ascend to the surface, or we shall simply turn round and go back by the way we came. I have every reason to believe that while we are traveling forward, it will not close behind us."
"Then one of the first matters to see to will be to repair the raft," was my rather melancholy response.
"Of course. We must attend to that above all things," continued the Professor.
"Then comes the all-important question of provisions," I urged. "Have we anything like enough left to enable us to accomplish such great, such amazing, designs as you contemplate carrying out?"
"I have seen into the matter, and my answer is in the affirmative. Hans is a very clever fellow, and has saved the greater part of the cargo. But the best way to satisfy your scruples, is to come and judge for yourself." Saying which, he led the way out of the kind of open grotto in which we had taken shelter. I had almost begun to hope that which I should rather have feared, the impossibility of such a shipwreck leaving even the slightest signs of what it had carried as freight.
As soon as I reached the shores of this inland sea, I found Hans standing gravely in the midst of a large number of things laid out in complete order. My uncle wrung his hands with deep and silent gratitude. His heart was too full for speech. This man, whose superhuman devotion to his employers, I never saw surpassed, nor even equaled, had been hard at work all the time we slept, and at the risk of his life had succeeded in saving the most precious articles of our cargo.
Of course, under the circumstances, we necessarily experienced several severe losses. Our weapons had wholly vanished. But experience had taught us to do without them. The provision of powder had, however, remained intact, after having narrowly escaped blowing us all to atoms in the storm.
"Well," said the Professor, who was now ready to make the best of everything, "as we have no guns, all we have to do is to give up all idea of hunting."
"Yes, my dear sir, we can do without them, but what about all our instruments?"
"Here is the manometer, the most useful of all, which
