Seamus Tripp had seen his share of perilous situations; a lifetime, in fact, full of adventures and discoveries that the accountants and shipping clerks of the world could not even begin to imagine. But to remain grounded, a man needed to have some perspective. He remembered in particular being locked aboard the Trans-Oceanic steamer Atlantis. Strange, of course, because here he was, hundreds of miles in the middle of the desert, and he was thinking of North Atlantic ghost ships. Nonetheless he remembered facing down those maritime spectres thinking to himself, “Seamus, death is the worst of it.”

“The key to my courage, in the face of danger,” he often told Gort, “is to remember that no matter the situation, no matter what happens to me, the world will keep on spinning. The sun w...

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