rom one trunk to another in the midst of tangled
brushwood and long grass. If castaways had landed on the island, they
could not have yet quitted the shore and it was not in the woods that
the survivors of the supposed shipwreck should be sought.

[Illustration: IS IT TOBACCO?]

The engineer therefore manifested some impatience to reach the western
coast of Lincoln Island, which was at least five miles distant
according to his estimation.

The voyage was continued, and as the Mercy appeared to flow not
towards the shore, but rather towards Mount Franklin, it was decided
that they should use the boat as long as there was enough water under
its keel to float it. It was both fatigue spared and time gained, for
they would have been obliged to cut a path through the thick wood with
their axes. But soon the flow completely failed them either the tide
was going down, and it was about the hour, or it could no longer be
felt at this distance from the mouth of the Mercy. They had therefore
to make use of the oars, Herbert and Neb each took one, and Pencroft
took the scull. The forest soon became less dense, the trees grew
further apart and often quite isolated. But the further they were from
each other the more magnificent they appeared, profiting, as they did,
by the free, pure air which circulated around them.

What splendid specimens of the Flora of this latitude! Certainly their
presence would have been enough for a botanist to name without
hesitation the parallel which traversed Lincoln Island.

"Eucalypti!" cried Herbert.

They were, in fact, those splendid trees, the giants of the
extra-tropical zone, the congeners of the Australian and New Zealand
eucalyptus, both situated under the same latitude as Lincoln Island.
Some rose to a height of two hundred feet. Their trunks at the base
measured twenty feet in circumference, and their bark was covered by a
network of furrows containing a red, sweet-smelling gum. Nothing is
more wonderful or more singular than those enormous specimens of the
order of the myrtaceae, with their leaves placed vertically and not
horizontally, so that an edge and not a surface looks upwards, the
effect being that the sun's rays penetrate more freely among the
trees.

[Illustration: THE HALT FOR BREAKFAST]

The ground at the foot of the eucalypti was carpeted with grass, and
from the bushes escaped flights of little birds, which glittered in
the sunlight like winged rubies.

"These are so