The darkness beneath those trees was intense, literally we could not see an inch before our faces.

Yet rather than stand still we struggled on, Hans leading the way, for his instincts were quicker than ours.

The steep rise of the ground beneath our feet told us that we were going uphill, as we wished to do, and from time to time I consulted a pocket compass I carried by the light of a match, knowing from previous observations that the top of the Holy Mount lay due north.
Thus for hour after hour we crept up and on, occasionally butting into the trunk of a tree or stumbling over a fallen bough, but meeting with no other adventures or obstacles of a physical kind.

Of moral, or rather mental, obstacles there were many, since to all of us the atmosphere of this forest was as that of a haunted house.

It may have been the embracing darkness, or the sough of the night wind amongst the boughs and mosses, or the sense of the imminent dangers that we had passed and that still awaited us.