ss!" returned the engineer.

But if they did not pass it was not for want of having attempted it.
Those in the rear pushed on the foremost assailants, and it was an
incessant struggle with revolvers and hatchets. Several culpeux
already lay dead on the ground, but their number did not appear to
diminish, and it might have been supposed that reinforcements were
continually arriving over the bridge.

The colonists were soon obliged to fight at close quarters, not
without receiving some wounds, though happily very slight ones.
Herbert had, with a shot from his revolver, rescued Neb, on whose
back a culpeux had sprung like a tiger cat. Top fought with actual
fury, flying at the throats of the foxes and strangling them
instantaneously. Jup wielded his weapon valiantly, and it was in vain
that they endeavoured to keep him in the rear. Endowed doubtless with
sight which enabled him to pierce the obscurity, he was always in the
thick of the fight, uttering from time to time a sharp hissing sound,
which was with him the sign of great rejoicing.

At one moment he advanced so far, that by the light from a revolver he
was seen surrounded by five or six large culpeux, with whom he was
coping with great coolness.

However the struggle was ended at last, and victory was on the side of
the settlers, but not until they had fought for two long hours! The
first signs of the approach of day doubtless determined the retreat of
their assailants, who scampered away towards the North, passing over
the bridge, which Neb ran immediately to raise. When day had
sufficiently lighted up the field of battle, the settlers counted as
many as fifty dead bodies scattered about on the shore.

"And Jup!" cried Pencroft, "where is Jup?" Jup had disappeared. His
friend Neb called him, and for the first time Jup did not reply to his
friend's call.

Every one set out in search of Jup, trembling lest he should be found
amongst the slain; they cleared the place of the bodies which stained
the snow with their blood, Jup was found in the midst of a heap of
culpeux, whose broken jaws and crushed bodies showed that they had to
do with the terrible club of the intrepid animal.

Poor Jup still held in his hand the stump of his broken cudgel, but
deprived of his weapon he had been overpowered by numbers, and his
chest was covered with severe wounds.

"He is living," cried Neb, who was bending over him.

"And we will save him," replied the sailor. "We will nu