"But our countrymen don't seem to show any inclination to emigrate."
"What about ourselves?" Jack exclaimed. "Didn't we develop the liking for colonisation—and not without some advantage?"
"Because we were obliged to," Fritz answered. "No, if ever New Switzerland is to be populated, I am very much afraid she won't continue to justify her name, and that the large majority of her inhabitants will be Anglo-Saxon."
Fritz was right, and Jack knew it so well that he could not refrain from making a grimace.
For at this period Great Britain was still frequently acquiring new possessions. Bit by bit, the Indian Ocean was always giving her fresh domains. So the great probability was that if a ship ever did come in sight, the British flag would be flying at her peak and her captain would take possession of New Switzerland and hoist the British flag on the summit of Prospect Hill.
When they had finished their inspection of the island the two brothers climbed the hill and went to the hangar where the battery stood.
Standing upon the edge of the upper terrace they swept with their telescopes the whole vast segment of sea contained between False Hope Point and the cape which shut in Deliverance Bay to the east.
Nothing but a desert waste of water! Right out to the extreme horizon, where sky and ocean met, nothing was to be seen except, three or four miles away to the north-east, the reef on which the Landlord had run aground.
Turning their eyes towards False Hope Point, Fritz and Jack perceived between the trees upon the hill the belvidere of the villa at Prospect Hill. The summer dwelling was still standing—which would be a satisfaction to M. Zermatt, who was constantly afraid that it might be destroyed by some of the sudden squalls of the rainy season.
The two brothers went into the hangar, which the storms had spared, although there had been more than enough thunderstorms and squalls during the two and a half months that the winter had lasted.