can't be
helped," said Pencroft, who felt home-sickness for Granite House.

But just as they were rising, Top was heard loudly barking; and the dog
issued from the wood, holding in his mouth a rag soiled with mud.

Neb seized it. It was a piece of strong cloth!

Top still barked, and by his going and coming, seemed to invite his
master to follow him into the forest.

"Now there's something to explain the bullet!" exclaimed Pencroft.

"A castaway!" replied Herbert.

"Wounded, perhaps!" said Neb.

"Or dead!" added the reporter.

All ran after the dog, among the tall pines on the border of the forest.
Harding and his companions made ready their firearms, in case of an
emergency.

They advanced some way into the wood, but to their great disappointment,
they as yet saw no signs of any human being having passed that way.
Shrubs and creepers were uninjured, and they had even to cut them away
with the axe, as they had done in the deepest recesses of the forest.
It was difficult to fancy that any human creature had ever passed there,
but yet Top went backward and forward, not like a dog who searches at
random, but like a dog being endowed with a mind, who is following up an
idea.

In about seven or eight minutes Top stopped in a glade surrounded with
tall trees. The settlers gazed around them, but saw nothing, neither
under the bushes nor among the trees.

"What is the matter, Top?" said Cyrus Harding.

Top barked louder, bounding about at the foot of a gigantic pine. All at
once Pencroft shouted,--"Ho, splendid! capital!"

"What is it?" asked Spilett.

"We have been looking for a wreck at sea or on land!"

"Well?"

"Well; and here we've found one in the air!"

And the sailor pointed to a great white rag, caught in the top of the
pine, a fallen scrap of which the dog had brought to them.

"But that is not a wreck!" cried Gideon Spilett.

"I beg your pardon!" returned Pencroft.

"Why? is it--?"

"It is all that remains of our airy boat, of our balloon, which has been
caught up aloft there, at the top of that tree!"

Pencroft was not mistaken, and he gave vent to his feelings in a
tremendous hurrah, adding,--

"There is good cloth! There is what will furnish us with linen for
years. There is what will make us handkerchiefs and shirts! Ha, ha, Mr.
Spilett, what do you say to an island where shirts grow on the trees?"

It was certainly a lucky circumstance for the settlers in Lincoln Island
that the b