“Pencroft,” replied the engineer, placing his hand on the sailor’s shoulder, “if any misfortune happens to you, or to this lad, whom chance has made our child, do you think we could ever cease to blame ourselves?”

“Captain Harding,” replied Pencroft, with unshaken confidence, “we shall not cause you that sorrow.  Besides, we will speak further of this voyage, when the time comes to make it.  And I fancy, when you have seen our tight-rigged little craft, when you have observed how she behaves at sea, when we sail round our island, for we will do so together—­I fancy, I say, that you will no longer hesitate to let me go.  I don’t conceal from you that your boat will be a masterpiece.”

“Say ‘our’ boat, at least, Pencroft,” replied the engineer, disarmed for the moment.  The conversation ended thus, to be resumed later on, without convincing either the sailor or the engineer.

The first snow fell towards the end of the month of June.  The corral had previously been largely supplied with stores, so that daily visits to it were not requisite; but it was decided that more than a week should never be allowed to pass without someone going to it.

Traps were again set, and the machines manufactured by Harding were tried.  The bent whalebones, imprisoned in a case of ice, and covered with a thick outer layer of fat, were placed on the border of the forest at a spot where animals usually passed on their way to the lake.

To the engineer’s great satisfaction, this invention, copied from the Aleutian fishermen, succeeded perfectly.  A dozen foxes, a few wild boars, and even a jaguar, were taken in this way, the animals being found dead, their stomachs pierced by the unbent bones.

An incident must here be related, not only as interesting in itself, but because it was the first attempt made by the colonists to communicate with the rest of mankind.

Gideon Spilett had already several times pondered whether to throw into the sea a letter enclosed in a bottle, which currents might perhaps carry to an inhabited coast, or to confide it to pigeons.

But how could it be seriously hoped that either pigeons or bottles could cross the distance of twelve hundred miles which separated the island from any inhabited land?  It would have been pure folly.

But on the 30th of June the capture was effected, not without difficulty, of an albatross, which a shot from Herbert’s gun had slightly wounded in the foot.  It was a magnificent bird, measuring ten feet from wing to wing, and which could traverse seas as wide as the Pacific.

Herbert would have liked to keep this superb bird, as its wound would soon heal, and he thought he could tame it; but Spilett explained to him that they should not neglect this opportunity of attempting to communicate by this messenger with the lands of the Pacific; for if the albatross had come from some inhabited region, there was no doubt but that it would return there so soon as it was set free.