These two stood out
alone, like great island masses made of iron rising from a formless,
silken sea.
The space around seemed boundless, and there was in it neither sound
nor colour, nor anything with form, save those two terrific things.
It was like a vision, and it held me spell-bound, as I stood
shivering on the rocks with the white mist round my knees until into
my wool-gathering mind came the memory of those anything but sublime
men of mine; and I turned and scuttled off along the rocks like an
agitated ant left alone in a dead Universe.
I soon found the place where I had come up into the crater plain and
went down over the wall, descending with twice the rapidity, but ten
times the scratches and grazes, of the ascent.
I picked up the place where I had left Xenia, but no Xenia was
there, nor came there any answer to my bush call for him, so on I
went down towards the place where, hours ago, I had left the men.
The mist was denser down below, but to my joy it was warmer than on
the summit of the wind-swept wall.
