"Impossible? And why, my noble friend?" asked Paganel, smiling.
"Because the bottle must have been thrown when the vessel was breaking on the rocks. Hence the degrees of longitude and latitude apply to the very place of shipwreck."
"Nothing proves it," said Paganel, earnestly; "and I do not see why the shipwrecked sailors, after being carried by the Indians into the interior of the country, could not have sought to make known by means of this bottle the place of their captivity."
"Simply, my dear Paganel, because to throw a bottle into the sea it is necessary, at least, that the sea should be before you."
"Or, in the absence of the sea," added Paganel, "the rivers which flow into it."
An astonished silence followed this unexpected, yet reasonable, answer. By the flash that brightened the eyes of his hearers Paganel knew that each of them had conceived a new hope. Lady Helena was the first to resume the conversation.
"What an idea!" she exclaimed.
"What a good idea!" added the geographer, simply.
"Your advice then?" asked Glenarvan.
"My advice is to find the thirty-seventh parallel, just where it meets the American coast, and follow it, without deviating half a degree, to the point where it strikes the Atlantic. Perhaps we shall find on its course the survivors of the Britannia."