“Where are you?” shouted Wally from the invisible. “Here; where are you?”
“Stay there; and I’ll come to you.”
Slowly the party foregathered, and stood huddled in the blinding mist on a flat rock.
“It’s blowing over,” said Wally. “We’d better make back for the hill-side, and get out of this ravine till it clears up.”
It was no easy task scrambling back, down that difficult way, over boulders already made slippery by the moist mist, and not able to see four yards ahead. The clouds poured up to meet them in column upon column, growing denser and wetter every minute. At last, how they scarcely knew, they came down to where the rush of the water ceased and the stones gave place to wet grass.
“We must be somewhere near where we sat down last,” said Ashby. “Whew! it’s cold.”
“The thing is,” said Percy, “aren’t we too much out to the left? There’s no sign of a path that I can see.”
“This looks like one,” said a voice ahead, which they recognised as Wally’s. “Come along—this way.”
They followed as well as they could, and groped about for the path. Then they shouted.
Wally replied out of the mist.