However, all were anxious to see, if not the fine season, at least the cessation of the insupportable cold.  If only they had been clothed in a way to meet it, how many excursions they would have attempted, either to the downs or to Tadorn’s Fens!  Game would have been easily approached, and the chase would certainly have been most productive.  But Cyrus Harding considered it of importance that no one should injure his health, for he had need of all his hands, and his advice was followed.

But it must be said, that the one who was most impatient of this imprisonment, after Pencroft perhaps, was Top.  The faithful dog found Granite House very narrow.  He ran backwards and forwards from one room to another, showing in his way how weary he was of being shut up.  Harding often remarked that when he approached the dark well which communicated with the sea, and of which the orifice opened at the back of the storeroom, Top uttered singular growlings.  He ran round and round this hole, which had been covered with a wooden lid.  Sometimes even he tried to put his paws under the lid, as if he wished to raise it.  He then yelped in a peculiar way, which showed at once anger and uneasiness.

The engineer observed this maneuver several times.

What could there be in this abyss to make such an impression on the intelligent animal?  The well led to the sea, that was certain.  Could narrow passages spread from it through the foundations of the island?  Did some marine monster come from time to time, to breathe at the bottom of this well?  The engineer did not know what to think, and could not refrain from dreaming of many strange improbabilities.  Accustomed to go far into the regions of scientific reality, he would not allow himself to be drawn into the regions of the strange and almost of the supernatural; but yet how to explain why Top, one of those sensible dogs who never waste their time in barking at the moon, should persist in trying with scent and hearing to fathom this abyss, if there was nothing there to cause his uneasiness?  Top’s conduct puzzled Cyrus Harding even more than he cared to acknowledge to himself.

At all events, the engineer only communicated his impressions to Gideon Spilett, for he thought it useless to explain to his companions the suspicions which arose from what perhaps was only Top’s fancy.

At last the cold ceased.  There had been rain, squalls mingled with snow, hailstorms, gusts of wind, but these inclemencies did not last.  The ice melted, the snow disappeared; the shore, the plateau, the banks of the Mercy, the forest, again became practicable.  This return of spring delighted the tenants of Granite House, and they soon only passed it in the hours necessary for eating and sleeping.