Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/155

Rh you; how did you manage the pass? Everything here is frozen solid, even the meat, but we've managed an Irish stew, and you're just in time for it." Then a council of war; could we accomplish the next twelve miles without being benighted, and reach the half-way house? It was impossible to follow the coach road, which on the mountain sides was quite obliterated with snow drifts, our only path lay down the river, on its frozen surface. It was past two, and in the mountains the winter darkness comes on soon after four. We determined to start, and for a time made fair progress, but in intense cold, a travelling thermometer, which one of the party had, showing only a few degrees above zero, so cold that unless one constantly kicked one's foot out of the stirrup the boot froze to the iron. We were all well clothed, save one, a French cook, a delicate man who ought not to have attempted such a journey. We rode in single file, the driver first, on the look-out for dangerous places in the ice. Presently we came into a zone of frozen fog, in which it was impossible to see more than a few yards ahead; it grew dark, and, convinced that we were wandering at large, I ranged up by the driver's side, and he owned that he had lost the way; "but don't tell the other chaps; we must somehow try to make the bank of the river, and follow it down." Just then came a rift in the fog, and I caught sight of Jupiter, the Evening Star, and being a star-gazer, I recognized its position and, steering by it, we soon reached the river bank. Then we crept along under it till we found the place where the coach road comes down to the level of the river, and were certain of the right course to the half-way house. Meanwhile the Frenchman was in bad case,