grotto."

"Well," inquired the child, "have you seen them?"

"Good," thought Becker, "our chatterers have not been able to hold
their tongues; I am surprised at that as regards Frank."

"We expected to have found them at Rockhouse."

"To have found whom?"

"The sailors from the wreck."

"What wreck?"

"The _Nelson_."

"I sincerely hope that the _Nelson_ has not been wrecked."

"In that case, whom do you refer to yourself, Miss Sophia?"

"To your go-cart and my doll, Master Jack."

CHAPTER VIII.

HABITANT OF THE MOON, ANTHROPOPHAGIAN OR HOBGOBLIN?--THE LACEDEMONIAN
STEW OF MADAME DACIER--UTILE DULCI--TETE-A-TETE BETWEEN WILLIS AND HIS
PIPE--TOBACCO VERSUS BIRCH--IS IT FOR EATING?--MOSQUITOES--THE
ALARM--TOBY--THE NOCTURNAL EXPEDITION--WE'VE GOT HIM.

Some days passed without anything having occurred to ruffle the
tranquil existence of the island families. Every morning the _elite_
of the sea and land forces continued to divide themselves into three
squadrons of observation; one of which remained at Rockhouse on some
pretext or other, whilst the other two were occupied in exploring the
country, or in carrying on the works at Falcon's Nest.

The mysterious stranger, whether shipwrecked seaman, savage, or
hobgoblin, who kept all the bearded inhabitants of Rockhouse on the
alert, had reappeared in his old quarters, where another litter of
leaves had been miraculously strewn exactly in the same place the
former had occupied.

Beyond this, however, and sundry gashes here and there--of which
Fritz's knife was clearly guilty, but which could not have been
perpetrated without an accomplice--nothing had transpired to enable
them to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion as to who or what this
personage could be.

Though the hypothesis was highly improbable, still Willis persisted in
his theory of the shipwreck; he only doubted whether the individual on
shore was a marine or the cabin-boy, an officer or a foremast man,
and, if the latter, whether it was Bill, Tom, Bob, or Ned.

Ernest rather inclined to think that the invisible stranger was an
inhabitant of the moon, who, in consequence of a false step, had
tumbled from his own to our planet.

The warlike Fritz was impatient and irritated. He would over and over
again have preferred an immediate solution of the affair, even were it
bathed in blood, rather than be kept any longer in suspense.

Frank, on the contrary, took a metaphysical view of the case