no welcome for them there: whatever feeling great
mountains evoke, THAT feeling was clear in Rodriguez and Morano. They
were all amongst those that have other aims, other ends, and know
naught of man. A bitter chill from the snow and from starry space drove
this thought home.

They walked on looking for a better place, as men will, but found none.
And at last they lay down on the cold earth under a rock that seemed to
give shelter from the wind, and there sought sleep; but cold came
instead, and sleep kept far from the tremendous presences of the peaks
of the Pyrenees that gazed on things far from here.

An ageing moon arose, and Rodriguez touched Morano and rose up; and the
two went slowly on, tired though they were. Picture the two tiny
figures, bent, shivering and weary, walking with clumsy sticks cut in
the wood, amongst the scorn of those tremendous peaks, which the moon
showed all too clearly.

They got little warmth from walking, they were too weary to run; and
after a while they halted and burned their sticks, and got a little
warmth for some moments from their fire, which burned feebly and
strangely in those inhuman solitudes.

Then they went on again and their track grew steeper. They rested again
for fatigue, and rose and climbed again because of the cold; and all
the while the peaks stared over them to spaces far beyond the thought
of man.

Long before Spain knew anything of dawn a monster high in heaven smiled
at the sun, a peak out-towering all its aged children. It greeted the
sun as though this lonely thing, that scorned the race of man since
ever it came, had met a mighty equal out in Space. The vast peak
glowed, and the rest of its grey race took up the greeting leisurely
one by one. Still it was night in all Spanish houses.

Rodriguez and Morano were warmed by that cold peak's glow, though no
warmth came from it at all; but the sight of it cheered them and their
pulses rallied, and so they grew warmer in that bitter hour.

And then dawn came, and showed them that they were near the top of the
pass. They had come to the snow that gleams there everlastingly.

There was no material for a fire but they ate cold meats, and went
wearily on. They passed through that awful assemblage of peaks. By noon
they were walking upon level ground.

In the afternoon Rodriguez, tired with the journey and with the heat of
the sun, decided that it was possible to sleep, and, wrapping his cloak
around him, he lay