is head in
a knowing way when Pencroft, referring to his joke of the first day,
said to him,--

"Decidedly, Jup, your wages must be doubled."

It is useless to say that the orang was now thoroughly domesticated at
Granite House, and that he often accompanied his masters to the forest
without showing any wish to leave them. It was most amusing to see him
walking with a stick which Pencroft had given him, and which he
carried on his shoulder like a gun. If they wished to gather some
fruit from the summit of a tree, how quickly he climbed for it! If the
wheel of the cart, stuck in the mud, with what energy did Jup with a
single heave of his shoulder put it right again.

"What a jolly fellow he is!" cried Pencroft often. "If he was as
mischievous as he is good, there would be no doing any thing with
him!"

It was towards the end of January the colonists began their labours in
the centre of the island. It had been decided that a corral should be
established near the sources of the Red Creek, at the foot of Mount
Franklin, destined to contain the ruminants, whose presence would have
been troublesome at Granite House, and especially for the musmons, who
were to supply the wool for the settlers' winter garments.

Each morning, the colony, sometimes entire, but more often represented
only by Harding, Herbert, and Pencroft, proceeded to the sources of
the Creek, a distance of not more than five miles, by the newly beaten
road to which the name of Corral Road had been given.

[Illustration: JUP PASSED MOST OF HIS TIME IN THE KITCHEN, TRYING TO
IMITATE NEB]

There a site was chosen, at the back of the southern ridge of the
mountain. It was a meadow land, dotted here and there with clumps of
trees, and watered by a little stream, which sprung from the slopes
which closed it in on one side. The grass was fresh, and it was not
too much shaded by the trees which grew about it. This meadow was to
be surrounded by a palisade, high enough to prevent even the most
agile animals from leaping over. This enclosure would be large enough
to contain a hundred musmons and wild goats, with all the young ones
they might produce.

The perimeter of the corral was then traced by the engineer, and they
would then have proceeded to fell the trees necessary for the
construction of the palisade, but as the opening up of the road had
already necessitated the sacrifice of a considerable number, those
were brought and supplied a hundred stakes, wh