The engineer was then informed of all that had passed during the voyage, and under what conditions the search had been conducted; how at last a castaway had been captured, who appeared no longer to belong to the human species.
"And that's just the point," added Pencroft, "I don't know if we have done right to bring him here."
"Certainly you have, Pencroft," replied the engineer quickly.
"But the wretched creature has no sense!"
"That is possible at present," replied Cyrus Harding; "but only a few months ago the wretched creature was a man like you and me. And who knows what will become of the survivor of us after a long solitude on this island? It is a great misfortune to be alone, my friends; and it is evident that solitude can quickly destroy reason, since you found this poor creature in such a state!"
"But, captain," asked Herbert, "what leads you to think that the brutishness of the unfortunate man began only a few months back?"
"Because the document we found had been recently written," answered the engineer, "and the castaway alone can have written it."
"Unless," observed Gideon Spilett, "it had been written by a companion of this man, since dead."
"That is impossible, my dear Spilett."
"Why so?" asked the reporter.
"Because the document would then have spoken of two castaways," replied Harding, "and it mentioned only one."
Herbert then in a few words related the incidents of the voyage, and dwelt on the curious fact of the sort of passing gleam in the prisoner's mind, when for an instant in the height of the storm he had become a sailor.
"Well, Herbert," replied the engineer, "you are right to attach great importance to this fact. The unfortunate man cannot be incurable, and despair has made him what he is; but here he will find his fellow-men, and since there is still a soul in him, this soul we shall save!"
The castaway of Tabor Island, to the great astonishment of Neb, was then brought from the cabin which he occupied in the fore part of the Bonadventure. When once on land he manifested a wish to run away.
