Page:Through South Westland.djvu/194

112 here, propped against my pack for a cushion, I passed the night. For a long time I did not sleep, but lay thinking of the day’s ride; the dark forest; those sheer mountain walls and the tiny track going on and on between them. The mosquitoes hummed in my ears (though they were not the blood-thirsty terrors of the Blue River hut)—from time to time one of the men knocked the ashes out of his pipe, or got up to replenish the logs; and, between sleeping and waking, I heard their voices in a low-toned conversation, that like the track, seemed to go on endlessly. Then it grew very cold, the mosquitoes stopped humming; and when I awoke again, the hut was empty. A cold, grey light was growing outside; the door-less entry became “a glimmering square,” and I shivered as I collected my hat and gloves, and began setting out the remains of last night’s supper. Then Ted came back, and brewed a billy-full of cocoa; the surveyor appeared—more dishevelled, and still covered with biddies, but cheerful as ever,—and assured me they had passed an excellent night, disturbed neither by mosquitoes nor frost.

Outside, the foliage was delicately frosted with silver, and the hut’s roof white with rime; behind the mountains on the right of the gorge the sun was rising, flushing the snows on Mount Alexander. While the others busied themselves getting the horses saddled and the packs adjusted, the surveyor and I watched the rose turn to gold, then fade, and the peaks glitter sharp and pure against