There was in that some truly inexplicable antipathy.
Dingo--that was the name of the dog--belonged to that race of mastiffs which is peculiar to New Holland.

It was not in Australia, however, that the captain of the "Waldeck" had found it.

Two years before Dingo, wandering half dead of hunger, had been met on the western coast of Africa, near the mouth of the Congo.

The captain of the "Waldeck" had picked up this fine animal, who, being not very sociable, seemed to be always regretting some old master, from whom he had been violently separated, and whom it would be impossible to find again in that desert country.

S.V .-- those two letters engraved on his collar--were all that linked this animal to a past, whose mystery one would seek in vain to solve.
Dingo, a magnificent and robust beast, larger than the dogs of the Pyrenees, was then a superb specimen of the New Holland variety of mastiffs.