“Good old Joey!” cried Magnus, as my brother lay on the turf beside him; “crowd in, old hoss—lots of room!”
“Good old Magny!” responded Joe; “what a day we’re having!”
Presently they condescended to look about them. They were on a sharp ridge, one side of which sloped down into the valley from which they had ascended, the other looked out on an uninterrupted prospect of cloud and mist.
“This isn’t what’s-his-name at all,” said Joe. “There’s a tuck shop on the top of it—there’s none here.”
“That chap was right,” said Magnus. “That must be Snowdon over there—we’ve missed him.”
“Horrid bore,” said Joe, who, however, regretted the mountain less than the tuck shop.
The afternoon was changing. The clouds were beginning to sweep up from the other side and begriming the sky which had been so ruthlessly clear all the morning.
All of a sudden the mist below them parted, and disclosed through a frame of cloud a great cauldron of rock yawning at their feet, at the bottom of which—as it seemed, miles below—lay a black lake. It was a scene Dante could have described better than I.
“If we could get down there we could have a tub,” said Magnus.
“It’s snug enough up here,” replied the poet; “don’t you think so?” Magnus admitted it was snug, and did not press his motion. For, though he scorned to say so, he was fagged, and felt he could do with a half-hour’s lounge before undertaking a new venture.