Towards afternoon, clouds heaped themselves in brilliant snowy
masses, all radiance and beauty to us, all fog and gloom below,
girdling the whole mountain, and interposing their glittering screen
between us and the dark timber belt, the black smoking shores of
Kau, and the blue shimmer of the Pacific. From that time, for
twenty-four hours, the lower world, and "works and ways of busy men"
were entirely shut out, and we were alone with this trackless and
inanimate region of horror.
For the first time our guide hesitated as to the right track, for
the faint suspicion of white smoke, which had kept alive our hope
that the fire was still burning, had ceased to be visible. We
called a halt while he reconnoitred, tried to eat some food, found
that our pulses were beating 100 a minute, bathed our heads,
specially our temples, with snow, as we had been advised to do by
the oldest mountaineer on Hawaii, and heaped on yet more clothing.
In fact, I tied a double woollen scarf over all my face but my eyes,
and put on a French soldier's overcoat, with cape and hood, which
Mr. Green had brought in case of emergency. The cold had become
intense. We had not wasted words at any time, and on remounting,
preserved as profound a silence as if we were on a forlorn hope,
even the natives intermitting their ceaseless gabble.
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