The sun was now high overhead, and beat torridly upon the granite
crags, which, as I clutched them, blistered my hands. The girl and
the two men (in spite of their burden) balanced themselves and sprang
from foothold to foothold with an ease which shamed me. For a while
I supposed that we were making for the actual summit; but on the
second terrace my captress bore away to the left and led us by a
track that slanted across the northern shoulder of the ridge.
A sentry started to his feet and stepped from behind a clump of arid
sage-coloured bushes, stood for a moment with the sun glinting on his
gun-barrel, and at a sign from the girl dropped back upon his post.
Just then, or a moment later, my ears caught the jigging notes of a
flute; whereby I knew Mr. Badcock to be close at hand, for it was
discoursing the tune of "The Vicar of Bray"!
Sure enough, as we rounded the slope we came upon him, Mr. Fett, and
Billy Priske, the trio seated within a semi-circle of admiring
Corsicans, and above a scene so marvellous that I caught my breath.
The slope, breaking away to north and east, descended sheer upon a
vast amphitheatre filled with green acres of pine forest and pent
within walls of porphyry that rose in tower upon tower, pinnacle upon
pinnacle, beyond and above the tree-tops; and these pillars, as they
soared out of the gulf, seemed to shake off with difficulty the
forest that climbed after them, holding by every nook and ledge in
their riven sides--here a dark-foliaged clump caught in a chasm,
there a solitary trunk bleached and dead but still hanging by a last
grip.
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