Beneath
us stretched the desert, and beyond it a broad belt of fantastically
shaped, snow-clad mountains, hundreds and hundreds of them; in front, to
the right, to the left, as far as the eye could reach.
"They are just as I saw them in my dream so many years ago," muttered
Leo; "the same, the very same."
"And where was the fiery light?" I asked.
"Yonder, I think;" and he pointed north by east.
"Well, it is not there now," I answered, "and this place is cold."
So, since it was dangerous to linger, lest the darkness should overtake
us on our return journey, we descended the peak again, reaching the cave
about sunset. The next four days we spent in the same way. Every morning
we crawled up those wearisome banks of snow, and every afternoon we
slid and tobogganed down them again, till I grew heartily tired of the
exercise.
On the fourth night, instead of coming to sleep in the tent Leo sat
himself down at the entrance to the cave. I asked him why he did this,
but he answered impatiently, because he wished it, so I left him alone.
I could see, indeed, that he was in a strange and irritable mood, for
the failure of our search oppressed him. Moreover, we knew, both of us,
that it could not be much prolonged, since the weather might break at
any moment, when ascents of the mountain would become impossible.
In the middle of the night I was awakened by Leo shaking me and
saying--"Come here, Horace, I have something to show you.
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