“My dear Mark, have we not gone far enough yet, to convince you that there is no use in going farther. It is dark as midnight this moment—you yourself are scarcely certain of the way—there are precipices and gulleys on every side—and grant that we do reach the top for sunrise, what shall we be able to see amid the immense masses of cloud around us?”
“No, Herbert, that same turning back policy it is, which thwarts success in life. Had you yourself followed such an impulse, you had not gained the honours that are yours. Onward, is the word of hope to all. And what if the day should not break clearly, it is a fine thing to sit on the peak of old Hungry, with the circling clouds wheeling madly below you, to hear the deep thundering of the sea far, far away, and the cry of the curlew mingling with the wailing wind—to feel yourself high above the busy world, in the dreary region of mist and shadow. If at such times as this the eye ranges not over leagues of coast and sea, long winding valleys and wide plains, the prophetic spirit fostered by such agencies looks out on life, and images of the future flit past in cloudy shapes and changing forms. There, see that black mass that slowly moves along, and seems to beckon us with giant arm. You'd not reject an augury so plain.”
“I see nothing, and if I go on much farther this way, I shall feel nothing either, I am so benumbed with cold and rain already.”
“Here, then, taste this—I had determined to give you nothing until we reached the summit.”
Herbert drained the little measure of whiskey, and resumed his way more cheerily.
“There is a bay down here beneath where we stand—a lovely little nook in summer, with a shore like gold, and waves bright as the greenest emerald. It is a wild and stormy spot to-day—no boat could live a moment there; and so steep is the cliff, this stone will find its way to the bottom within a minute.”
And as Mark spoke he detached a fragment of rock from the mountain, and sent it bounding over the edge of the precipice, while Herbert, awe-struck at the nearness of the peril, recoiled instinctively from the brink of the cliff.
“There was a ship of the Spanish Armada wrecked in that little bay—they show you still some mounds of earth upon the shore they call the Spaniards' graves,” said Mark, as he stood peering through the misty darkness into the depth below. “The peasantry had lighted a fire on this rock, and the vessel, a three-decker, decoyed by the signal, held on her course, in shore, and was lost. Good heavens!” cried he, after a brief pause, “why has this fatality ever been our lot? Why have we welcomed our foes with smiles, and our friends with hatred and destruction? These same Spaniards were our brethren and our kindred, and the bitter enemies of our enslavers; and even yet we can perpetuate the memory of their ruin, as a thing of pride and triumph. Are we for ever to be thus, or is a better day to dawn upon us?”
Herbert, who by experience knew how much more excited Mark became by even the slightest opposition, forbore to speak, and again they pursued their way.
They had continued for some time thus, when Mark, taking Herbert's arm, pointed to a dark mass which seemed to loom straight above their heads, where, towering to a considerable height, it terminated in a sharp pinnacle.