But he would not be pacified. Two heads were better than one, he argued, and very often a clear-sighted, shrewd man of business could see a deal farther than an expert.
"Well," I said, "for all that, I think I'll keep my own counsel until we've looked round a bit more!"
At that Garth became huffy. We were partners in this venture, he reminded me, and we must have no secrets. He did not think he should have to recall that fact to my mind.
The stifling heat and the fatigue of our long climb had made us both a bit cross, I suppose. At any rate I was pretty short with him.
"My dear fellow," I said, and rose to my feet by way of putting an end to the conversation, "all in good time. In this sort of work one must work alone, at any rate in the initial stages. Give me a little breathing space!"
He spoke without heat, but there was a look in his face which reminded me that at our first meeting, I had noticed signs of temper about his nose and mouth. Garth was a man who obviously did not like to be thwarted. Now I thought I knew where Marjorie got her proud temper from.
A little puff of hot wind came whirling into the hollow. The trees swayed to it as it rustled through the leaves with a melancholy sound.
"We don't want to go too far," remarked Garth, cocking an eye at the sky, "or we shall have this storm on us before we can get under cover at the camp."
At the first blush the cliff on the far side of the hollow looked perfectly inaccessible. But handy to my bush with the red flowers a succession of flat boulders, like a giant's staircase, enabled us to scramble up until we found ourselves on a plateau of rock dominated on one side by an immense crag which towered above our heads in a succession of shelving ledges. In front of us the ground dropped to a steep nullah from which rose a sheer wall of rock and barred the way.
It was a desolate scene. Neither tree nor shrub nor anything green grew in this barren landscape of grey and friable volcanic rock. The bare and frowning heights oppressed me. I turned to Garth.
"This looks like the end of things," said I, "unless we can find a way up by these terraces. What do you say? Shall we have a try?"
"If we could manage to reach that first shelf," my companion answered, "we could at any rate get a view. There's nothing to be seen from here."