These enormous thick-skinned quadrupeds are not natives of the New World.

As yet, they have never been acclimated there.
The hypothesis that elephants had passed there was absolutely inadmissible.
However that might be, Dick Sand hardly knew how much this inexplicable fact gave him to think about.

He did not even question the American on this point.

What could he expect from a man who had tried to make him take giraffes for ostriches?
Harris would have given him some explanation, more or less imaginative, which would not have changed the situation.
At all events, Dick had formed his opinion of Harris.

He felt in him a traitor! He only awaited an occasion to unmask his disloyalty, to have the right to do it, and everything told him that this opportunity was near.
But what could be Harris's secret end?
What future, then, awaited the survivors of the "Pilgrim ?" Dick Sand repeated to himself that his responsibility had not ceased with the shipwreck.