These simple words profoundly impressed Cyrus Harding and his companions.
The engineer rose.
"We ask you nothing, my friend," said he, "it is your right to be silent."
"It is my duty to speak."
"Sit down, then."
"No, I will stand."
"We are ready to hear you," replied Harding.
The stranger remained standing in a corner of the room, a little in the shade. He was bareheaded, his arms folded across his chest, and it was in this posture that in a hoarse voice, speaking like some one who obliges himself to speak, he gave the following recital, which his auditors did not once interrupt—-
"On the 20th of December, 1854, a steam-yacht, belonging to a Scotch nobleman, Lord Glenarvan, anchored off Cape Bermouilli, on the western coast of Australia, in the thirty-seventh parallel. On board this yacht were Lord Glenarvan and his wife, a major in the English army, a French geographer, a young girl, and a young boy. These two last were the children of Captain Grant, whose ship, the Britannia, had been lost, crew and cargo, a year before. The Duncan was commanded by Captain John Mangles, and manned by a crew of fifteen men.
"This is the reason the yacht at this time lay off the coast of Australia. Six months before, a bottle, enclosing a document written in English, German, and French, had been found in the Irish sea, and picked up by the Duncan. This document stated in substance that there still existed three survivors from the wreck of the Britannia, that these survivors were Captain Grant and two of his men, and that they had found refuge on some land, of which the document gave the latitude, but of which the longitude, effaced by the sea, was no longer legible.