up the broken tube.

"That?" returned Pencroft.

"Yes! This cylinder is all that remains of a torpedo!"

"A torpedo!" exclaimed the engineer's companions.

"And who put the torpedo there?" demanded Pencroft, who did not like to
yield.

"All that I can tell you is, that it was not I," answered Cyrus Harding;
"but it was there, and you have been able to judge of its incomparable
power!"

Chapter 5

So, then, all was explained by the submarine explosion of this torpedo.
Cyrus Harding could not be mistaken, as, during the war of the Union,
he had had occasion to try these terrible engines of destruction. It
was under the action of this cylinder, charged with some explosive
substance, nitro-glycerine, picrate, or some other material of the same
nature, that the water of the channel had been raised like a dome, the
bottom of the brig crushed in, and she had sunk instantly, the damage
done to her hull being so considerable that it was impossible to refloat
her. The "Speedy" had not been able to withstand a torpedo that would
have destroyed an ironclad as easily as a fishing-boat!

Yes! all was explained, everything--except the presence of the torpedo
in the waters of the channel!

"My friends, then," said Cyrus Harding, "we can no longer be in doubt
as to the presence of a mysterious being, a castaway like us, perhaps,
abandoned on our island, and I say this in order that Ayrton may be
acquainted with all the strange events which have occurred during these
two years. Who this beneficent stranger is, whose intervention has, so
fortunately for us, been manifested on many occasions, I cannot imagine.
What his object can be in acting thus, in concealing himself after
rendering us so many services, I cannot understand: But his services are
not the less real, and are of such a nature that only a man possessed of
prodigious power, could render them. Ayrton is indebted to him as much
as we are, for, if it was the stranger who saved me from the waves after
the fall from the balloon, evidently it was he who wrote the document,
who placed the bottle in the channel, and who has made known to us the
situation of our companion. I will add that it was he who guided that
chest, provided with everything we wanted, and stranded it on Flotsam
Point; that it was he who lighted that fire on the heights of the
island, which permitted you to land; that it was he who fired that
bullet found in the body of the peccary; that it was he w