As we had got far enough from the
railway to render the finding it again an impossibility,
the fog shut down on us once more.
We were in a bleak, unsheltered place, now, and had
to trudge right along, in order to keep warm, though we
rather expected to go over a precipice, sooner or later.
About nine o'clock we made an important discovery
- that we were not in any path. We groped around a while
on our hands and knees, but we could not find it;
so we sat down in the mud and the wet scant grass to wait.
We were terrified into this by being suddenly confronted
with a vast body which showed itself vaguely for an instant
and in the next instant was smothered in the fog again.
It was really the hotel we were after, monstrously magnified
by the fog, but we took it for the face of a precipice,
and decided not to try to claw up it.
We sat there an hour, with chattering teeth and quivering bodies,
and quarreled over all sorts of trifles, but gave most
of our attention to abusing each other for the stupidity
of deserting the railway-track. We sat with our backs
to the precipice, because what little wind there was
came from that quarter.
