It was no hilltop they stood on. It was a tiny island jutting upward out of an immeasurable sea. In the distance to either hand rose similar islets. Above was the cloudless sky. Below, lay that vast waveless deep.
“It’s the fog!” cried the girl, finding her voice as the marvel explained itself. “Don’t you see? It lies low, over the water and the valley. And we’re above it. It has settled down over everything like a white cloud. But some of the hilltops pierce the top of it. We’re ‘above the clouds!’” she quoted, laughing; her spirits coming back with her returning strength.
“We’re above that one, anyhow,” assented Conover. “You’re right. But where’s the camp?”
“Down there, somewhere,” she replied, vaguely.
“But how can we find it?” he urged. “We don’t know which side of this hill it’s on. It may be five miles away. If we go down, the chances are a million to one we won’t strike it. An’ then we’ll have to wander ’round all night in that slimy white cloud, like we’ve been doin’ for the past hour. We’re up against it, girl.”
“I wouldn’t spend another hour in that mist for a fortune,” she shuddered. “It stifled me; and hideous woozzey faces seemed to be peering at us out of it. I could hear invisible things whispering all around us. Ugh!”
Caleb filled his lungs and shouted across the sea of mist. Again and again he bellowed forth his long-drawn halloo. To anyone on the nearer hilltop islands his call might readily have been heard. But human voice could as readily have penetrated a mountain of cotton-batting as carry sound through that waste of cloud-reek.
At length the two fugitives realized this. A last shout, a final straining of ears for some answering cry; then Conover turned again to the girl.
“They wouldn’t hear us a hundred yards away,” said he, “even if they was awake. We’ll have to,—Why, you’re shiverin’!”
To Desirée the glow of the long climb was giving place to the chill air of the Adirondack autumn night. Her teeth were chattering; but she bravely scouted the idea of discomfort.