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And when they were atop of the scree it was harder yet to get them down, for on that side it was steeper; but at last they brought it about, and came down into a little grassy plain or isle in the rock sea, which narrowed toward the eastern end, and the rocks on either side were smooth and glossy, as if the heat had gone out of them suddenly, when the earth-fires had ceased in the mountains.
The pine-trees gave way to stunted larches, and these to pine scrub and bare scree, up which he scrambled, clutching at the tough bushes, terribly out of breath, his heart pumping, the sweat streaming into his eyes. He had no feeling now but wonder whether he would get to the top before he dropped, exhausted.
The day was bright, with glaring sunshine, and a moderate breeze drove up wisps of ragged cloud that dappled the hills with flitting shadow. Towering crag and shingly scree showed blue and purple through it and then flashed again into brilliancy, while the long, grassy slopes gleamed with silvery gray and ocher.
The White Rock it was called, and as a child Walter a Cleeve had climbed about it a score of times in search of madrepores; for a gully ran down beside it, half choked with fern and scree, and from the gully here and there a ledge ran out across the cliff-face, otherwise inaccessible.
They left the black peat-soil behind them, and the heather gave place to thin and more fragile ling, beaded with its unopened buds, while fangs of rock cropped out here and there. Then turning the flank of a steep ascent, they reached the foot of a shingly scree, and sat down to lunch in the warm sunshine where the wind was cut off by the peak above.
They had found her a long distance from the path, at the foot of a steep and rocky scree, some twenty or thirty feet high, down which she must have slipped headlong. There she had lain for some eight hours in the storm before they found her. She neither moved nor spoke when they discovered her, nor had there been any sign of life, beyond the faint beating of the pulse, on the journey down.
"Long hours of reading have revealed the nature of a moraine," she said; "but, please, what is a geröll?" "A slope of loose stones. Let me see, what do they call it in Scotland and Cumberland? Ah, yes, a scree. On the French side of the Alps the same thing is known as a casse." "How well you know this country and its ways! Have you climbed many of the well known peaks?"
An old man instructed them in their duties. "You'll staun here," he panted, indicating a little platform about two feet broad, and running along the full length of the "scree." "You'll watch for every bit stane that comes doon, an' dinna' let any past.
No grass was to be seen, and hardly any trees, except a few stunted silver birch. They walked inland for a mile or more to where the snow began, and then saw, as it were, one vast unwrinkled sheet of snow stretching upwards into a bank of cloud. The ground was all scree of slate and shaly rock. They saw no signs of habitancy, and few tracks of animals.
"It's much too far." "The shortest is up the crag by the Stairs or the gully on the other side. The regular track takes us down near the bottom of the next dale, and then back over the top." "That's unthinkable," Miss Jardine declared. "Well," said Helen thoughtfully, "there's a short line down the scree and across the shoulder of the fell below, but it's steep and rough.
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