Running up like a child that would scale heaven he stood on the bare round, the head of the mountain, and saw, with an invading shock of amazement, and at first of disappointment, that there was no going higher: in every direction the slope was downward.

He had never been on the top of anything before.

He had always been in the hollows of things.

Now the whole world lay beneath him.

It was cold; in some of the shadows lay snow--weary exile from both the sky and the sea and the ways of them--captive in the fetters of the cold--prisoner to the mountain top; but Gibbie felt no cold.