Page:Through South Westland.djvu/114

52 glimpses to be caught of bare snow-slopes and mountain walls. All was dismal—“horrid,” as Evelyn would have said—shrouded in mist. Yet, on the other hand, the valley was still clothed with many kinds of plants, and tree-veronicas and ratas flowered alongside the ice. Our guide had gone back after bringing us thus far, and we never thought of having the slightest difficulty in reaching the hut again. Now, when we turned to go, the whole place seemed to have changed. There was no one to ask our way, and the dusk was falling. Each stony ridge we climbed over we imagined to be the last, and that we should see the hut from its summit. But the hut was nowhere: it had vanished. A kind of despair seized us as we wandered hither and thither in the gathering gloom, seeing around us naught but stones:

Far up in the mist near the glacier the men were calling and halloa-ing, but we had wandered so far now, they could not see us in the waning light. We strayed through this nightmare of a place—it was impossible we could miss two men and a hut, and spend the night among the stones, yet it began to look like it!

At last we saw a figure approaching over a ridge, and gladly went to meet it. The men had imagined that we had by some means got on to the glacier and knowing the danger, they had