"Everything, Pencroft," answered Harding, "and we have no means of preventing them."
"Are they numerous? that is the question," said the reporter. If they are not more than a dozen, we shall be able to stop them, but forty, fifty, more perhaps!"
"Captain Harding," then said Ayrton, advancing towards the engineer, "will you give me leave."
"For what, my friend?"
"To go to that vessel to learn the strength of her crew."
"But Ayrton———" answered the engineer, hesitating, "you will risk your life———"
"Why not, sir?"
"That is more than your duty."
"I have more than my duty to do," replied Ayrton.
"Will you go in the boat?" asked Gideon Spilett.
"No, sir, I will swim. A boat will be seen where a man may glide between wind and water."
"Do you know that the brig is a mile and a quarter from the shore?" said Herbert.
"I am a good swimmer, Mr Herbert."
"I tell you it is risking your life," said the engineer.
"That is no matter, answered Ayrton. "Captain Harding, I ask this as a favor. Perhaps it will be a means of raising me in my own eyes!"
"Go, Ayrton," replied the engineer, who felt sure that a refusal would have deeply wounded the former convict, now become an honest man.
"I will accompany you," said Pencroft.
"You mistrust me!" said Ayrton quickly.
Then more humbly, "Alas!"
"No! no!" exclaimed Harding with animation, "no, Ayrton, Pencroft does not mistrust you. You interpret his words wrongly."
"Indeed," returned the sailor, "I only propose to accompany Ayrton as far as the islet. It may be, although it is scarcely possible, that one of these villains has landed, and in that case two men will not be too many to hinder him from giving the alarm. I will wait for Ayrton on the islet, and he shall go alone to the vessel, as he has proposed."
These things agreed to, Ayrton made preparations for his departure. His plan was bold, but might succeed, in
