Chapter
19
IN WHICH THE SITUATION ALREADY GRAVELY COMPROMISED BECOMES MORE AND MORE COMPLICATED.THE PRESENCE OF A FORMIDABLE wild beast in Phina Island was, it must be confessed, calculated to make our friends think the worst of the ill-fortune which had fallen on them.
Godfrey—perhaps he was wrong—did not consider that he ought to hide from Tartlet what had passed.
"A bear!" screamed the professor, looking round him with a bewildered glare as if the environs of Will Tree were being assailed by a herd of wild beasts. "Why, a bear? Up to now we had not even got a bear in our island! If there is one there may be many, and even numbers of other ferocious beasts—jaguars, panthers, tigers, hyænas, lions!"
Tartlet already beheld Phina Island given over to quite a menagerie escaped from thei
