decipherable was the syllable "Vil."

"Vil--Villa!" he cried out, in his excitement dropping the marble, which
was broken into atoms by the fall.

What else could this fragment be but the sole surviving remnant of some
sumptuous mansion that once had stood on this unrivaled site? Was it not
the residue of some edifice that had crowned the luxuriant headland of
Antibes, overlooking Nice, and commanding the gorgeous panorama that
embraced the Maritime Alps and reached beyond Monaco and Mentone to the
Italian height of Bordighera? And did it not give in its sad and too
convincing testimony that Antibes itself had been involved in the great
destruction? Servadac gazed upon the shattered marble, pensive and
disheartened.

Count Timascheff laid his hand kindly on the captain's shoulder, and
said, "My friend, do you not remember the motto of the old Hope family?"

He shook his head mournfully.

"_Orbe fracto, spes illoesa_," continued the count--"Though the world be
shattered, hope is unimpaired."

Servadac smiled faintly, and replied that he felt rather compelled to
take up the despairing cry of Dante, "All hope abandon, ye who enter
here."

"Nay, not so," answered the count; "for the present at least, let our
maxim be _Nil desperandum!_"

CHAPTER XVII. A SECOND ENIGMA

Upon re-embarking, the bewildered explorers began to discuss the
question whether it would not now be desirable to make their way back
to Gourbi Island, which was apparently the only spot in their new world
from which they could hope to derive their future sustenance. Captain
Servadac tried to console himself with the reflection that Gourbi Island
was, after all, a fragment of a French colony, and as such almost like
a bit of his dear France; and the plan of returning thither was on the
point of being adopted, when Lieutenant Procope remarked that they ought
to remember that they had not hitherto made an entire circuit of the new
shores of the sea on which they were sailing.

"We have," he said, "neither investigated the northern shore from the
site of Cape Antibes to the strait that brought us to Gibraltar, nor
have we followed the southern shore that stretches from the strait to
the Gulf of Cabes. It is the old coast, and not the new, that we have
been tracing; as yet, we cannot say positively that there is no outlet
to the south; as yet, we cannot assert that no oasis of the African
desert has escaped the catastrophe. Perhaps, even here i