heptasentility

@@@@@They passed along rockly ledges, up knife-edged slopes of kunai grass so steep that they climbed by clutching at the roots as though they were ascending a ladderThey passed through a forest which straddled the ridge and sheered down to the floor of the gullies beneath themThey went farther and farther up until their limbs were trembling and their packs felt like hundred-pound bags of flourAnd each time they came to a minor peak they were certain the crest of the mountain was near, and all they saw instead was another half mile of torturous ridge which abutted still another crestSeveral times during the morning, he stopped and said, "You men might jus' as well realize right now that the goddam mountain's pretty big, an' you ain't gettin' to the top in a hurry They listened to him, but they could not believe himIt was too painful to climb without the supporting notion that their labors would be over soon At noon they reached the end of the ridge and had a shockIt dropped for several hundred feet of precipitous rocks into a valley of stone set in the middle of the mountain, and beyond it the center of Mount Anaka rose far above them, ascending as high as they could see in tier upon tier of forest and clay and jungle and rock, rising vertiginously for what seemed like thousands and thousands of feetThey could not even glimpse the peak; it was lost in a coronet of clouds "Jesus, have we got to climb that?" one of the men panted Croft stared uneasily at themIt was too obviously an expression of the way they all feltHe was tired himself, almost as tired as he had been, and he knew he would have to drive them every yard upward"We're gonna eat a ration here, and then we're gonna go onYou men understand that?" There was a subdued muttering againHe sat down on a boulder and stared in the direction from which they had comeMiles away he could see the yellow hills where they had been ambushed, and where someplace now Brown and his litter detail must be travelingFar off he could see the fringe of jungle that bordered the island and beyond it the sea from which they had comeIt was all wilderness; there seemed no one, nothing alive in any of itThe war on the other side of the mountain was remote at this moment Behind him Mount Anaka bored into his back as if it were a human thingHe turned around and stared at it soberly, feeling again the crude inarticulate thrill it always gave himHe was going to climb it; he swore it to himself But all around him he could feel the pressure of the men