Hours to wait! and she loathed waiting.
But gradually, as the rug warmed her, the passion for adventure and mystery--the vision of the mermaid--the hope of the blue cotton--reasserted themselves, and the little sharp face relaxed.
She began to amuse herself with hunting the spiders and beetles which ran across the rocky roof above her head, or crept in and out of the crevices of stone, wondering, no doubt, at this unbidden and tormenting daylight.

She caught one or two small blackbeetles in a dirty rag of a handkerchief--for she would not touch them if she could help it--and then it delighted her to push aside the curtain, stretch her hand out into the void darkness, and let them fall into the gulf below.

Even if they could fly, she reflected, it must 'gie 'em a good start.' Meanwhile, David had charged up the hill, filled with a sudden curiosity to see what the top of the Scout might look like by night.

He made his way through the battlement of grit, found the little path behind, gleaming white in the moonlight, because of the quartz sheddings which wind and weather are forever teasing out of the grit, and which drift into the open spaces; and at last, guided by the sound and the gleam of water, he made out the top of the Downfall, climbed a high peat bank, and the illimitable plateau of the Scout lay wide and vast before him.
Here, on the mountain-top, there seemed to be more daylight left than on its rocky sides, and the moon among the parting clouds shone intermittently over the primeval waste.

The top of the Peak is, so to speak, a vast black glacier, whereof the crevasses are great fissures, ebon-black in colour, sometimes ten feet deep, and with ten feet more of black water at the bottom.