So we addressed ourselves to the ascent of the northern mountain; though Richard and I would first beg a little space in which to drain the water from our boots, and to wring some pounds’ weight of it from our clothes.  That done, we fell in line once more; and being so fortunate as to hit upon a ravine which led to the cliff-crowned summit, the climb was shorn of half its toil and difficulty.  Nevertheless, by the sun’s height it was well on in the forenoon before we came out, perspiring, like sappers in a steam bath, upon the mountain top.

As Yeates had guessed, this northern mountain proved to be a lofty table-land.  So far as could be seen, the summit was an undulating plain, less densely forested than the valley, but with a thick sprinkling of pines to make the still, hot air heavy with their resinous fragrance.  As it chanced, our ravine of ascent headed well back from the cliff edge, so we must needs fetch a compass through the pine groves before we could win out to any commanding point of view.

The old borderer took his bearings by the sun and laid the course quartering to bring us out as near as might be on the heights above the gorge.  But when we had gone a little way, a thinning of the wood ahead warned us that we were approaching some nearer break in the table-land.

Five minutes later we four stood on the brink of a precipice, looking abroad upon one of nature’s most singular caprices.  Conceive if you can a segment of the table-land, in shape like a broad-bilged man o’ war, sunk to a depth of, mayhap, six or seven hundred feet below the general level of the plateau.  Give this ship-shaped chasm a longer dimension of two miles or more, and a breadth of somewhat less than half its length; bound it with a wall-like line of cliffs falling sheer to steep, forested slopes below; prick out a silver ribbon of a stream winding through grassy savannas and well-set groves of lordly trees from end to end of the sunken valley; and you will have some picture of the scene we looked upon.

But what concerned us most was a sight to make us crouch quickly lest sharp eyes below should descry us on the sky-line of the cliff.  Pitched on one of the grassy savannas by the stream, so fairly beneath us that the smallest cannon planted on our cliff could have dropped a shot into it, was the camp of the powder train.

XXV

HOW UNCANOOLA TRAPPED THE GREAT BEAR

’Twas Richard Jennifer who first broke the noontide silence of the mountain top, voicing the query which was thrusting sharp at all of us.

“Now how in the name of all the fiends did they make shift to burrow from yonder bag-bottom into this?” he would say.

“Ez I allow, that’s jest what the good Lord fotched us here for—­to find out,” was Yeates’s rejoinder.  “Do you and the chief, Cap’n John, circumambylate this here pitfall yon way, whilst Cap’n Dick and I go t’other way ’round.  By time we’ve made the circuit and j’ined company again, I reckon we’ll know for sartain whether ‘r no they climm’ the mounting to get in.”