We
Wind Our Way In Between The Mounds, Or Clamber Over Them, Or
Scramble Along Their Sides Impartially.
The general level is then
flat, and then comes a rise towards the peak wall, so we steer
N.N.E. until we strike the face of the peak, and then commence a
stiff rough climb.
We keep as straight as we can, but get driven at an angle by the
strange ribs of rock which come straight down. These are most
tiresome to deal with, getting worse the higher we go, and so rotten
and weather-eaten are they that they crumble into dust and fragments
under our feet. Head man gets half a dozen falls, and when we are
about three parts of the way up Xenia gives in. The cold and the
climbing are too much for him, so I make him wrap himself up in his
blanket, which he is glad enough of now, and shelter in a depression
under one of the many rock ridges, and Head man and I go on. When
we are some 600 feet higher the iron-grey mist comes curling and
waving round the rocks above us, like some savage monster defending
them from intruders, and I again debate whether I was justified in
risking the men, for it is a risk for them at this low temperature,
with the evil weather I know, and they do not know, is coming on.
But still we have food and blankets with us enough for them, and the
camp in the plain below they can reach all right, if the worst comes
to the worst; and for myself - well - that's my own affair, and no one
will be a ha'porth the worse if I am dead in an hour. So I hitch
myself on to the rocks, and take bearings, particularly bearings of
Xenia's position, who, I should say, has got a tin of meat and a
flask of rum with him, and then turn and face the threatening mist.
It rises and falls, and sends out arm-like streams towards us, and
then Bum, the head man, decides to fail for the third time to reach
the peak, and I leave him wrapped in his blanket with the bag of
provisions, and go on alone into the wild, grey, shifting, whirling
mist above, and soon find myself at the head of a rock ridge in a
narrowish depression, walled by massive black walls which show
fitfully but firmly through the mist.
I can see three distinctly high cones before me, and then the mist,
finding it cannot drive me back easily, proceeds to desperate
methods, and lashes out with a burst of bitter wind, and a sheet of
blinding, stinging rain. I make my way up through it towards a peak
which I soon see through a tear in the mist is not the highest, so I
angle off and go up the one to the left, and after a desperate fight
reach the cairn - only, alas!
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