We had put on the thickest of those intermediate suits, leaving our tunics behind, and made this scramble quite successfully, though I got a pretty heavy fall just at the end, and was only kept on the second ledge by main force.

The next stage was down a sort of "chimney"-- a long irregular fissure; and so with scratches many and painful and bruises not a few, we finally reached the stream.
It was darker there, but we felt it highly necessary to put as much distance as possible behind us; so we waded, jumped, and clambered down that rocky riverbed, in the flickering black and white moonlight and leaf shadow, till growing daylight forced a halt.
We found a friendly nut-tree, those large, satisfying, soft-shelled nuts we already knew so well, and filled our pockets.
I see that I have not remarked that these women had pockets in surprising number and variety.

They were in all their garments, and the middle one in particular was shingled with them.

So we stocked up with nuts till we bulged like Prussian privates in marching order, drank all we could hold, and retired for the day.
It was not a very comfortable place, not at all easy to get at, just a sort of crevice high up along the steep bank, but it was well veiled with foliage and dry.

After our exhaustive three- or four-hour scramble and the good breakfast food, we all lay down along that crack--heads and tails, as it were--and slept till the afternoon sun almost toasted our faces.
Terry poked a tentative foot against my head.
"How are you, Van?
Alive yet ?" "Very much so," I told him.