“It’s further than it looks. Come on; let’s be jogging,” said Wally.
The new ascent, which consisted chiefly in clambering from stone to stone up the rocky ravine, was less exhausting than the tramp up the bog, and as Wally was no better at this sort of climbing than any of the rest, he did not dishearten them by getting hopelessly ahead, but kept with the party. Occasionally they had to help one another up a specially stiff ledge, and this mutual accommodation was an additional source of comfort to the weak goers. Progress was very slow. Cash, having hauled himself up on to a little platform of moss, looked at his watch and was alarmed to find it was past one. The huge ravine, at the far head of which they could see the open sky, seemed a tremendous distance yet. And after that, according to Wally, was to come the bog and the cliffs beyond, on which Wisdom lost his life.
Yet none of these things was quite so bad as the rolling up of some fleecy clouds behind them, which effaced the view below, and seemed to be crawling up the mountain in pursuit of them.
Cash pointed this out to Wally, who grunted.
“We shall miss the view from the top,” said he.
“If we ever get there,” said Cash.
On they scrambled again, casting every now and then a longing look upward at the grim ravine head, and now and then an anxious glance behind at the fast overhauling clouds.
“We’re bound to get out of it up there,” sang out Wally.
But almost as he spoke the light mist swept past him, blotting out everything but the boulder he stood on and a rift of the dashing water at his feet.
The clouds had befriended Fisher minor. They did what he durst not do; ordered the party to halt.