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"Your ship" said Keene "as far as I can make out from your illiterate scrawl, Mr. Simpson, is in Central Africa. Let us now see what other terrae incognitae have been opened up by the remaining intrepid explorers of this class."

It must have been Fate--it was dramatic enough to be art and not an occurrence in real life; Hornblower knew what was going to happen even as Keene picked up the other papers, including his. The result he had obtained was the only one which was correct; everybody else had added the correction for refraction instead of subtracting it, or had worked out the multiplication wrongly, or had, like Simpson, botched the whole problem.

"Congratulations, Mr. Hornblower" said Keene. "You must be proud to be alone successful among this crowd of intellectual giants. You are half Mr. Simpson's age, I fancy. If you double your attainments while you double your years, you will leave the rest of us far behind. Mr. Bowles, you will be so good as to see that Mr. Simpson pays even further attention to his mathematical studies."