the position of my own territory by that of my brother's; for I was
determined to place a monstrous world of waters between us as the only
chance (and a very poor one it proved) for compelling my brother to
keep the peace. At length, for some reason unknown to me, and much to
my astonishment, he located his capital city in the high latitude of
65 deg. N. That fact being once published and settled, instantly I
smacked my little kingdom of Gombroon down into the tropics, 10 deg.,
I think, south of the line. Now, at least, I was on the right side of
the hedge, or so I flattered myself; for it struck me that my brother
never would degrade himself by fitting out a costly nautical expedition
against poor little Gombroon; and how else could he get at me? Surely
the very fiend himself, if he happened to be in a high arctic latitude,
would not indulge his malice so far as to follow its trail into the
tropic of Capricorn. And what was to be got by such a freak? There was
no Golden Fleece in Gombroon. If the fiend or my brother fancied _that_,
for once they were in the wrong box; and there was no variety of
vegetable produce, for I never denied that the poor little island was
only 270 miles in circuit. Think, then, of sailing through 75 deg. of
latitude only to crack such a miserable little filbert as that. But
my brother stunned me by explaining, that, although his capital lay
in lat. 65 deg. N., not the less his dominions swept southwards through
a matter of 80 or 90 deg.; and as to the tropic of Capricorn, much of
it was his own private property. I was aghast at hearing _that_. It
seemed that vast horns and promontories ran down from all parts of his
dominions towards any country whatsoever, in either hemisphere,--empire
or republic, monarchy, polyarchy, or anarchy,--that he might have
reasons for assaulting.

Here in one moment vanished all that I had relied on for protection:
distance I had relied on, and suddenly I was found in close neighborhood