“Why don’t you tackle ‘Brave and Bold,’ Kid?” said Harry, as he settled down. Gordon chose to interpret this as a cowardly and slurring attack on Alger, and he disdained to reply.
“If you’re going to be knocking around in the Scotch Highlands all afternoon, I might as well take a walk.”
“Don’t fall off the peak.”
Gordon scorned this shallow attempt at humor. “How near through are you, anyway?”
“Eight more chapters.”
“That’ll take you two hours. Good-by.”
“Here, take the compass—and don’t trip over those contour lines.”
Gordon caught the compass, but his scout smile was conspicuous by its absence. The rain had held up somewhat, and he picked his way through the thick brush, every stir of which shook water upon him, for old Bulwagga was thoroughly soaked from the continuous drizzle.
Stumbling and creeping on, he soon found himself in a labyrinth which it was impossible to pass through, so interwoven were the limbs and vines. He retraced his path and was able to pick out a comparatively open way around this tangled spot. Never had he seen such wildness. There was not a thing to indicate that any human being had ever before set foot on this rugged mountain top. Great bowlders, covered with tenacious vines and sheltered by crooked sinewy branches, lay about in tumbling confusion.
“This is a peak, I don’t think!” he sneered, and brushed the water from his clothing. He came to a black pool in which broken twigs lay motionless, and there was the pungent odor of rotting wood and wet foliage. A few feet away stood a tall hemlock which seemed to rear its head out of the pandemonium of rock and thicket, into the light of day. As he looked about him in the silence of this untamed spot, it seemed as if all the materials of creation, rock, water, trees, creeping vines, had been thrown here in an indiscriminate heap.