I do not meddle with anything, save to take a few
specimens and to put a few more rocks on the cairn, and to put in
among them my card, merely as a civility to Mungo, a civility his
Majesty will soon turn into pulp. Not that it matters - what is done
is done.
The weather grows worse every minute, and no sign of any clearing
shows in the indigo sky or the wind-reft mist. The rain lashes so
fiercely I cannot turn my face to it and breathe, the wind is all I
can do to stand up against.
Verily I am no mountaineer, for there is in me no exultation, but
only a deep disgust because the weather has robbed me of my main
object in coming here, namely to get a good view and an idea of the
way the unexplored mountain range behind Calabar trends. I took my
chance and it failed, so there's nothing to complain about.
Comforting myself with these reflections, I start down to find Bum,
and do so neatly, and then together we scramble down carefully among
the rotten black rocks, intent on finding Xenia. The scene is very
grand. At one minute we can see nothing save the black rocks and
cinders under foot; the next the wind-torn mist separates now in one
direction, now in another, showing us always the same wild scene of
great black cliffs, rising in jagged peaks and walls around and
above us. I think this walled cauldron we had just left is really
the highest crater on Mungo. {439}
We soon become anxious about Xenia, for this is a fearfully easy
place to lose a man in such weather, but just as we get below the
thickest part of the pall of mist, I observe a doll-sized figure,
standing on one leg taking on or off its trousers - our lost Xenia,
beyond a shadow of a doubt, and we go down direct to him.
When we reach him we halt, and I give the two men one of the tins of
meat, and take another and the bottle of beer myself, and then make
a hasty sketch of the great crater plain below us. At the further
edge of the plain a great white cloud is coming up from below, which
argues badly for our trip down the great wall to the forest camp,
which I am anxious to reach before nightfall after our experience of
the accommodation afforded by our camp in the crater plain last
night.
While I am sitting waiting for the men to finish their meal, I feel
a chill at my back, as if some cold thing had settled there, and
turning round, see the mist from the summit above coming in a wall
down towards us.
