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We stand in awe at the grandeur of the mountains, thrusting their snowcapped summits into the clouds, and it is indeed a glorious sight; but the ocean, with its ceaseless motion, its wonderful rising and falling of the tides, and its constant and mysterious moaning, is not to be outdone in sublimity, and offers a keen delight to the lover of nature. Its sands and waters are ever changing.
Northward, and not thirty miles distant, the Himalayas reared their heaven-piercing summits, peak succeeding peak, and crag succeeding crag, far as the eye could reach, from east to west a glittering chain, while here and there the light clouds which hung upon its rocks and precipices became thinned, till they vanished altogether, or, rising in denser masses from some dark valley, obscured the lower portions of the range, only to give relief to the summits and elevate them in appearance an aid they little needed, for the height of the lowest level of the chain is upwards of 15,000 feet.
In the west the moon was growing pale, and was just on the point of plunging into the black clouds which were hanging over the distant summits like the shreds of a torn curtain. We went out of the hut. Contrary to my fellow-traveller's prediction, the weather had cleared up, and there was a promise of a calm morning.
Within the hour we were fairly within the Straits of Gibraltar, the tall yellow-splotched hills of Africa on our right, with their bases veiled in a blue haze and their summits swathed in clouds the same being according to Scripture, which says that "clouds and darkness are over the land." The words were spoken of this particular portion of Africa, I believe.
The filmy disc of the moon had risen in the east, and was already faintly silvering the shadowy scenery below, while yet Sir Bale stood in the mellow light of the western sun, which still touched also the summits of the opposite peaks of Morvyn Fells.
When the Baal Shem was not fasting, which was rarely, he mixed this flour with water and earth, and baked it in the sun. That was his only fare. What else needed he he, whose greatest joy was to make holy ablutions in the mountain waters, or to climb the summits of the mountains and to wander about wrapt in the thought of God?
The crescent of the moon was then over the mountain of the Hot Springs, in the hollow formed by its two summits, on the other side of the gulf. Below it there was a little star, and all around it a pale circle. Salammbo went on: "But thou art a terrible mistress!
But when to this difficulty was added the further one that the hill had two summits, each crowned by very strong earthworks constructed of sand-bags, timber and steel rails, connected by tunnels with bomb-proof works on the rear slope, and that it was further protected by two lines of trenches, themselves protected by strong barbed wire entanglements, and that the works on the summit mounted several machine-guns and some heavier pieces of artillery, the reader may be able to form some slight idea of the obstacles which the Japanese undertook to surmount, as well as the indomitable courage which possessed them to make the attempt.
The slopes were swept by machine-gun and rifle fire, and the beds of the wadis were enfiladed. The ascent on the far side was steeply terraced. Men had alternately to hoist and pull each other up under fire, and finally to expel the enemy from the summits in hand-to-hand fighting. Under these conditions no rapid advance could be looked for.
Whatever may once have been their height and magnitude, they have now scarcely more prominence in the actual scene than the battle of which they are the sole monuments retains in history, being only a few mounds side by side, elevated a little above the surface of the ground, ten or twelve feet in diameter, with a shallow depression in their summits.
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