ut
he was silent.

Meanwhile Captain Harding had made no reply. He appeared to be very
little troubled by the question of fire. For a few minutes he remained
absorbed in thought; then again speaking,--

"My friends," said he, "our situation is, perhaps, deplorable; but, at
any rate, it is very plain. Either we are on a continent, and then, at
the expense of greater or less fatigue, we shall reach some inhabited
place, or we are on an island. In the latter case, if the island is
inhabited, we will try to get out of the scrape with the help of its
inhabitants; if it is desert, we will try to get out of the scrape by
ourselves."

"Certainly, nothing could be plainer," replied Pencroft.

"But, whether it is an island or a continent," asked Gideon Spilett,
"whereabouts do you think, Cyrus, this storm has thrown us?"

"I cannot say exactly," replied the engineer, "but I presume it is
some land in the Pacific. In fact, when we left Richmond, the wind was
blowing from the northeast, and its very violence greatly proves that
it could not have varied. If the direction has been maintained from
the northeast to the southwest, we have traversed the States of North
Carolina, of South Carolina, of Georgia, the Gulf of Mexico, Mexico,
itself, in its narrow part, then a part of the Pacific Ocean. I cannot
estimate the distance traversed by the balloon at less than six to seven
thousand miles, and, even supposing that the wind had varied half a
quarter, it must have brought us either to the archipelago of Mendava,
either on the Pomotous, or even, if it had a greater strength than I
suppose, to the land of New Zealand. If the last hypothesis is correct,
it will be easy enough to get home again. English or Maoris, we shall
always find some one to whom we can speak. If, on the contrary, this is
the coast of a desert island in some tiny archipelago, perhaps we shall
be able to reconnoiter it from the summit of that peak which overlooks
the country, and then we shall see how best to establish ourselves here
as if we are never to go away."

"Never?" cried the reporter. "You say 'Never,' my dear Cyrus?"

"Better to put things at the worst at first," replied the engineer, "and
reserve the best for a surprise."

"Well said," remarked Pencroft. "It is to be hoped, too, that this
island, if it be one, is not situated just out of the course of ships;
that would be really unlucky!"

"We shall not know what we have to rely on until we have