TWO DIANAS IN ALASKA 225 



lances of gold the snow reflected back, heliograph- 

 wise, the message of the dawn of a perfect day. 

 Underfoot the snow patches, overhead the sky of 

 wondrous blue, and so to the sheep ground. 



We took a new direction this time, and as we 

 climbed the rarefied air told on us, and our senses 

 seemed awhirl. Rounding a corner, on a ledge of a 

 precipice, a small black bear, shambling and shy, met 

 us face to face. He fled, wise animal, to a fastness 

 of rock in his rear. We had no designs on his simple 

 life, because our sole quest was the wily sheep, and 

 our watchword was silence. 



Outlined on the giant slopes we made out many 

 feeding groups of rams and ewes, but to get within 

 range seemed beyond our powers of limited endur- 

 ance. On peeping round a rocky wall I saw, perched 

 on a ridge of a black-looking crevasse, a lordly 

 patriarch, whose head seemed to me the most to be 

 desired in all the world. He had got beyond even his 

 powers of climbing, and looked more than a little 

 puzzled as to his next move. 



Cecily was behind me, Gummidge behind her, and 

 a long way off, like a klipspringer on a pinnacle of 

 rock, sat our other man, with a coil of emergency rope 

 round about his shoulders. I alone could peer round 

 the frowning fortress, and that only by leaning care- 

 fully against the wall of the precipice above us, with 

 due regard to the drop below, a yawning abyss that 

 stretched in unbroken lines down to the glacier 

 beneath. 



He was still there, my ram I called him mine 



Q 



