took precautions so as to surprise, and
not be surprised.

Two minutes afterwards the smoke disappeared, as if the fire had been
suddenly extinguished.

But Godfrey had noted with exactness the spot whence it arose. It was at
the point of a strangely formed rock, a sort of truncated pyramid,
easily recognizable. Showing this to his companion, he kept straight on.

The quarter of a mile was soon traversed, then the last line was
climbed, and Godfrey and Carefinotu gained the beach about fifty paces
from the rock.

They ran up to it. Nobody! But this time half-smouldering embers and
half-burnt wood proved clearly that the fire had been alight on the
spot.

"There has been some one here!" exclaimed Godfrey. "Some one not a
moment ago! We must find out who!"

He shouted. No response! Carefinotu gave a terrible yell. No one
appeared!

Behold them then hunting amongst the neighbouring rocks, searching a
cavern, a grotto, which might serve as a refuge for a shipwrecked man,
an aboriginal, a savage--

It was in vain that they ransacked the slightest recesses of the shore.
There was neither ancient nor recent camp in existence, not even the
traces of the passage of a man.

"But," repeated Godfrey, "it was not smoke from a warm spring this
time! It was from a fire of wood and grass, and that fire could not
light itself."

Vain was their search. Then about two o'clock Godfrey and Carefinotu, as
weary as they were disconcerted at their fruitless endeavours, retook
their road to Will Tree.

There was nothing astonishing in Godfrey being deep in thought. It
seemed to him that the island was now under the empire of some occult
power. The reappearance of this fire, the presence of wild animals, did
not all this denote some extraordinary complication?

And was there not cause for his being confirmed in this idea when an
hour after he had regained the prairie, he heard a singular noise, a
sort of hard jingling.

Carefinotu pushed him aside at the same instant as a serpent glided
beneath the herbage, and was about to strike at him.

"Snakes, now. Snakes in the island, after the bears and the tigers!" he
exclaimed.

Yes! It was one of those reptiles well-known by the noise they make, a
rattlesnake of the most venomous species: a giant of the Crotalus
family!

Carefinotu threw himself between Godfrey and the reptile, which hurried
off under a thick bush.

But the negro pursued it and smashed in its head with a blow