A SEASHORE ONE MILE UP 



of Haiti, when I sent forward a chit asking in 

 what direction were Hayne Boy den's ruins. The 

 Major's answer was to slip sideways off the face 

 of a sheer mountain, shoot westward and skirt a 

 steep range stretching far ahead to the very gulf 

 itself. Over and along the entire ridge a dark 

 phalanx of cloud was pouring, now down one side 

 valley, now another. Dashing in twice, between 

 wisps, we caught glimpses of the great manor 

 house ruins, all that was left of the glory of the 

 French colony of the 1770's. 



Then we dashed into a pass, beneath a dense 

 cloud whose drops struck our faces horizontally 

 and as sharp as hail. Now followed an exciting 

 fifteen minutes, twisting up a tortured valley, 

 flattening against Mt. Terrible, with its sheer cliff 

 of even-beached strata and gaping end-views of 

 cloud-washed layers of shells and corals. Then, 

 squeezing between a level, hanging valley and an 

 oncoming cloud, we snatched a glimpse of great 

 human-made walls, circular basins and long ter- 

 races which once were new and beautiful. 



The Major's hand was pointing out the last and 

 greatest of these ruins when the bottom dropped 

 out of everything. We had already had several 

 vacuums beneath us, and in France I had dropped 

 more feet than I like to remember, with only time 

 to gasp and go on. But here in this valley we 

 struck a hole of what felt like naked ether and 

 simply dropped — evenly but wholly. It felt like 

 a mile. We grinned rather sickly at each other — 



107 



