"I wonder."
"Of Sluiskin's appeal to Stevens and Van Trump, down there at the falls that now bear his name:
"'Wake klatawah! Wake klatawah!'"
"But," said I, "they went, and they came back. That's an augury."
"But," he answered, "if it hadn't been for those steam-caves up there in the crater, they might not have come back, might have perished on the summit that night in the bitter cold. And then the Siwash would have been a true prophet."
"Well, there may be something equivalent to those steam-caves somewhere in the place that we are going to. I don't mean, of course, in that pile of rock over there."
"Of course not. But that isn't what's troubling me; it's the possibility that we may be too late."
"Too late?" I exclaimed.
"Just so. It is only at long intervals—so far as we know, that is—that these strange beings appear on the mountain."
"Well?" I queried.