Page:Through South Westland.djvu/324

208 No Silver Cone against the blue here; black and grey walls of sheer rock like a crater rim held two glaciers, which ended in falls over perpendicular rocks—an unclimbable mountain as seen from here.

The track beyond this is quite lost for either man or beast—so we made a fire and had lunch, and leaving the men to smoke, I climbed up beside a waterfall to a bower of moss and ferns, where the little green and grey wrens, no bigger than mice, were daintily hopping about among the branches.

As I came back slowly to the little flat, no horses were in sight. There sat Transome, solitary on a stone, smoking.

“They are all gone away,” he remarked. “We’ll have to wait till they are caught.” Then he proceeded to explain that the Scorpion and Mephibosheth had made off, the latter trailing a twenty-foot rope, and they were only in time to catch old Tom at the fording-place and bring him back to be saddled. Duncan rode after the truants, but they had had a good start, with faces towards home. We sat watching for some time, devoured by sandflies and speculating as to how we should pass the night: there were still some crusts and a little cocoa and a bar of chocolate in the knapsack, but not even an oilskin to cover us. The valley was all in shadow now, and a night up here did not seem an attractive programme. Then from below the junction of the river I saw the mare I had ridden come slowly out of the bush, and cross the shingle-spit with Mephibosheth following; then came Duncan