Far away the harsh and desolate mountains raising their scarped and denuded ridges seemed to wait for him menacingly.

The evening found him fairly near to them, but, in sailor language, uncertain of his position, hungry, wet, and tired out by a day of steady tramping over broken ground during which he had seen very few people, and had been unable to obtain the slightest intelligence of Tom Corbin's passage.
"On! on! I must push on," he had been saying to himself through the hours of solitary effort, spurred more by incertitude than by any definite fear or definite hope.
The lowering daylight died out quickly, leaving him faced by a broken bridge.

He descended into the ravine, forded a narrow stream by the last gleam of rapid water, and clambering out on the other side was met by the night which fell like a bandage over his eyes.

The wind sweeping in the darkness the broadside of the sierra worried his ears by a continuous roaring noise as of a maddened sea.

He suspected that he had lost the road.