just going to grin!" exclaimed Pencroft.

And if Master Jup had not been satisfied, he would have been very
difficult to please, but he was quite contented, and contemplated his
own countenance with a sentimental air which expressed some small
amount of conceit.

The summer heat ended with the month of March. The weather was
sometimes rainy, but still warm. The month of March, which corresponds
to the September of northern latitudes, was not so fine as might have
been hoped. Perhaps it announced an early and rigorous winter.

It might have been supposed one morning--the 21st--that the first snow
had already made its appearance. In fact Herbert, looking early from
one of the windows of Granite House, exclaimed,--

"Hallo! the islet is covered with snow!"

"Snow at this time?" answered the reporter, joining the boy.

Their companions were soon beside them, but could only ascertain one
thing, that not only the islet, but all the beach below Granite House,
was covered with one uniform sheet of white.

"It must be snow!" said Pencroft.

"Or rather it's very like it!" replied Neb.

"But the thermometer marks fifty-eight degrees!" observed Gideon
Spilett.

Cyrus Harding gazed at the sheet of white without saying anything, for
he really did not know how to explain this phenomenon, at this time of
year and in such a temperature.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Pencroft, "all our plants will be frozen!"

And the sailor was about to descend, when he was preceded by the
nimble Jup, who slid down to the sand.

[Illustration: JUP SITTING FOR HIS PORTRAIT]

But the orang had not touched the ground, when the snowy sheet arose
and dispersed in the air in such innumerable flakes that the light of
the sun was obscured for some minutes.

"Birds!" cried Herbert.

They were indeed swarms of sea-birds, with dazzling white plumage.
They had perched by thousands on the islet and on the shore, and they
disappeared in the distance, leaving the colonists amazed as if they
had been present at some transformation scene, in which summer
succeeded winter at the touch of a fairy's wand. Unfortunately the
change had been so sudden that neither the reporter nor the lad had
been able to bring down one of these birds, of which they could not
recognise the species.

A few days after came the 26th of March, the day on which, two years
before, the castaways from the air had been thrown upon Lincoln
Island.

[Illustration: THE SNOWY SHEET AROSE