At seven o’clock next morning, after breakfasting off the remains of supper and drinking a stirrup-cup of palm wine, Fritz and his companions left the hermitage at Eberfurt.
They were all in haste, and intended to cover the seven and a half miles that lay between the farm and Falconhurst in less than three hours.
“It is possible that our people may be settled now in their dwelling in the air,” Fritz remarked.
“If so, dear,” said Jenny, “we shall have the joy of meeting them quite an hour sooner.”
“Provided they have not gone into summer quarters on Prospect Hill,” Frank observed. “In that case we should be obliged to go back to False Hope Point.”
“Isn’t that the cape from which M. Zermatt must watch for the Unicorn?” Captain Gould enquired.
“That is the one, captain,” Fritz replied; “and as the corvette must have completed her repairs, it will not be long before she reaches the island.”
“However that may be,” the boatswain remarked, “the best thing we can do, in my opinion, is to start. If there is nobody at Falconhurst we will go to Rock Castle, and if there is nobody at Rock Castle we will go to Prospect Hill, or anywhere else. But let us get on the march!”
Although there was no lack of kitchen utensils and gardening tools at the hermitage, Fritz had looked in vain for any sporting guns and ammunition. When his father and brothers came to the farm they brought their guns, but never left them there. However, there was nothing to be afraid of in crossing the Promised Land, since no wild beasts could get through the defile of Cluse.
A cart road—and how often already had it been rolled by the waggon which the buffaloes and the onager drew!—ran between the cultivated fields, now in their full vegetation, and the woods in their full verdure. The sight of all this prosperity gladdened the eye. Captain Gould and the boatswain, and James and Susan Wolston, who saw this district for the first time, were amazed. Most certainly might colonists come here; it could support hundreds, the island as a whole could thousands!