XPLAIN THE BULLET!"
EXCLAIMED PENCROFT]

"Ho, splendid! capital!"

"What is it?" asked Spilett

"We have been looking for a wreck at sea or on land!"

"Well?"

"Well, and here we've found one in the air!"

And the sailor pointed to a great white rag, caught in the top of a
pine, a fallen scrap of which the dog had brought to them.

"But that is not a wreck!" cried Gideon Spilett.

"I beg your pardon!" returned Pencroft.

"Why? is it--?"

"It is all that remains of our airy boat, of our balloon, which has
been caught up aloft there, at the top of that tree!"

Pencroft was not mistaken, and he gave vent to his feelings in a
tremendous hurrah, adding,--

"There is good cloth! There is what will furnish us with linen for
years. There is what will make us handkerchiefs and shirts! Ha, ha, Mr
Spilett, what do you say to an island where shirts grow on the trees?"

It was certainly a lucky circumstance for the settlers in Lincoln
Island that the balloon, after having made its last bound into the
air, had fallen on the island and thus given them the opportunity of
finding it again, whether they kept the case under its present form,
or whether they wished to attempt another escape by it, or whether
they usefully employed the several hundred yards of cotton, which was
of fine quality. Pencroft's joy was therefore shared by all.

But it was necessary to bring down the remains of the balloon from the
tree, to place it in security, and this was no slight task. Neb,
Herbert, and the sailor, climbing to the summit of the tree, used all
their skill to disengage the now reduced balloon.

The operation lasted two hours, and then not only the case, with its
valve, its springs, its brasswork, lay on the ground, but the net,
that is to say a considerable quantity of ropes and cordage, and the
circle and the anchor. The case, except for the fracture, was in good
condition, only the lower portion being torn.

[Illustration: A WRECK IN THE AIR]

It was a fortune which had fallen from the sky. "All the same,
captain," said the sailor, "if we ever decide to leave the island, it
won't be in a balloon, will it? These air-boats won't go where we want
them to go, and we have had some experience in that way! Look here, We
will build a craft of some twenty tons, and then we can make a
main-sail, a fore-sail, and a jib out of that cloth. As to the rest of
it, that will help to dress us."

"We shall see, Pencroft," replied Cyrus H