The bitter wind and swishing rain keep on. We are to a certain
extent sheltered from the former, but the latter is of that
insinuating sort that nothing but a granite wall would keep off.
Just at sundown, however, as is usual in this country, the rain
ceases for a while, and I take this opportunity to get out my
seaman's jersey. When I have fought my way into it, I turn to
survey our position, and find I have been carrying on my battle on
the brink of an abysmal hole whose mouth is concealed among the
rocks and scraggly shrubs just above our camp. I heave rocks down
it, as we in Fanland would offer rocks to an Ombwiri, and hear them
go "knickity-knock, like a pebble in Carisbrook well." I think I
detect a far away splash, but it was an awesome way down. This
mountain seems set with these man-traps, and "some day some
gentleman's nigger" will get killed down one.
The mist has now cleared away from the peak, but lies all over the
lower world, and I take bearings of the three highest cones or peaks
carefully. Then I go away over the rocky ground southwards, and as
I stand looking round, the mist sea below is cleft in twain for a
few minutes by some fierce down-draught of wind from the peak, and I
get a strange, clear, sudden view right down to Ambas Bay. It is
just like looking down from one world into another. I think how
Odin hung and looked down into Nifelheim, and then of how hot, how
deliciously hot, it was away down there, and then the mist closes
over it. I shiver and go back to camp, for night is coming on, and
I know my men will require intellectual support in the matter of
procuring firewood.
The men are now quite happy; over each fire they have made a tent
with four sticks with a blanket on, a blanket that is too wet to
burn, though I have to make them brace the blankets to windward for
fear of their scorching.
The wood from the shrubs here is of an aromatic and a resinous
nature, which sounds nice, but it isn't; for the volumes of smoke it
gives off when burning are suffocating, and the boys, who sit almost
on the fire, are every few moments scrambling to their feet and
going apart to cough out smoke, like so many novices in training for
the profession of fire-eaters. However, they soon find that if they
roll themselves in their blankets, and lie on the ground to windward
they escape most of the smoke. They have divided up into three
parties: Kefalla and Xenia, who have struck up a great friendship,
take the lower, the most exposed fire.
