Our way had led through unbroken
forest oppressed by low brush and an underfooting of brakes. There had
been hills. Our clothes were wringing wet, to the last stitch; even the
leather of the tump-line was saturated. The hot air we gulped down did
not seem to satisfy our craving for oxygen any more than lukewarm water
ever seems to cut a real thirst. The woods were literally like an oven
in their hot dryness. Finally we skirted a little hill, and at the base
of that hill a great tree had fallen, and through the aperture thus
made in the forest a tiny current of cool air flowed like a stream. It
was not a great current, nor a wide; if we moved three feet in any
direction, we were out of it. But we sat us down directly across its
flow. And never have dinners or wines or men or women, or talks of
books or scenery or adventure or sport, or the softest, daintiest
refinements of man's invention given me the half of luxury I drank in
from that little breeze. So the commonest things--a dash of cool water
on the wrists, a gulp of hot tea, a warm, dry blanket, a whiff of
tobacco, a ray of sunshine--are more really the luxuries than all the
comforts and sybaritisms we buy. Undoubtedly the latter would also rise
to the higher category if we were to work for their essence instead of
merely signing club cheques or paying party calls for them.
Which means that when we three would rest our packs against the side of
that hill, and drop our head-straps below our chins, we were not at all
to be pitied, even though the forest growth denied us the encouragement
of knowing how much farther we had to go.
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