s, with black skins, black
hair, black teeth, who regarded white colour with deadly terror?

All of a sudden a light flashed upon me. "An earthquake!" I
exclaimed. "Yes, two or three of those terrible shocks, so common
in these regions where the sea penetrates by infiltration, and a day
comes when the quantity of accumulated vapour makes its way out and
destroys everything on the surface."

"Could an earthquake have changed Tsalal Island to such an
extent?" asked Len Guy, musingly.

"Yes, captain, an earthquake has done this thing; it has destroyed
every trace of all that Arthur Pym saw here."

Hunt, who had drawn nigh to us, and was listening, nodded his head
in approval of my words.

"Are not these countries of the southern seas volcanic?" I
resumed; "If the _Halbrane_ were to transport us to Victoria Land,
we might find the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ in the midst of an
eruption."

"And yet," observed Martin Holt, "if there had been an
eruption here, we should find lava beds."

"I do not say that there has been an eruption," I replied,
"but I do say the soil has been convulsed by an earthquake."

On reflection it will be seen that the explanation given by me
deserved to be admitted. And then it came to my remembrance that
according to Arthur Pym's narrative, Tsalal belonged to a group of
islands which extended towards the west. Unless the people of Tsalal
had been destroyed, it was possible that they might have fled into
one of the neighbouring islands. We should do well, then, to go and
reconnoitre that archipelago, for Tsalal clearly had no resources
whatever to offer after the cataclysm. I spoke of this to the captain.

"Yes," he replied, and tears stood in his eyes, "yes, it may
be so. And yet, how could my brother and his unfortunate companions
have found the means of escaping? Is it not far more probable that
they all perished in the earthquake?"

Here Hunt made us a signal to follow him, and we did so.

After he had pushed across the valley for a considerable distance,
he stopped.

What a spectacle was before our eyes!

There, lying in heaps, were human bones, all the fragments of that
framework of humanity which we call the skeleton, hundreds of them,
without a particle of flesh, clusters of skulls still bearing some
tufts of hair--a vast bone heap, dried and whitened in this place!
We were struck dumb and motionless by this spectacle. When Captain
Len Guy could speak, he murmured,--

"My br