Wilson broke the spell. He was feverish with the desire to go farther. It was the exciting finish to a long race; the last move in a puzzle which had challenged men for centuries.
“The map, Stubbs! We mustn’t stop here now.”
Stubbs put up his pipe and unrolled once more the bit of parchment. The directions now seemed brutally calm.
“From where the peaks kiss,” he read, “take one hundred strides to the right.”
“We must go back to there,” said Wilson. “Come on.”
He led the way at a run. This starting point was a distance of several hundred yards from the hut itself. From there Wilson took the stated number of steps. He stopped with a start upon the brink of a hidden precipice. The chasm was narrow, scarcely ten feet wide, and from where he stood slanted so that the bottom could not be seen. But a little way to the right of here one looked into a sheer drop which ended in darkness. Wilson wiped his forehead.
“I guess we had better remember what the Priest says about those with unsteady steps. Another yard and I would have gone down.”
But Stubbs was again bending over the map.
“The brave do not falter,” it read, “for the seeming is not always the true. The path leads down twice the length of a man’s body, then ten paces to the left. Again the seeming is not true, for it leads back again and under.”