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 you are, madam,” said the unknown, who waited for an instant for the American lady to tell him her name.

“Mrs. Weldon,” replied the latter.

“I?  My name is Harris and I was born in South Carolina.  But here it is twenty years since I left my country for the pampas of Bolivia, and it gives me pleasure to see compatriots.”

“You live in this part of the province, Mr. Harris?” again asked Mrs. Weldon.

“No, Mrs. Weldon,” replied Harris, “I live in the South, on the Chilian frontier; but at this present moment I am going to Atacama, in the northeast.”