Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/130

 save us some stiff rock-work in the morning and about an hour in point of time. Cheered by such news as this, dinner was a jubilant meal; and after it was over we crawled into our sleeping-bags as a protection against the evening chill and waited for the sunset. The fog was rapidly clearing, and as the setting sun's rays pierced through the thin mist there began a series of the most wonderful colour effects it is possible to imagine. They were beautifully soft and yet extraordinarily vivid. We saw the distant mountains through a luminous curtain of softest transparency. Away on the horizon outlined against pale green evening sky rose peak after peak vivid with an edge of purest gold; the nearer cones were touched with violet and rose, while over Baker's Saddle drifted soft little clouds of crimson and gold, which shattered themselves into rainbow mists and vanished as they touched the rugged, sun-warmed rocks that impeded their westward flight. The changes of colour were so quick it was impossible to follow them—they were here and gone in a breath. No voice was raised above a whisper; we seemed to be watching some scene in fairyland that at a sound would vanish and leave us dazed and desolated. Slowly the colours faded and the mountains were blotted out by the shadowy twilight, and innumerable stars glinted from the deep blue sky. The pageant was over, the day was done, and we who had witnessed it crept quietly to sleep, awed by a beauty such as one sees but once in a lifetime.

The evening turned exceedingly cold, and I decided that having already walked over most of the conventions since I began mountaineering, one more would matter nothing; so I suggested to the guides that they abandon their tent and save me from shivering in icy aloofness till morning. The plan worked well, and I really got some sleep, especially in the early morning when Alex lit the two "cookers" inside the tent, and a delicious sense of warmth and luxury, pervaded by a smell of methylated