And they were foxes, but foxes of enormous size. They made a sort of bark which seemed to astonish Top, for he stopped in his chase and gave these swift animals time to escape. The dog had a right to be surprised, for he knew nothing of natural history; but by this barking, the greyish-red color of their hair, and their black tails, which ended in a white tuft, these foxes had betrayed their origin. So Herbert gave them without hesitation their true name of culpeux. These culpeux are often met with in Chili, in the Saint Malo group, and in all those parts of America lying between the 30th and 40th parallels. Herbert was very sorry that Top had not caught one of these carnivora. “Can we eat them?” asked Pencroff, who always considered the fauna of the island from that special point of view. “No,” said Herbert, “but zoologists have not yet ascertained whether the pupil of the eye of this fox is diurnal or nocturnal, or whether the animal would come under the genus “canine.” Smith could not help smiling at this remark of the boy, which showed thoughtfulness beyond his years. As for the sailor, from the moment these foxes ceased to belong to the edible species, they ceased to interest him. Ever since the kitchen had been established at Granite House he had been saying that precautions ought to be taken against these four-footed plunderers. A fact which no one denied. Having turned Jetsam Point the party came upon a long reach washed by the sea. It was then 8 o’clock in the morning. The sky was very clear, as is usual in prolonged cold weather; but, warmed by their work, Smith and his companions did not suffer from the sharpness of the atmosphere. Besides, there was no wind, the absence of which always renders a low temperature more endurable. The sun, bright but cold, rose from the ocean, and his enormous disc was poised in the horizon. The sea was a calm, blue sheet of water, like a land-locked sea under a clear sky. Claw Cape, bent in the shape of an ataghan, was clearly defined about four miles to the southeast. To the left, the border of the swamp was abruptly intercepted by a little point which shone brightly against the sun. Certainly in that part of Union Bay, which was not protected from the open sea, even by a sand bank, ships beaten by an east wind could not have found shelter. By the perfect calm of the sea, with no shoals to disturb its waters, by its uniform color, with no tinge of yellow, and, finally, by the entire absence of reefs, they knew that this side was steep, and that here the ocean was fathoms deep. Behind them, in the west, at a distance of about four miles, they saw the beginning of the Forests of the Far West. They could almost have believed themselves upon some desolate island in the Antarctic regions surrounded by ice.