itself so opportunely, during our first sea-excursion; how our canoe, having broken its moorings, floated down the current of the Mercy and rejoined us precisely at the very moment we needed it; how the apes suddenly fled from Granite House, and how after their flight the ladder was so obligingly thrown down; and lastly, how the document, which Ayrton asserts was never written by him, fell into our hands?"
As Cyrus Harding thus enumerated, without forgetting one, the singular incidents which had occurred in the island, Herbert, Neb, and Pencroft stared at one another, not knowing what to reply, for this succession of incidents, grouped thus for the first time, could not but excite their surprise to the highest degree.
"'Pon my word," said Pencroft at last, "you are right, captain, and it is difficult to explain all these things!"
"Well, my friends," resumed the engineer, a last fact has just been added to these, and it is no less incomprehensible than the others!
"What is it, captain?" asked Herbert quickly.
"When you were returning from Tabor Island, Pencroft," continued the engineer, "you said that a fire appeared on Lincoln Island?"
"Certainly," answered the sailor.
"And you are certain of having seen this fire?"
"As sure as I see you now."
"You also, Herbert?'
"Why, captain," cried Herbert, "that fire was blazing like a star of the first magnitude!"
"But was it not a star?" urged the engineer.
"No," replied Pencroft, "for the sky was covered with thick clouds, and at any rate a star would not have been so low on the horizon. But Mr. Spilett saw it as well as we, and he will confirm our words."
"I will add," said the reporter, "that the fire was very bright, and that it shot up like a sheet of lightning."
"Yes, yes! exactly," added Herbert, "and it was certainly placed on the Heights of Granite House."
"Well, my friends," replied Cyrus Harding, "during the night of the 19th of October, neither Neb nor I lighted any fire on the coast."
