Page:Son of the wind.djvu/131

RV 119 a little higher, a little more pronounced and dramatic in form, until the two just opposite the watershed appeared the commanders of the column.

One showed an almost perpendicular cliff, a waterfall of rock; the other was but half its height, a slide of earth, topped by a collar of sandstone, which in turn was crowned by a shape of rock like a great head. Helmet-like pieces clung on either side, and though there was nothing so grotesque as a projection upon its front to suggest any feature, nevertheless the smooth great face wore an expression implacable and mysterious as that of the sphinx. Wherein it lurked—a scarcely discernible beetling hinting at a forehead, a modeling that might have been a cheek, a floating shadow like a faint evanescent smile—was impossible to say. He discerned, but could not detect it.

Yet it was neither this head nor its neighbor which most struck his attention, but the thing which, together, they made. For one point of the helmet, thrusting out, overlapped the waterfall of stone. From there the side of the face cut under and away from it into the sharp hollow of the neck, and swelling again into the projecting collar, made thus a little window through which shone the strange blue jewel of the distance. He looked upon white lights and shadows, and lines of summits half seen