Still, here he was. And down he must get somehow.
He was terribly thirsty, and looked around for water. After some searching he found a tiny spring, clear and cold as ice. A little moss grew round about it, in beautifully varying shades of green. He lay down and drank, rested and drank again, till his thirst was quenched and he felt himself refreshed. Then he rose.
“And now for that monument!” he cried gaily.
He had only his bare hands to work with, and they were bruised and sore, but there was no lack of material at hand; rocks of all sorts and sizes lay strewn about. He chose, first of all, a big flat stone as a foundation, looking first to see that its position was such as to render the cairn visible from the valley below, and set to work building up carefully with suitable pieces. After a couple of hours’ work, the thing was done—a compact pile of stone, tapering from a broad base evenly towards the top. On this he placed a large flat stone spreading out like the brim of a hat, and above it a smaller one again.
When the work was finished, he patted the stone with his hand, and laughed.
“There you are,” he said. “Now, see and stay there as long as you can, for I doubt if any one will come to set you up again if you fall.”
Then, putting on his jacket, which he had laid aside for the work, he commenced to walk round the little platform which formed the summit of the peak. On three sides the rock fell away sheer; on the fourth was a steep slope of loose sand mixed with a soft kind of rock. Here and there were hard projections of lava and stone. To miss one’s foothold there would mean rolling down, with the first stop some eight hundred feet below. And, likely as not, the rolling would develop into a series of bouncing leaps, breaking every bone in one’s body.
Ørlygur noted half-absently that it was no use trying to get down on this side. Then he sat down and gazed out over the valley below. The land merged into the horizon on all sides save the north-east, where the sea showed a leaden-grey surface, broken in places by white-topped breakers. To the south were snow-capped hills, that seemed more like part of the sky than earth, their glittering surface seeming out of keeping with the dark hues of the lower land. A bank of fog came gliding in from the sea, clear of the bottom of the valley and not touching the mountain heights, making a weird effect. Ørlygur found himself suddenly looking down from clear air into a sea of fog two hundred feet below, that hid the valley from view. He looked down the mountain-side. It seemed far less formidable now that the fog obscured the greater part. And he rose with a sudden impulse to try the descent now while it was less dangerous.
“How stupid,” he said to himself a moment later. “Of course, it is dangerous as ever. Still, I must try it. No use trying to go down the way I came up; it would be no better than jumping off the edge. The sandy slope on the other side is my only chance; I must try to get off it as soon as I can find a ledge, and take my chance of slipping before I strike one.”
He took off his shoes and stockings, and removed his coat. At first he thought of throwing them over on the side where he had come up, but on second thoughts he refrained. To look over there now might make him nervous. He left his things lying where they were.