H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ This complicated series of artificial docks filled with the waters of the La Plata River pleased Luggard even more than the beautiful harbour of Rio.
To his practical mind the evidence of human energy was more fascinating than natural beauty, usefulness of more appeal than loveliness; and yet this true believer in the theory of the Moderns, free, one might think, of the disease of inutility as a crank-shaft, was out on a hunt for old bones in that home of lost species, Patagonia. Fossils, things of deep scientific interest but no practical value at all. ”

“ He spent a day trying to dig into the bank where the skull was, to make a cave of some sort. Useless, he had nothing to shore up the roof and sides with: the thing crumbled in. He was defeated, but so weary with the work that he scarcely cared. He slept well that night till before dawn, when a nightmare whose dream was the problem about the triangle and the limitation of distance, which we already know, aroused him to the fact that he was still without a shelter from the sky and the distances around him. ”

“ Nature, whom he had made light of and against whom he was so well equipped, had got him at last. Her storms, desolation and loneliness could not touch him, yet her presence was beginning to tell. For against it he had no roof or walls to shelter him.
No man can live long in her presence without a hole of some sort to hide himself in from her ceaseless stare. In the great flat land he had neither house nor hut nor tent nor cave, not even a hole in the ground. ”

“ Of all things that move the machine is the only thing entirely sane, and remembering instinctively that truth and looking at Luggard, one might have said: "Here is something perfectly balanced, never varying and sure as far as humanly possible to answer to call as a marine engine or one of those derricks just finished lading cargo into the Tagus." ”

“ The tree-men had a roof of leaves, the cave-men the roof of a cave, the tent-dwellers their tents; there is no tribe so savage that it has not evolved a hut or hiding-place; and without any doubt I am suffering from the old stain of the mind coupled with the fact that I am tethered to this spot.
"Herds and primitive men on the march would not worry about a shelter, and I believe if I broke from here and started on the march to San Julian this thing would lift—all these instincts are not things of yesterday, but deep-rooted in old times. ”

“ There can be no distance greater than the "length" of this circumference. Distance, therefore, has a limit which cannot be exceeded. A man starting from any point in space and moving forward in an ideally straight line towards another point must come back at last to the point of departure.
In other words, Space, whilst being possibly infinite in itself, is finite relative to every point of itself.
Einstein's curvature exists not as an attribute of space but of distance.
Luggard, playing with this idea, fell asleep. ”

“ It was a hot wind, steadily and rapidly increasing in weight, gusting so that the waggon-cover flapped and strained to it, and Fallon, who was cleaning up after breakfast, had a tin plate blown from his hand a distance of yards.
"Hell of a wind," said Fallon. "It's blowing half a gale, and I believe it's coming stronger; no use working in a tear like this."
"Oh, I think it's all right," said Luggard, looking into the clear sky of the east under his hand. "I reckon it will drop soon." ”

“ Half seated on a bollard close by and backgrounded by the Tagus was Fallon, Luggard's friend, assistant and paid partner in this expedition he was making down to the wilds of Patagonia in search of the bones of vanished animals; a dry, sunburnt, hard-bitten man of forty or so with a pleasant irregular face, the strongest feature of which was the nose. ”

“ Practicality and force are excellent attributes, especially of a machine; in man, beyond a certain point they tend to crowd out the more human elements and the softer qualities. I am not saying they had done this in the case of Luggard, but at least it was safe to predict that with him sentiment would never be allowed to thwart action. ”

“ From San Julian, having obtained, by luck, two good horses for the waggon, they struck west across the great plains with the Rio Chico to the south of them and the Rio de Bayos to the north, and the Cordilleras hidden beyond the horizon to the west.
The Patagonian coast has been long known as a hunting ground for fossil remains, the bones of the small horses, the pyrotherium and the earlier South American animals, to say nothing of fossil woods; but from information which he had received Luggard was leaving the coast to itself and striking far inland. ”

“ Human nature is full of delightful surprises like this. Biological History, or, if one may use the term, Animal Archæology, was the passion of this man's life whom Nature had designed to be a leader in the world of affairs; the science of all others most remote from the affairs of men and the practice of life. ”

“ To-night, after supper and smoking his pipe, Patagonia and the visible universe was forgotten. He had seized at last a problem that had eluded him.
All mathematical figures are finite. You cannot expand a triangle indefinitely in space because the straight lines forming it cannot be infinite in length: they must meet to form angles. For this reason the triangle is an imperfect figure since it is incapable of being expanded indefinitely. Where lies the imperfection? There is nothing to the thing but lines, the imperfection must be in the lines and must be want of straightness. ”

“ You can't stick it any longer here, you are tethered by that cache and the skull, you must hike for San Julian if you can get there. Your mind is being sucked away from you. You've got to get under cover, got to make for cover. You can't fight this thing and you are a fool to think you can. ”

“ This man of iron and will had no inclination for speculations or musings, and Fallon out of gunshot was dead to him till Fallon's return.
He turned to the business in hand.
The great blow had not hurt the skull. A wind capable of dismasting a ship is utterly disarmed by a bald man's head; the skull that for æons had been covered and whose dome had been partly exposed during perhaps twenty years was there waiting to be worked upon, and Luggard, forgetting the other, set to on his job. ”

“ They are not ideally straight, and the only possible imperfection affecting all parts of all straight lines equally must be curvature. The ideal straight line, that is to say, the shortest distance, between two points must be curved, and of course equally curved, for any inequality would lengthen the distance. ”

“ It is a thing to be studied and so overcome. Without any manner of doubt I am suffering from the effect of the roof habit. Since the time of the worms Life has been accustomed to dig itself in against the weather and enemies. ”