He collected a quantity of chips and sticks, and soon had a bright fire burning. After it had burned for about twenty minutes and made some hot ashes, Dick pushed the fire to one side, and set the cups upside down on the hot place. It was not easy to build up the fire again, because it had fallen away and was nearly out; and when he put on fresh fuel, the smoke got in his eyes. Also he poked his best cup with a big stick that he was putting on the fire, and dented its side; but it was too late to mend that, and he went on stoking up. He kept the fire going till he thought the pots must have become red hot among the ashes, and then he let it die down. He wondered whether he might try to get the cups out before they were cool; but he decided that it was best to leave them until the whole thing had cooled down. Just then, Joe and David came back, without any fish, and when they had heard what Dick had been doing, and had seen the fire, they all went in to tea.
When they came out after tea, they found the ashes still quite hot; but they got a garden rake and raked them off, and there were the two cups baked light brown and quite hard. The one that had been damaged was also much cracked; but the other one was sound except for one little crack, though it was not very shapely. Dick took it off to show to Uncle John.
“That’s a good one,” said Uncle John, “but if you had let them dry longer before putting them into the fire, they wouldn’t have cracked; and then you have forgotten something: what is it?”
Dick looked at his cup, but he could not tell what it was that he had forgotten.
“Why, the ornament,” said Uncle John. “When we pay that visit to the British Museum, you will see that the pottery of the old time always had ornament on it--or very nearly always. And I suppose you found it hard to make a bigger one? I daresay anybody would until he had had a great deal of practice. Even the old people that we have been reading about, who were so clever at making pots, had to build up their big ones on a wicker frame.
“There is something very interesting about the wicker-work frames, and you ought to remember it. It is this--baskets were made before pottery. In the very early days, before people could make pottery at all, they had, at any rate, rude sorts of baskets. And, I daresay, they sometimes tried to warm their food in baskets beside the fire. No doubt the baskets often caught fire and the food was spoiled. Then some woman who had her wits about her thought of daubing the basket with clay to make it resist the fire. The next thing was to plaster the clay inside the basket instead of outside, and next to burn the wicker off altogether; and so, in course of time, they learned how to make vessels of clay without any framework at all, except for the very large ones.”