I camped for the night here, and again found my single blanket insufficient.  The next day, i.e.  Tuesday, December 8, I had to pass as I best could, and it occurred to me that as I should find the gold a great weight, I had better take it some three hours up the mountain side and leave it there, so as to make the following day less fatiguing, and this I did, returning to my camp for dinner; but I was panic-stricken all the rest of the day lest I should not have hidden it safely, or lest I should be unable to find it next day—­conjuring up a hundred absurd fancies as to what might befall it.  And after all, heavy though it was, I could have carried it all the way.  In the afternoon I saddled Doctor and rode him up to the glaciers, which were indeed magnificent, and then I made the few notes of my journey from which this chapter has been taken.  I made excuses for turning in early, and at daybreak rekindled my fire and got my breakfast.  All the time the companionship of the dog was an unspeakable comfort to me.

It was now the day my father had fixed for my meeting with George, and my excitement (with which I have not yet troubled the reader, though it had been consuming me ever since I had left Harris’s hut) was beyond all bounds, so much so that I almost feared I was in a fever which would prevent my completing the little that remained of my task; in fact, I was in as great a panic as I had been about the gold that I had left.  My hands trembled as I took the watches, and the brooches for Yram and her daughters from my saddle-bags, which I then hung, probably on the very bough on which my father had hung them.  Needless to say, I also hung my saddle and bridle along with the saddle-bags.

It was nearly seven before I started, and about ten before I reached the hiding-place of my knapsack.  I found it, of course, quite easily, shouldered it, and toiled on towards the statues.  At a quarter before twelve I reached them, and almost beside myself as I was, could not refrain from some disappointment at finding them a good deal smaller than I expected.  My father, correcting the measurement he had given in his book, said he thought that they were about four or five times the size of life; but really I do not think they were more than twenty feet high, any one of them.  In other respects my father’s description of them is quite accurate.  There was no wind, and as a matter of course, therefore, they were not chanting.  I wiled away the quarter of an hour before the time when George became due, with wondering at them, and in a way admiring them, hideous though they were; but all the time I kept looking towards the part from which George should come.