SIDE LIGHTS ON BIRDS 



cliff, gives a good footway, but with little to 

 spare. It tends upwards, and ever upwards ; 

 by slow degrees the darkness falls, and one by one 

 the stars appear in the velvet blackness of the sky. 



We are travelling now through a chaos of huge 

 detached rocks, following every turn of the 

 shadowy guide. At length he pauses and points 

 to a faint patch of whiteness in the gloom above. 

 The first stage of our journey is nearly at an end. 



The Club-Hutte — the hospice where we may 

 rest and sleep awhile— is at hand. 



The interior of the Club-Hutte is of the simplest. 

 Now that the small lamp glimmers on the rude, 

 deal table, we may peer into the shadowy recesses. 

 The walls are of bare stone. At the further end 

 is a wooden platform which extends across the 

 whole breadth of the structure. Upon this is a 

 mattress, and, depending from a rope stretched 

 from wall to wall, are rugs, to serve for covering. 

 There is no superfluous luxury here. Our meal 

 is of the simplest, and we sleep on the bare mat- 

 tress stretched within a few feet of our dining 

 table. But before we turn in we have time for 

 a pipe. We stand for a little time on the terrace 

 of rock just outside the door. The stars seem 

 almost within reach of the hand. 



For a while a great wreath of cloud beneath 

 our feet obscures the valley. Now it blows aside, 

 and for a moment we see, glittering in some im- 

 measurable depth, the lights of the Kurhaus. 



It is still dark when we arise. Dressing is a 

 brief process, for we have merely divested our- 

 selves of our boots. 



After a rinse in the little, ice-cold torrent in the 

 rocks, we are ready. From the terrace we can 

 make out the changing shapes of the mist, as it 

 seethes beneath our feet, like smoke from some 

 giant cauldron. 



210 



