The noise was deafening, and the position one of the grandest and wildest I had ever beheld, but I could not afford the time just then for sentiment. It was already getting dark, and I had scarcely a foot to stand on. It seemed indeed, for a moment, that I would not be able to turn my horse, which I was leading, on the narrow path we had now got on to, and if I succeeded in doing that I would have a considerable distance to retrace before reaching safe ground, a false step would send us headlong a couple of hundred feet into a rushing torrent, if we escaped being smashed on the rocks before we got there. I do not think I ever felt so lonely or alarmed, but I had to act, and that quickly. Fortunately my horse was a steady one, well accustomed to climbing over bad places, and no doubt the coming darkness and weird surroundings did not affect him as they did me, and my anxiety after all was then more on his account than my own, for without him I knew I could feel my way back alone. As I moved to turn, the horse twisted round as if on a pivot and followed me like a cat, indeed he could see the track better than I could, and exhibited little nervousness as he crept along with his nose near the ground, and testing every step before he trusted the weight of his body on it. I was very thankful when we at length emerged from that frowning and dark chasm as it now appeared, with the foaming water away in its black depths and an icy wind blowing directly from it. But what were we to do now? In the darkness it would be impossible to either go onward or return the way I had come, and the fact that I was benighted, and in a very nasty position too, now struck me clearly; but there was nothing for it but to make the best of a bad job. Outside the narrow gorge it was considerably lighter, and I had no difficulty in finding my way a bit up towards the pass, where I fortunately discovered a patch of tall snow grass between the tussocks of which the ground had been partly sheltered from the snow, and near this I stumbled on a quantity of "Irishman" scrub which had recently been burnt and was easily broken down. So far this was lucky, for it secured me the means of making a fire, without which it would have been impossible, I believe, to live till the morning, which was still some sixteen hours distant.