waves that way, they would dash against the little castles,
breaking themselves into snowy spray, and crumbling away at the same
time the tiny walls that had been the polyps' work of years.
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