Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/254

 attempts at slumber. He managed to rig the tent over a rock for me, and I soon fell asleep, only to be awakened apparently next moment by a hail from the glacier below. Our successful friends were returning, not by any means in silence. We shouted and waved good-byes to them until they were lost to sight round the corner of the Hooker Icefall, and with them vanished our last link to civilization.

At 4 p.m. the guides set off to tramp steps for to-morrow's route, while the snow was still soft, and I was left to my own devices for three hours. They passed quickly enough in observing a phenomenon I have met before in the great silent places. Every now and then a voice seemed to rise from nowhere in a faint cry. Again and again I have started up, sure that some one was calling me, to confront only the silent snow-clad mountains. Some stone falling from the heights, the gurgle of an underground stream, or the wind sweeping into a hidden cave and raising an echo from the distant ridges—clear and distinct it comes, this call of the mountains, sometimes friendly and of good cheer; but often eerie, wild, and full of melancholy warning, as if the spirit of the mountains bade you beware how you tread her virgin heights, except in a spirit of reverence and love.

About 6.30 p.m. my guides returned, and while they prepared the evening meal I sat and watched the everchanging colours the setting sun cast upon the scenes around me. Looking westward the jagged tooth-like range of the Sierras was outlined sharp against a green and primrose sky, while Mount Sefton and the Footstool stood out from a background of palest blue, which merged into green and orange behind the distant foothills. Close at hand the red rocks of Mount Nazomi towered up into the intense blue sky, lending a wonderful contrast to the white ice of Mount Cook, whose lower slopes merged into a glow of pink and lilac, broken here and there with deep narrow crevasses, which were filled with ever-changing colours—sea-green, yellow, and blue. They glowed with living fire. Beneath