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.
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