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From this post of vantage on the edge of the meadows he could see the crest of old Ringwaak dominating the forests to the south; and the sight, for some unknown reason, drew him. Among those bleak rampikes and rocks and dark coverts he might find a range to his liking. He resumed his journey with a definiteness of purpose which kept him from squandering time on the chase.
It advanced slowly, with an angry roar, licking up the dry brush and branches before the big trunks caught. In front they were hung with streamers of flame, farther off they glowed red, and in the distance smoldering rampikes towered above a wide belt of ash. Now and then one leaned and fell, and showers of sparks shot up as if the log had exploded.
Still there were those who had to smart for it the trackers. But the Mecca of the Landing being so near, and its stimulating delights looming largely in the haze of their imagination, they were as eager to go on as ourselves. The left bank of the river now exhibited, for a long distance, a wilderness swept by fire, but covered with "rampikes" and fallen timber.
An eager light flamed into his eyes, and he blessed his luck that the fire had gone out. Along the crest of the ridge, among the rampikes, silhouetted dark and large against the sunrise, moved a great herd of caribou, feeding as they went. Crouching low in his trench, Pete hurriedly did up his blankets, fixed the pack on his back, then crawled through the snow into the shelter of the fir-woods.
The dogged voyagers were within perhaps two miles of the head of the lake, with the sun gone down behind the desolate rampikes, and strange tints of violet and rose and amber, beautiful and lonely, touching the angry turbulence of the waves, when the man in the bow, whose eyes were free to wander, caught sight of the drifting bateau. It was a little ahead of them, but farther out in the lake.
Up stream, the water threw back faint reflections, but its surface was dull and wrinkled where it narrowed at the top of the rapid, round which he had carried the canoes. Then it plunged down into gloom that was deepened by a cloud of spray and its hoarse turmoil echoed among the hills. A few charred rampikes rose behind the camp, and Jim sat beneath one, with his back against a stone.
On the whole, the trees just here, though chipped and knocked about, have not suffered badly; they have the look of trees, and are leafy in summer. Beyond the trees, on the other side of the marsh, is the steep and high eastern bank of the Ancre, on which a battered wood, called Thiepval Wood, stands like an army of black and haggard rampikes.
Flocks of Wild Pigeons had been coming all day across the blue Lake of Cayggeonull, and perching in line on the dead limbs of the great rampikes that stood as monuments of fire, around the little clearing in the forest, they afforded tempting marks; but he followed them for hours in vain.
The fire had gone over it years before, cutting a sharply defined, gradually widening path through the forest, and leaving behind it only a few scattered rampikes, or tall, naked trunks bleached to whiteness by the storms of many winters.
Then the life sank out of his brain, and he hung limply; and the broad wings bore him inland over the dyke-top straight over the warm and hidden nest where he had longed to be. The Rivals of Ringwaak A white flood, still and wonderful, the moonlight lay on the naked rampikes and dense thickets of Ringwaak Hill.
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