The Challenge of the North

The professor crossed one long, lean leg over the other, and punched down the ashes in his pipe-bowl with the square tip of his middle finger. The thermometer on the shady veranda marked eighty-seven degrees of heat, and nature wooed the soul to languor and revery; but nothing could abate the energy of this bony sage. They talk about their Atlantises,-their submerged conti-nents! he exclaimed, with a sniff through his wide, hairy nostrils. Why, Trednoke, do you realize that we are living literally at the bottom of a Mesozoic-at any rate, Cenozoic -sea? The gentleman thus indignantly addressed contemplated his questioner with the serenity of one conscious of freedom from geologic responsibility. He was a man of about the professor's age,-say, sixty years,-but not like him in appearance. His figure was stately and massive,-that of one who in his youth must have possessed vast physical strength, rigidly developed and disciplined. Well set upon his broad shoulders was a noble head, crowned with gray, wavy hair; the eyes and eyebrows were black and powerful, but the expression was kindly and humorous.