"I conclude that it is not so easy to get to Cape Bathurst or to Fort Hope as we could wish."
The lady looked into the Lieutenant's anxious face, struck with the melancholy and significant intonation of the word easy.
"Lieutenant Hobson," she said earnestly, "if you fear neither men nor animals, I must conclude that your anxiety has reference to the elements."
"Madam," he replied, "I do not know if my spirit be broken, or if my presentiments blind me, but there seems to me to be something uncanny about this district. If I had known it better I should not have settled down in it. I have already called your attention to certain peculiarities, which to me appear inexplicable; the total absence of stones everywhere, and the clear-cut line of the coast. I can't make out about the primitive formation of this end of the continent. I know that the vicinity of a volcano may cause some phenomena; but you remember what I said to you on the subject of the tides?"
"Oh yes, perfectly."
"Where the sea ought according to the observations of explorers in these latitudes, to have risen fifteen or twenty feet, it has scarcely risen one !"
"Yes; but that you accounted for by the irregular distribution of land and the narrowness of the straits."
"I tried to account for it, that is all," replied Hobson; "but the day before yesterday I noticed a still more extraordinary phenomenon, which I cannot even try to explain, and I doubt if the greatest savants could do so either."
Mrs Barnett looked inquiringly at Hobson.
"What has happened?" she exclaimed.