We should do well, then, to go and reconnoitre that archipelago, for Tsalal clearly had no resources whatever to offer after the cataclysm.

I spoke of this to the captain.
"Yes," he replied, and tears stood in his eyes, "yes, it may be so.

And yet, how could my brother and his unfortunate companions have found the means of escaping?
Is it not far more probable that they all perished in the earthquake ?" Here Hunt made us a signal to follow him, and we did so.
After he had pushed across the valley for a considerable distance, he stopped.
What a spectacle was before our eyes! There, lying in heaps, were human bones, all the fragments of that framework of humanity which we call the skeleton, hundreds of them, without a particle of flesh, clusters of skulls still bearing some tufts of hair--a vast bone heap, dried and whitened in this place! We were struck dumb and motionless by this spectacle.

When Captain Len Guy could speak, he murmured,-- "My brother, my poor brother!" On a little reflection, however, my mind refused to admit certain things.

How was this catastrophe to be reconciled with Patterson's memoranda?
The entries in his note-book stated explicitly that the mate of the _Jane_ had left his companions on Tsalal Island seven months previously.