Well, we were on the continent when I met with my terrible blanket. We were going up one of the passes on foot, and somehow I, as I usually do, lagged behind. I, of course, had an Alpine stock in my hand, and I went swinging it away, until at last it struck against a lump of rock overhanging a precipice, so deep that, sailor as I am, I trembled as I looked down. Well, the stick bounded from the granite against my shin, and so I made a vow that the lump of granite should take a run, or my name was not Theophilus. But it was a tough job, for the stone was very big, and well set in the rock; but after a deal of straining and pushing, down it went with dull thuds, as it fell from rock to rock, and at last it splashed into the water, which seethed up as though trying to get at and drown me. The job must have taken me longer than I thought for, for when I looked before me I could see no one, and as I looked I began to see that twilight was coming on. Now, I don't know whether you have been much among our own high hills in Scotland or Wales; but, if you have, you must know how rapidly night comes on. It is day one moment and night the next, so to speak. Now I knew this, and made haste forward. I do not think I had gone twenty yards when I knew, by the great wuthering sound about me, that a storm was brewing, and it was on me in no time; and as the snow came down a great curtain seemed to be drawn over the sky, it grew dark so quickly. Well, I groped on, but I didn't like it. If it had been a storm at sea now, I should not have cared much; if the mountains about me had only been of water, I should not have cared at all; but when I knew that a false step might send me toppling down as the rock had toppled before me, I don't mind owning that I grew to like it all less and less. I stooped down to look at the path, as well as I was able in the little remaining light, and I found I was in no path at all. As the last rays of light died out, and as the snow whirled about me, I remember, as though it would be glad to make my winding-sheet, I turned cautiously towards a slope of rock, feeling with my stick before I took a step, for the snow will fill up a crevice in no time, and you may sink twenty feet before you know where you are; and at last I touched the rock. There was still an atom of light left, and by it I just discerned a black part of the rock, which I took, and rightly, to be a cave. So I crept towards it, into it, and crouched down on the ground to leeward; and I can tell you the wind was getting up. Well, I hadn't lain there three minutes when it was as dark as you could wish it. I don't know whether any of you have ever been in the dark when full of anxiety; but if you have, you will believe me when I say every precious minute seemed an hour.