Even Concepcion Straits on the north and the San Blas Channel on the
south were marked in those significant dotted lines. The coast was
practically unknown to civilized man. One of the last fortresses of
the world, grim, inhospitable, it guarded its secret recesses with crag
and glacier and reef-strewn sea.
It was borne in on the girl, while she worked, that the chiefest marvel
in her present condition was the triumph of science over nature in its
most hostile mood. The _Kansas_ boasted all the comforts and luxuries
of a well-equipped hotel. Seated at the same table as herself was a
skilful sailor, using logarithms, secants and cosecants, polar
distances and hour angles, as if he were in some university class-room.
Near the door, enjoying the warm sun, Boyle was stretched on a
deck-chair, while Christobal was offering a half-hearted protest
against his patient's manifest enjoyment of the first cigar he had been
able to smoke since a Chilean knife disturbed certain sensory nerves
between his shoulder-blades. The every sociableness of the gathering
was a paradox: the truth lay with the ice-capped hills and the ape-like
nomads who infested the humid forests of the lower slopes.
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