Puslapio vaizdai
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than two miles in length, and whose width
was evidently very slight.

Did this sand islet, covered with stones, and without vegetation, the desolate refuge of a few seabirds, belong to a more important archipelago? They could not aver it. When the balloon passengers, from their car, saw the land dimly through the mists, they could not sufficiently recognize its importance. Nevertheless, Pencroff, with his sailor's eyes accustomed to pierce

the darkness, thought at that moment he could distinguish in the west the confused. masses which announced an elevated

coast.

But they could not in such darkness determine to what system, simple or complex, the island belonged. They could not leave it, as the sea surrounded it. It was necessary to put off until the next day their search for the engineer, who had not, alas! announced his presence by any cry.

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'The silence of Cyrus proves nothing," said the reporter. "He may have fainted, be wounded, or out of condition to answer at once, but let us not despair!"

The reporter then suggested the idea of lighting on some point of the island a fire, which might serve as a signal to the engineer. But they looked in vain for wood or dry twigs. Stones and sand-there was nothing else.

One can understand what must have been the anguish of Neb and his companions, who were strongly attached to this intrepid Smith. It was too evident that they were then powerless to aid him. wait for daylight. Either the engineer had They must saved himself without help, and had already taken refuge on a point of the coast, or he was lost for ever.

Those were long and terrible hours to pass. The cold was bitter. The friends suffered cruelly, but they hardly noticed it. They did not dream of taking an instant of repose. Forgetting themselves for their chief, hoping, striving to hope on, they came and went upon that sterile island, returning without cessation to its northern point, where they would be nearest to the place of the catastrophe. They listened, they cried out, they sought to hear some great cry, and their voices must have penetrated far, because a kind of calm then reigned in that atmosphere, and the noises of the sea began to lessen with the roughness. One of Neb's cries even seemed, at a certain moment, to produce an echo. Harbert spoke of it to Pencroff, adding—

"That would prove that towards the west there is a coast reasonably near."

sides, his eyes could not be deceived. If The sailor made a sign of assent. Behe had ever so faintly distinguished land, it was because land was there.

sponse provoked by Neb's cries, and the But that far away echo was the only reimmensity over all the eastern part of the islet remained silent.

Nevertheless the sky cleared little by little. Towards midnight a few stars shone, and if the engineer had been there with his companions he would have remarked hemisphere. that those stars were not of the boreal In fact the polar star did not constellations were not those which he had appear on this new horizon, the zenithal of the new continent, and the Southern been wont to observe in the northern part Cross shone out with splendor at the austral pole of the world!

The night fled away. Towards five in the morning the vault of the sky was lightly clouded over. The horizon still reday, an opaque mist arose from the sea in mained somber, but, with the first light of such a manner that the eyesight could not extend more than twenty paces. The fog rolled onward in dense curtains, which heavily succeeded each other.

It was a disappointment. The unforthem. While Neb and the reporter swept tunates could distinguish nothing around the ocean with their gaze, the sailor and Harbert examined the western coast. But not a speck of land was visible.

"Never mind," said Pencroff. "If I don't see the coast, I feel it; it is there, there as sure as that we are no longer in Richmond!"

But the fog was not long in lifting. heated its upper strata, and that heat sifted was only a fine weather mist. A strong sun itself downward to the islet's surface.

quarters of an hour after sunrise, the fog
In fact, towards half-past six, three
above, but dispersed below. Soon all the
became more transparent. It grew denser
from a cloud; then the sea disclosed itself,
island appeared as if it had descended
following a circular plan, infinite to the
eastward, but bounded on the west by a
high and abrupt coast.

assured for the time being, at least.
Yes! there was land. Their safety was
by a channel, half a mile wide, noisily ran
tween the island and the coast, separated
Be-
an extremely rapid current.

[graphic]

"THEY LISTENED, THEY CRIED OUT, THEY SOUGHT TO HEAR SOME GREAT CRY.

But one of the company, consulting only | his heart, plunged at once into the current without taking the advice of his companions, without even saying a single word. It was Neb. He was in haste to be upon that coast, and to climb along it towards the north No one could have held him back. Pencroff recalled him, but in vain. The reporter prepared to follow Neb.

Then Pencroff, going to him, asked: "Do you wish to cross that canal?" "Yes," answered Gideon Spilett.

"Well, wait and trust me," said the sailor. "Neb will suffice to aid his master. If we throw ourselves into the channel we shall risk being carried out to sea by the current, which is of an extreme violence. Now, unles I am deceived, this is an ebb

tide. See! the water lowers on the sand. Let us have patience, then, and at low tide it is possible that we may discover a fordable passage.

During this time Neb battled vigorously against the current. He crossed it in an oblique direction. His black shoulders were seen emerging at each stroke. He fell to leeward with extreme swiftness, but he also gained towards the coast. It took him more than half an hour to cross the half mile which separated the islet from the main land, and he reached the shore many hundreds of feet below the point opposite to that from which he had set out.

Neb stopped at the base of a high granite wall, and shook himself vigorously. Then running, he disappeared behind a point of

rocks, which rose nearly to the height of the southern extremity of the islet.

Neb's companions had followed his audacious attempt with anguish ; and when he was out of sight they once more examined the land to which they were going to demand refuge-meantime, eating some of the shell-fish with which the sand was strewn. It was a meager repast, but, at any rate, it was one.

The opposite coast formed a vast bay, terminated at the south by a needle-like point of land, devoid of vegetation, and of a very savage aspect. This point was welded on to the main shore by a singularly capricious design, and was buttressed by high granitic rocks. Towards the north, on the contrary, the bay, widening, formed a more rounded coast, which ran from south-west to north-east and terminated in a slender cape. Between these two extreme points, on which the bow of the bay leaned, the distance was perhaps eight miles. Half a mile from the shore, the island occupied a narrow band of sea, resembling an enormous cetaceous animal, whose greatly magnified carcass it represented.

Its extreme width was scarcely a quarter of a mile.

It

In front of the islet the shore was composed, first, of a sandy strand, sown with blackened rocks, which, at that moment, reappeared little by little, under the lowering tide. Farther back arose a kind. Farther back arose a kind of granite curtain, shaped like a peak, and terminated at a height of at least three hundred feet by a capricious edge. ascended thus in profile about three miles, and ended abruptly at the right by a clean cut side which one might have believed carved by the hand of man. At the left, on the contrary, above the promontory, this species of irregular cliff, shelling itself into prismatic fragments composed of agglomerated rocks and rubbish, lowered by an elongated descent which was finally mingled with the rock on the southern point.

On the higher plateau of this coast, not a tree! It was a clean table-land, like that which overhangs Cape Town at the Cape of Good Hope, but of more reduced proportions. It at least appeared so, seen from the islet. But verdure was not lacking on the

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right, behind the carven wall. The friends could easily distinguish the confused mass of great trees, whose rows extended beyond the reach of vision. That verdure rejoiced the eye, strangely saddened by the harsh outlines of the granite formation.

Finally, quite in the back-ground and above the plateau in a north-westerly direction, and at a distance of at least seven miles, glistened a white summit, on which the solar rays beat down. It was a snowcap, upon some far off mountain.

One could then hardly pronounce himself as to whether this land were an island, or whether it were part of a continent. But, at the sight of those convulsed rocks heaped up at the left, a geologist would not have hesitated to give them a volcanic origin, because they were incontestably the product of Plutonian labor.

Gideon Spilett, Pencroff, and Harbert looked attentively at this land, on which they might, perhaps, have to live during long years; on which they might even die, if it did not lay on the route of ships!

"Well," said Harbert," what do you say, Pencroff?"

"Ah, well," answered the sailor, "there is good and bad there, as in everything. But the ebb tide is beginning to make itself felt. In three hours we will attempt the passage, and once there we will try to get out of our scrape, and to find Mr. Smith."

Pencroff was not deceived in his presumptions. Three hours later, at low tide, the greater part of the sand forming the bed of the channel was laid bare. There remained between the islet and the coast only a narrow brook, which it would without doubt be easy to cross.

So, about ten o'clock, Gideon Spilett and his two companions took off their clothes, put them in packets on their heads, and ventured into the stream, whose depth was not more than five feet. Harbert, for whom the water would have been too deep, swam like a fish, and went over in fine style. All three arrived on the opposite shore without difficulty. There, the sun having rapidly dried their bodies, they put on their clothes, which they had preserved from contact with the water, and held a consultation.

(To be continued.)

PAREPA-ROSA.

O SPIRIT, disembodied though thou art,
I cling to thee, and cannot let thee go!
Thy voice rings through the chambers of my heart;
Its subtile music echoes all my woe.
Its perfect passion, its consummate pain,
Its dreamy rapture and its lofty range
Thrill with a sorrow-laden joy my brain.
Ah, sweet dead singer! it is sad and strange
To lose with thee the harmony of life:

Why could not gentle Death deign to foresee
That all our souls would be with discord rife

If in his round he placed his hand on thee?
E'en he shall learn the silences to hate,
And half regret he sealed thy sudden fate.

Pan will not rise to tune his reed again;'"

Fair Aphrodite, with her foam-lipped shell, Will spring no more from bosom of the main, Her mad, melodious tale of love to tell; The light that shone from great Apollo's brow Is dulled beneath the shade of centuries; The harp of David is neglected now,

And Orpheus into black oblivion flees;
The song of Sappho is remembered not;
The world forgets the glorious Malibran;
Yet, spirit, may thy voice escape the lot

That gives to brightest fame so brief a span;
Since its transcendent purity may claim
For thy lost presence an eternal name.

Like to that splendid Swede who swayed the souls
Of prince and peasant, dids't thou live and sing;
So long as Time's firm hand the years outrolls,
The memories of ye twain shall bloom in spring.
The nightingale your melodies shall chant,

For she alone of all the birds can know
How near ye were to nature; her romaunt
Outlives the ages' solemn ebb and flow.
And if some eve the birdling sweeter cries
Than e'er before-transfigured by her pains;
If closer home to Heaven her carol flies,

And catches music from celestial strains;

Then shall she make thy notes her noblest choiceO stainless lady of the matchless voice!

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JOHN HAY was born in Salem, Indiana, | and was taken in his infancy to Warsaw, Illinois, where his parents still reside. His father is a physician, greatly respected and esteemed. His grandfather, John Hay, of Springfield, Ill., who died recently at a great age, was one of the most devout and exemplary of the early settlers of the State. His mother was born in Bristol, R. I., daughter of Rev. David Leonard of that place. Mr. Hay's education began very early. His father and mother had both received a thorough classical training, very rare for the country and the time. studied Latin and Greek at home, under their tuition, and also profited very much by the companionship and example of an elder brother, Leonard, now of the 9th Infantry, U.S. A. When, at the age of 15, he went to Providence, to enter the university there, he was admitted to the Sophomore class, and graduated with the class poem in 1858. He studied law in Springfield for two years, in the office of Logan & Hay, and there made the acquaintance of Mr. Lin..

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coln, whom he accompanied to Washington at the time of his inauguration. He remained with the President as Assistant Private Secretary until 1863, when he joined General Hunter in South Carolina, as Aid-de-camp. He was appointed as Assistant Adjutant-General in 1863, and assigned first to the staff of General Gillmore, and afterwards ordered to duty at the White House, where he remained until Mr. Lincoln's death. He was promoted to the grade of colonel, and given leave of absence to accept the position of Secretary of Legation in Paris. He remained there nearly two years, by which time his political education seems to have been pretty well finished. His personal observations of the Court of Napoleon III. inspired him with that aggressive republican feeling which is displayed, not, perhaps, always seasonably or temperately, in everything he has since written. John Randolph, of Roanoke, used to say he would go a mile out of his way to kick a sheep. Col. Hay goes farther than that sometimes to kick a king.

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