try-yard
particularly suffered. The colonists were often obliged to make
immediate repairs, without which the safety of the birds would have
been seriously threatened.

[Illustration: THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEGATIVE]

During the worst weather, several jaguars and troops of quadrumana
ventured to the edge of the plateau, and it was always to be feared
that the most active and audacious would, urged by hunger, manage to
cross the stream, which besides, when frozen, offered them an easy
passage. Plantations and domestic animals would then have been
infallibly destroyed, without a constant watch, and it was often
necessary to make use of the guns to keep those dangerous visitors at
a respectful distance. Occupation was not wanting to the colonists,
for without reckoning their out-door cares, they had always a thousand
plans for the fitting up of Granite House.

They had also some fine sporting excursions, which were made during
the frost in the vast Tadorn marsh. Gideon Spilett and Herbert, aided
by Jup and Top, did not miss a shot in the midst of the myriads of
wild-duck, snipe, teal, and others. The access to these
hunting-grounds was easy; besides, whether they reached them by the
road to Port Balloon, after having passed the Mercy Bridge, or by
turning the rocks from Flotsam Point, the hunters were never distant
from Granite House more than two or three miles.

Thus passed the four winter months, which were really rigorous, that
is to say, June, July, August, and September. But, in short, Granite
House did not suffer much from the inclemency of the weather, and it
was the same with the corral, which, less exposed than the plateau,
and sheltered partly by Mount Franklin, only received the remains of
the hurricanes, already broken by the forests and the high rocks of
the shore. The damages there were consequently of small importance,
and the activity and skill of Ayrton promptly repaired them, when some
time in October he returned to pass a few days in the corral.

During this winter, no fresh inexplicable incident occurred. Nothing
strange happened, although Pencroft and Neb were on the watch for the
most insignificant facts to which they attached any mysterious cause.
Top and Jup themselves no longer growled round the well or gave any
signs of uneasiness. It appeared, therefore, as if the series of
supernatural incidents was interrupted, although they often talked of
them during the evenings in Granite House, and they r