“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.”

“You did not!” exclaimed Pencroft, in the height of his astonishment, not being able to finish his sentence.

“We did not leave Granite House,” answered Cyrus Harding, “and if a fire appeared on the coast, it was lighted by another hand than ours!”

Pencroft, Herbert, and Neb were stupefied.  No illusion could be possible, and a fire had actually met their eyes during the night of the 19th of October.  Yes! they had to acknowledge it, a mystery existed!  An inexplicable influence, evidently favorable to the colonists, but very irritating to their curiosity, was executed always in the nick of time on Lincoln Island.  Could there be some being hidden in its profoundest recesses?  It was necessary at any cost to ascertain this.

Harding also reminded his companions of the singular behavior of Top and Jup when they prowled round the mouth of the well, which placed Granite House in communication with the sea, and he told them that he had explored the well, without discovering anything suspicious.  The final resolve taken, in consequence of this conversation, by all the members of the colony, was that as soon as the fine season returned they would thoroughly search the whole of the island.

But from that day Pencroft appeared to be anxious.  He felt as if the island which he had made his own personal property belonged to him entirely no longer, and that he shared it with another master, to whom, willing or not, he felt subject.  Neb and he often talked of those unaccountable things, and both, their natures inclining them to the marvelous, were not far from believing that Lincoln Island was under the dominion of some supernatural power.

In the meanwhile, the bad weather came with the month of May, the November of the northern zones.  It appeared that the winter would be severe and forward.  The preparations for the winter season were therefore commenced without delay.

Nevertheless, the colonists were well prepared to meet the winter, however hard it might be.  They had plenty of felt clothing, and the musmons, very numerous by this time, had furnished an abundance of wool necessary for the manufacture of this warm material.