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For about five miles after that we kept along a promontory that shouldered its way across an undulating plain, ringed in the distance by purple hills; then we sighted our distant landmark a conical beacon that we had been steering for. We were descending, thigh-deep in bracken, when the wind bore down to us from a dot against the skyline of a ridge the tiniest of thin whistles.
There was one man here to-night for whom he had always held particular detestation. His name was Nicolas Doremus. He was a broker in a small way, but Ruyler guessed that he made the best part of his income at bridge, possibly poker. He lived with two other men in a handsome apartment in one of the new buildings that were changing the old skyline of San Francisco.
It was a snow sky which only refrained from releasing its burden by reason of the high, top wind that drove the heavy masses relentlessly. The earthly prospect was no more inviting. It was wide, and flat, and devoid of vegetation. There were no hills anywhere, and the skyline was just a vanishing point similar to the horizon of the open sea.
Without pausing, except for a brief half hour at noon, and another later in the day for eating, they pressed the trail, running what rapids they could and portaging the others, until in the early evening they saw, far away, a dirty blur on the skyline. "Hurrah!" yelled Fielding. "Good old firebus, waiting for us." "Somebody run ahead and hold her," said Duff.
The avenue was all your own; you might appreciate it as an avenue for itself; and every building and even the skyline of the streets you might appreciate, free of any association except the thought of the results of man's planning and building. Silent, deserted Paris by moonlight, without street lamps few had ever seen that.
Thoughts like these do not grow up all at once as I have set them down. At this time they seemed to gather from the many times they had passed through my mind, and rank themselves against my words. So it came to pass that I was silent, and was glad presently that so I had been. "Look!" said Gerda suddenly, pointing out to the far eastward, "yonder are sails on the skyline."
It was four hours after sun-up when they left the camp; and two hours' march brought them to that ridge which Berselius had indicated from the camp as being near the skyline. When they reached the ridge, and not before, Berselius halted and stared over the country in front of him, his face filled with triumph and hope. He seized Adams's hand and pointed away to the west.
He melted away into the darkness as he spoke, and through the night he slipped, one shadow more amongst many, from tree to bush, from bush to tree. Across a patch of open grass he crawled on his hands and knees; and once lay flat on his face when against the skyline he saw a figure he was sure was Deede Dawson's creep by a yard or two on his right hand.
Then searchlights began to play on the lower country; there was skirmishing along the skyline; blades flashed. At last, between the lightning flashes, the blackness was so dense it was hardly possible for Tisdale to see the road, and he could not trust the nervous team to keep the track; it was necessary to stop, at least to wait until the moon should rise.
He looked away to the southward where the land stretched gray and dreary to the low skyline broken here and there with the pale outline of distant hills. A night and half a day of riding to take them there, and an airplane to haul back through brush and rocks, maybe, and across draws and gulches Good Lord! The thing might almost as well be in Honolulu!
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