stifled voice,--

"What month?" he asked.

"December," replied Herbert.

"What year?"

"1866."

"Twelve years! twelve years!" he exclaimed.

Then he left him abruptly.

Herbert reported to the colonists the questions and answers which had
been made.

"This unfortunate man," observed Gideon Spilett, "was no longer
acquainted with either months or years!"

"Yes!" added Herbert, "and he had been twelve years already on the
islet when we found him there!"

"Twelve years!" rejoined Harding. "Ah! twelve years of solitude, after
a wicked life, perhaps, may well impair a man's reason!"

"I am induced to think," said Pencroft, "that this man was not wrecked
on Tabor Island, but that in consequence of some crime he was left
there."

"You must be right, Pencroft," replied the reporter, "and if it is so
it is not impossible that those who left him on the island may return
to fetch him some day!"

"And they will no longer find him," said Herbert.

"But then," added Pencroft, "they must return, and--"

"My friends," said Cyrus Harding, "do not let us discuss this question
until we know more about it. I believe that the unhappy man has
suffered, that he has severely expiated his faults, whatever they may
have been, and that the wish to unburden himself stifles him. Do not
let us press him to tell us his history! He will tell it to us
doubtless, and when we know it, we shall see what course it will be
best to follow. He alone besides can tell us, if he has more than a
hope, a certainty, of returning some day to his country, but I doubt
it!"

"And why?" asked the reporter.

"Because that, in the event of his being sure of being delivered at a
certain time, he would have waited the hour of his deliverance and
would not have thrown this document into the sea. No, it is more
probable that he was condemned to die on that islet, and that he never
expected to see his fellow-creatures again!"

"But," observed the sailor, "there is one thing which I cannot
explain."

"What is it?"

"If this man had been left for twelve years on Tabor Island, one may
well suppose that he had been several years already in the wild state
in which we found him!"

"That is probable," replied Cyrus Harding.

"It must then be many years since he wrote that document!"

"No doubt, and yet the document appears to have been recently
written!"

"Besides, how do you know that the bottle which enclosed the document
may not have taken sev