Page:To the Summit of Cardigan (1922).djvu/14

 But how the wind blows! It rushes over that granite dome as if its purpose was to clean it of every speck of dust, even of every projecting pebble-point—and that is what it has done in the ages. The wind rushed as if it were also its purpose to clear the mountain top of the little human excrescence that was now defying it. Going out on the dome, the Nomad felt himself losing his feet. A fierce gust made him get down on all fours! Stopping to mark the spot where he emerged from the timber, in order to find it again when he came back, the Nomad perceived that the tops of the little spruce trees simply would not be bent down. The winds of years and years seemed to have converted them into unbreakable steel. So he marked the spot with two white stones laid side by side, and pressed on.

That is to say, he tried to press on. The wind caught him again—it was all fours for it once more. He fought his way on farther. The glistening waters of New Found Lake came into view on the east—a beautiful sheet of water, a real New Hampshire Windermere. As he looked at this lake, the Nomad was strangely impressed with the probability that if he kept on over the granite dome to the tip of the lesser dome at the summit, he would presently be blown into the waters of that lake. It might be a pleasant journey of some fifteen miles through the air with a cool watery plunge at the end—but then the Nomad's promise to Luisita came into his mind. "No risk"—that was it. The Nomad crept into the lee of a rounded rock, at the foot of which grew masses of red bear-berries, and also many more big fat blueberries than he could eat, and thought about it all. It was a clear case. You could only go to that summit on all fours, and even then you would be likely to find yourself presently creeping high in the upper air. He had to give it up. It was ignominious. Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.

But one recourse was open. He could creep around the sides, clinging to the little spruce trees at the lower edge of the dome. He did so, observing on the way the northward-looking panorama