Cyrus Harding gave his hand to the captain, who clasped it affectionately.
“It is well!” he murmured.
He resumed—
“But enough of myself. I have to speak concerning yourselves, and this Lincoln Island, upon which you have taken refuge. You desire to leave it?”
“To return, captain!” answered Pencroft quickly.
“To return, Pencroft?” said the captain, with a smile. “I know, it is true, your love for this island. You have helped to make it what it now is, and it seems to you a paradise!”
“Our project, captain,” interposed Cyrus Harding, “is to annex it to the United States, and to establish for our shipping a port so fortunately situated in this part of the Pacific.”
“Your thoughts are with your country, gentlemen,” continued the captain; “your toils are for her prosperity and glory. You are right. One’s native land!—there should one live! there die! And I! I die far from all I loved!”
“You have some last wish to transmit,” said the engineer with emotion, “some souvenir to send to those friends you have left in the mountains of India?”
“No, Captain Harding; no friends remain to me! I am the last of my race, and to all whom I have known I have long been as are the dead.—But to return to yourselves. Solitude, isolation, are painful things, and beyond human endurance. I die of having thought it possible to live alone! You should, therefore, dare all in the attempt to leave Lincoln Island, and see once more the land of your birth. I am aware that those wretches have destroyed the vessel you had built.”