tresses 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.

She stole a glance at Courtenay. He was so keenly engaged on the
business in hand, so bent on achieving accuracy in his figures, that
she chided herself for her morbid reverie. Then she wondered if he
ever gave a thought to that promised wife of his, who must soon suffer
the agony of knowing that the _Kansas_ was overdue.

Elsie was sufficiently well acquainted with shipping to realize the
sensation that would be created by the first cablegram from Coronel
anouncing the non-appearance of the steamer in the Straits. The
Valparaiso newspapers would be full of surmises as to the vessel's
fate. They would publish full details of the valuable cargo--and give
a list of the passengers and officers. Ah! Ventana would learn then,
if he had not heard of it earlier, that she was on board. And he alone
would understand the true reason of her flight from Chile. Her cheeks
flushed, and she applied herself more closely to the chart she was
copying. She had left a good deal unsaid in her brief statement that
morning. How strange, how utterly unexpected it was, that Ventana's
name should fall from Courtenay's lips--Courtenay, of all men living!
And what did Isobel mean, during that last dreadful scene ere she was
carried away to the boat, by screaming in her frenzy that Ventana had
taken "an ample vengeance." Vengeance for what? Had the half-breed
dared to make the same proposal to the rich and highly placed Isobel
Baring that he did n