Most of that day and the next two they drifted with the tides through narrowing waters, though now and then for a few hours they were wafted on by light and fickle winds. At length they crept into the inlet where they had landed on the previous voyage, and on the morning after their arrival set out on the march. There was on this occasion reason to expect more rigorous weather, and the load each carried was an almost crushing one. Where the trees were thinner, the ground was frozen hard, and even in the densest bush the undergrowth was white and stiff with frost, while, when they could see aloft through some chance opening, a forbidding grey sky hung over them. On approaching the rift in the hillside which he had glanced at when they first passed that way, Vane stopped a moment. "I looked into that place before, but it didn't seem worth while to follow it up," he said. "If you'll wait, I'll go a little farther along it." Though the air was nipping, Carroll, who was breathless, was content to remain where he was, and he spent some time sitting upon a log before a faint shout reached him. Then he rose, and making his way up the hollow, found his comrade standing upon a jutting ledge. "I thought you were never coming," the latter remarked. "Climb up; I've something to show you." Carroll joined him with difficulty, and Vane stretched out his hand. "Look yonder," he said. Carroll looked and started. They stood in a rocky gateway with a river brawling down the chasm beneath them; but a valley opened up in front. Filled with sombre forest, it ran back almost straight between stupendous walls of hills. "It answers Hartley's description," he said. "After all, I don't think it's extraordinary we should have taken so much trouble to push on past the right place." "How's that?" Vane demanded. Carroll sat down and filled his pipe. "It's the natural result of possessing a temperament like yours. Somehow, you've got it firmly fixed into your mind that everything worth doing must be hard." "I've generally found it so." "I think," said Carroll, grinning, "you've generally made it so. There's a marked difference between the two. If any means of doing a thing looks easy, you at once conclude it can't be the right way, which is a mode of reasoning that has never convinced me. In my opinion, it's more sensible to try the easiest method first." "As a rule, that leads to your having to fall back upon the other one; and a frontal attack on a difficulty's often quicker than considering how you can work round its flank. In this case I'll own we have wasted a lot of time and taken a good deal of trouble that might have been avoided. But are you going to sit here and smoke?" "Until I've finished my pipe," Carroll answered. "I expect we'll find tobacco, among other things, getting pretty scarce before this expedition ends."