Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/254

 He stretched his long arms lazily and yawned.

"Come," he said, "the mists are lifting. We can see something now."

A few paces from the brink of the precipice he halted them.

"They have sharp eyes," he explained. "If we stand on the edge against the sky line, they might see us from down yonder."

They stood where they could see everything, yet could not be seen. Almayne waved his hand in a wide gesture.

"The Kingdom of the Cherokees," he said.

Jolie stood silent, her eyes wide with wonder, her bosom heaving. Nothing in her past experience had prepared her for such a spectacle, for the little hills of Hampshire were pygmies beside this mountain. The grandeur of what she saw took her breath; the beauty of it benumbed her mind and paralyzed her tongue; the vastness of it filled her with something that was like terror.

The cloud blanket beneath them had disappeared except a few drifting fragments which melted as she gazed. Spread beneath her now she saw a blue hazy world of hills and valleys and mountains billowing to the horizon, while, directly in front, her gaze dropped down, down, down—down through space that seemed unfathomable to a deep wide valley which the long humped ridge of Sani'gilagi partly encircled like a wall. There was a clearing in this valley, she noticed; but except this one clearing, which resembled a tiny