CHAPTER VIII
IN A WILD HAVEN
Fortune has her cycles, whether for good or ill. The _Kansas_, having
run the gauntlet of many dangers, seemed to have earned an approving
smile from the fickle goddess. A slight but perceptible veering of the
wind, combined with the increasing power of the sun's rays, swept the
ocean clear of its storm-wraiths. Soon after passing the pillar rock,
Courtenay thought he could make out the unwavering outline of
mountainous land amid the gray mists. A few minutes later the waves
racing alongside changed their leaden hue to a steely glitter which
told him the fog was dispersing. The nearer blue of the ocean carpet
spread an ever-widening circle until it merged into a vivid green.
Then, with startling suddenness, the curtain was drawn aside on a
panorama at once magnificent and amazing.
Almost without warning, the ship was found to be entering the estuary
of a narrow fiord. Gaunt headlands, carved on Titanic scale out of the
solid rock, guarded the entrance, and already shut out the more distant
coast-line. Behind these first massive walls, everywhere unscalable,
and rising in separate promontories to altitudes of, perhaps, four
hundred feet, an inner fortification of precipitous mountains flung
their glacier-clad peaks heavenward to immense heights,--heights which,
in that region, soared far above the snow-line.
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