The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Fleece, by Julian Hawthorne

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Title: The Golden Fleece

Author: Julian Hawthorne

Posting Date: October 5, 2008 [EBook #1614]
Release Date: January, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN FLEECE ***

Produced by Charles Keller

THE GOLDEN FLEECE

A Romance

By Julian Hawthorne

CHAPTER I.

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 continents!"
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. His moustache and the Roman convexity of his chin would have
confirmed your conviction that he was a retired warrior; in which you
would have been correct, for General Trednoke always appeared what he
was, both outwardly and inwardly. His great frame, clad in white linen,
was comfortably disposed in a Japanese straw arm-chair; yet there was
a soldierly poise in his attitude. He was smoking a large and excellent
cigar; and a cup of coffee, with a tiny glass of cognac beside it, stood
on a mahogany stand at his elbow.

"Do you remember, Meschines, the time I licked you at school?" he
inquired, in a tone of pleasant reminiscence.

"I