It was mid-afternoon before the camp was fully arranged and Mather set out for his first survey of the area he might have to cover as with a fine tooth comb. Hopeless enough it seemed, as he looked up at it from the ravine head, an appallingly vast and rugged haystack in which to search for one small needle. Were his quarry a bird that flew or an animal that ran, the task would not have looked so hopeless. But a spider, a crawling creature of the grass and brush, probably never coming into fair view—that was different.
He set to work methodically, covering every type of ground that lay between the points which his aneroid told him were eight and twelve thousand feet above the sea. Bunch grass, scrub, rocks, volcanic ash—he went over them all with keen and patient thoroughness but no success. Inquiries of Pedro and the occasional mountain Quichuas whom he met elicited no information of value; either his attempts to describe the creatures he sought were not understood, or the spiders were so rare that even the natives were unfamiliar with them. Evening after evening he returned wearily to camp, empty-handed save for a brace of mountain partridges or a few wild pigeons which he had shot for food, or the half-dozen smaller birds of which his collection stood in need.
“If I had only had some line on the habits of the beasts it would be easier,” he mused as he ate his cornbread lunch one day beside a stream that plunged down the mountain far to the north of where his camp lay. “As a matter of fact, I don’t know even whether they’re day or night feeders. About the only thing I’m sure of is that they’re not to be found on the south slope where I’ve been working. Pedro and I will have to move the outfit around to this side, I guess; the vegetation is quite different here—thicker and not so dried, as though it got more rain. I’ll take a look down this spur and then work back around the base. There may be a good camp site down that way.”
He picked up his gun and started to descend the ridge that dropped sharply toward a valley so far below that its brush and trees blended to a uniform sage-green carpet of marvellous softness. Rocks and beds of loose pumice that broke and slid treacherously as he crossed them covered the slope. He edged his way down cautiously, grasping the rare handholds of bush or tough grass, above him the blue spaces of the sky, the patchwork quilt of the world far-flung below.
A half-hour of this, and then the knife edge fanned out into a broader, easier descent across which trailing bamboo had spread an unbroken mat. As far as Mather could see on either side, and forward to the last steep pitch that dropped to the valley floor, that tangle of interlacing stems and offshoots extended, three feet or so above the ground and in some places strong enough to support a man’s full weight. Had a leafy cloth been woven to cover the mountain’s bareness it could not have more perfectly concealed what lay beneath.
“I’m not very keen to tackle that,” Mather muttered, halting at the edge of the tangle. “Too tough to smash through, and not quite tough enough to walk on—I’ve tried ground cane before.”
He looked back at the pitch he had just descended and shook his head.
“About six of one and half a dozen of the other, I guess. Damned if I’ll shin up that ridge again. Can’t work around the edge of this bamboo, either—those cliffs block me off. Well, here goes for a bad two hours’ work.”
He took the shells out of his gun, slung the weapon on his back so as to leave both hands free, and started down, choosing what appeared to be the least rugged part of the slope.
It was rough going. On hands and knees he would crawl along for a few yards over the bamboo, then strike a weak spot and smash through to the ground in a smother of leaves and hampering tendrils, scramble out and go on. By the time he was half way to the bottom of the valley he was soaked with perspiration and nearly fagged out. Only his indomitable will and the knowledge that to turn back now would be doubly impossible kept him going.