And now, for Jane Porter, the reaction came, and she threw
herself upon the bench, sobbing with hysterical laughter.
Chapter 16
"Most Remarkable"
Several miles south of the cabin, upon a strip of sandy
beach, stood two old men, arguing.
Before them stretched the broad Atlantic. At their backs
was the Dark Continent. Close around them loomed the
impenetrable blackness of the jungle.
Savage beasts roared and growled; noises, hideous and
weird, assailed their ears. They had wandered for miles in
search of their camp, but always in the wrong direction. They
were as hopelessly lost as though they suddenly had been
transported to another world.
At such a time, indeed, every fiber of their combined
intellects must have been concentrated upon the vital
question of the minute--the life-and-death question to
them of retracing their steps to camp.
Samuel T. Philander was speaking.
"But, my dear professor," he was saying, "I still maintain
that but for the victories of Ferdinand and Isabella over the
fifteenth-century Moors in Spain the world would be today a
thousand years in advance of where we now find ourselves.
The Moors were essentially a tolerant, broad-minded, liberal
race of agriculturists, artisans and merchants--the very type
of people that has made possible such civilization as we find
today in America and Europe--while the Spaniards--"
"Tut, tut, dear Mr.
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