I smelt the pungent scent of wild-geraniums, and knew there were pink flowers, but my eyes saw not.
The rope slackened, and I looked back!
I understood why Lot's wife became a pillar of salt: we had come up over the edge of the world.
Once, like a reassuring presence, a small black car ran down past the trolley, almost brushing my coat.
Twelve minutes of this, then before us were iron sheds and black and white genii—the men who had made the line and the men who worked the trolley. Inside the shed the puffing little engine of magic power. Then the 'man who makes' on the mountain hurried us off, through a forest of thin firs, on to a plain of rock and white sand, with not more than ten feet of view around.
It was a mysterious walk, this pilgrimage in silence through the rain—soft, soaking stuff of spray—past huge water-worn boulders, grey granite gargoyles that peered at us through the fog. No sound but the noise of our footsteps on the damp white pathway, and the crunch of small pebbles as we passed between grey walls of rock.
Suddenly the way became a field of mauveness, palest pink and purple flowers, hedged by masses of tall, yellow, flowering reeds, while close to the damp earth grew hundreds of sweet-smelling butter-coloured orchids and white crassula.
As we watched our phantom party moving through the flowers in their unpractical garments, Marinus reminded me of how Anne Barnard had climbed this mountain in scanty skirt, her husband's trousers, and pattens. The memory of Anne made me sing something Scotch—not her own song, 'Robin Gray,' but 'Loch Lomond.' I sang very softly to suit the mists, elusive spirits with feathery wings.
As I sang there came a noise of driven waters, the clouds moved away, and before us was a lake: a great ocean it might have been, for one saw no farther shore, but only big angry waves dashing against the rocks.
The 'man who made things' took us down the bank and led us on to a huge wall with a cement pathway and a thin iron rail.