, "we are shipwrecked ones whose ship was broken to
pieces yesterday on these reefs."

An expression of pity spread over the unknown's face, whose eyes sought
the vessel which had been stranded.

"There is nothing left of our ship," added the novice. "The surf has
finished the work of demolishing it during the night."

"And our first question," continued Mrs. Weldon, "will be to ask you
where we are."

"But you are on the sea-coast of South America," replied the unknown,
who appeared surprised at the question. "Can you have any doubt about
that?"

"Yes, sir, for the tempest had been able to make us deviate from our
route," replied Dick Sand. "But I shall ask where we are more exactly.
On the coast of Peru, I think."

"No, my young friend, no! A little more to the south! You are wrecked
on the Bolivian coast."

"Ah!" exclaimed Dick Sand.

"And you are even on that southern part of Bolivia which borders on
Chili."

"Then what is that cape?" asked Dick Sand, pointing to the promontory
on the north.

"I cannot tell you the name," replied the unknown, "for if I know the
country in the interior pretty well from having often traversed it, it
is my first visit to this shore."

Dick Sand reflected on what he had just learned. That only half
astonished him, for his calculation might have, and indeed must have,
deceived him, concerning the currents; but the error was not
considerable. In fact, he believed himself somewhere between the
twenty-seventh and the thirtieth parallel, from the bearings he had
taken from the Isle of Paques, and it was on the twenty-fifth parallel
that he was wrecked. There was no impossibility in the "Pilgrim's"
having deviated by relatively small digression, in such a long passage.

Besides, there was no reason to doubt the unknown's assertions, and, as
that coast was that of lower Bolivia there was nothing astonishing in
its being so deserted.

"Sir," then said Dick Sand, "after your reply I must conclude that we
are at a rather great distance from Lima."

"Oh! Lima is far away--over there--in the north!"

Mrs. Weldon, made suspicious first of all by Negoro's disappearance,
observed the newly-arrived with extreme attention; but she could
discover nothing, either in his attitude or in his manner of expressing
himself which could lead her to suspect his good faith.

"Sir," said she, "without doubt my question is not rash. You do not
seem to be of Peruvian origin?"

"I am American as