At snail's pace, now with heads bent
to knees, now standing erect to draw themselves up by the arms or to
leap a wicked-looking crevice, the four took their way up the black
side of the rock. Birds of the cliffs, disturbed from long rest,
wheeled and screamed about them, almost brushing their faces with
long, fearless wings. There was an occasional shelf where, with
backs against the wall spotted with crystals of feldspar, they
waited to breathe, hardly looking down from the dizzy ledge. Great
slabs of obsidian were piled about them between stretches of
calcareous stone, and the soil which was like beds of old lava
covered by thin layers of limestone, was everywhere pierced by sharp
shoulders of stone lying in savage disarray. Gradually rock-slides
and rock-edges yielded a less insecure footing on the upper reaches,
but the chasms widened and water dripping from lateral crevasses
made the vague trail slippery and the occasional earth sodden and
treacherous. For a quarter of a mile their way lay over a kind of
porous gravel into which their feet sank, and beyond at the summit
of a ridge Jarvo halted and threw back to them a summary warning to
prepare for "a long leap.
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