“Well, you can stay here then, I’m going,” Bennie declared. His voice was shrill, and Spider realized that he wasn’t quite himself. Besides, he was shivering with cold. Spider was shivering, too, here in the gloomy shadow of Llao Rock, with the wind beating upon them.
“All right,” he decided, “if you go, I go. Come on. We got to hit the rim road before dark. But take it easy, Bennie, for Pete’s sake. We got to save our strength, and this old stuff’s awful treacherous, too. Test your footing.”
“I’ll test my footing, all right,” Bennie answered, starting up the long, steep incline of powdered pumice and loose conglomerate, out of which here and there thrust up jagged lumps and spikes and little cliffs of harder lava.
It was hard work, all the harder because they were so wet and tired. And they soon found it was dangerous work. Drive your foot down into the soft stuff too hard to get a brace, and you start a little landslide right under your own feet. That releases a lot of stuff above you, which starts down, too, and it is only too easy to get carried down with the rush. The boys found this out, fortunately, before they had climbed very far, so that they didn’t slide far enough to hurt them. After that, they climbed side by side, ten feet apart, instead of one behind the other, and zigzagged across the slopes, instead of going directly up.
It seemed ages before they reached the top of the loose stuff, at the very base of the mighty precipice. From here they could see the whole lake, and scanned the water for any sign of the launch, but no launch was to be seen. So they kept on.
Their troubles, which they thought would be over when they reached the base of the cliff, were not over. They still had a long, soft slope to climb at the foot of the lava, which was impeded by huge broken fragments fallen from the cliff above. Often they couldn’t go around these, because if they did they got too near the edge of the slope, and were in danger of starting down on a landslide. They had to work over them. However, they toiled on, getting warm, at least, with the exertion, until they reached the long and almost level stretch that led rapidly to the rim.
Here, for the first time in ten minutes, Bennie spoke. “We’re going to make it!” he cried.
“And we’re going to make it before dark!” Spider answered.
They hurried on now, with renewed courage, and gained the rim at last, coming up out of the cold shadows into the sharp mountain gale and the last low rays of sunset.
Both boys flopped for a minute on the dry pumice back from the rim, and lay there getting back some of their strength.