They were on the inside of the Cup of Nannabijou.
CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE CUP!
I
Josephine Stone gasped involuntarily at the restful beauty of the scene that lay before her.
It was like a bit of some fantastic fairyland cached away up in the hills, surrounded on all sides as it was by what seemed an unbroken and impregnable wall of black cliffs.
To her left and occupying almost half the area inside the Cup right up to the cliffs back of her, where its overflow escaped through a narrow opening, reposed a mountain lake like a silver-grey mirror reflecting the walls of the Cup on the further side in absolute clarity of detail. To the right, from the point by which the party had entered, the land rose at a gentle grade till it reached the foot of the walls of rock on that side and the farther end possibly three-quarters of a mile away. Back of the clear area of green sward at the lake-front was a great forest of glistening white birch trees making a natural background for a landscape picture indescribably perfect in the dull gold of the morning sunlight.
But it was the vast green plot up which the carriers were transporting her over a winding, gravelled walk, bordered to either side with shrubs and small electric light standards such as are used in city parks, that most amazed the young woman. Miniature fountains, built of amethyst encrusted rock, were set out here and there in little green “islands” isolated by means of linked circles branching out at regular intervals from the main gravelled path.
Before them, in the centre of the great lawn, stood a great rambling building, constructed of unbarked cedar, with screened verandahs and odd-looking little towers at its corners. Some little distance from this château was a smaller building and before it on high, white-painted poles were what were unmistakably wireless aërials. Heavy copper wires carried up on a series of poles from a point back in the opening of the cliffs indicated that somewhere in the cascades formed by the overflow of the lake a hydro-electric plant was located, whence the current was brought for light and power to this strange habitation in the heart of the wilderness.
Once Josephine Stone looked back into the face of Ogima Bush. On the instant she thought she caught a quizzical, amused expression on his swarthy visage, as though the Medicine Man were actually enjoying her bewilderment. But his features relapsed as quickly into the grim, stoical lines they habitually held, so that only the wicked eyes above the livid red gashes in his cheeks seemed alive and human.
As the party approached the château a plump, middle-aged woman with a kindly, beaming face came out on the verandah and down the steps to the walk.