“Is it?” said Griggs. “Then it’s before its time. There, unbutton your eyelids and look again. The sun doesn’t crackle and spit when it gets over the world’s edge.”
“Humph!” grunted Chris, as he realised the truth that a roaring fire of pinewood was burning in a sheltered spot. “Have you woke Ned?”
“Yes, and he’s growling for his breakfast. Going to have a sluice first? You’ll just have time.”
Griggs went back to see after the breakfast, and Chris turned to where Ned had lain down on a fragrant pine-bough couch.
“Here, look sharp,” he said. “I suppose we must have a dose of cold water.”
Ned grunted and seemed as ill-humoured as his companion at being awakened from sleep, and the pair hurried through the gloom to the side of the gully, where there was a soft, splashing roar caused by water falling like so much foam from a ledge about a hundred feet above their heads into a rock-pool at their feet.
The boys’ preparations did not take long, neither did the application of their bath. Chris stepped into the rock-pool, took a couple of paces, and stood right in the middle of the descending broken water, uttered a gasp or two, stepped out, and began to apply a rough home-made towel with tremendous energy.
“Is it cold?” said Ned, with a preliminary shiver.
“Ugh! Horrid!” was the smothered reply.
The words seemed to check Ned, but the shock had to be suffered, and he too stepped into the natural shower-bath, and sprang out again, to follow his companion’s example.