Adventure, June 1911 — page 122: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

308 possible from the impact of the water. ~ Then I began to pull myself slowly up. I could not doit. HI got my feet on the rock the effort would bring me too far into the water and that meant destruction. I saw this clearly in a second while my wrists were cracking with the effort. But if I had a wall behind me I could reach back with one hand and get what we call in Scot- land a “‘stell.”” I knew there was a wall, but how far I could not judge. The per- petual hammering of the stream had con- fused my wits. It. was a horrible moment, but I had to risk it. I knew that if the wall was too far back I should fall, for I had to let my weight go till my hand fell on it. Delay would do no good, so with a prayer I flung my right hand back, while my left hand clutched the ' spike. I found the wall—it was only a foot or two beyond my reach. With a heave I had my foot on the spike and, turning, had both hands on the opposite wall. There I stood, straddling like a Colossus over a waste of white waters, with the cave floor far below me in the gloom and my discarded ax lying close to a splash of Laputa’s blood. The spectacle made me giddy, and I had to move on or fall. The wall was not quite perpendicular, but, as far as I could see, a slope of about 60°. It was ribbed and terraced pretty fully, but I could see no ledge within reach that offered standing- room. Once more I tried the moral support of the rope and, as well as I could, dropped . a noose on the spike, which might hold me if I fell. Then I boldly embarked on a hard trav- erse, pulling myself along a little ledge till I was right in the angle of the fall. Here happily the water was shallower and less violent, and with my legs up to the knees in foam I managed to scramble into a kind of corner. Now at last I was on the side of the gully, and above the cave. I had achieved by amazing luck one of the most difficult of all mountaineering operations. I had got out of a cave to the wall above. MY TROUBLES were by no means over, for I found the cliff most diffi- cult toclimb. The great rush of the stream confused my brain, the spray made. the rock damp, and the slope steepened as IT advanced. At one overhang my shoulder was almost in the water again. All this Adventure time I was climbing doggedly, with terrom somewhere in my soul, and hope lighting but a feeble lamp. I was very distrustful of my body, for I knew that at any moment my weakness might return. The fever of three days of peril and stress is not allayed by one night’s rest. By this time I was high enough to see that the river came out of the ground about fifty feet short of the lip of the gully and some ten feet beyond whereI stood. Above the hole whence the waters came was a loose slope of slabs and screes. It looked an ugly place, but there I must go, for the rock-wall I was on was getting unclimbable. I turned the corner a foot or two above . the water, and stood on a slope of about 50° running from the parapet of stone to a line beyond which blue sky appeared... The first step I took, the place began to move. A boulder crashed into the fall and tore down into the abyss with a shattering thun- der. I lay flat and clutched desperately at every scrub, but I had loosened an avalanche of earth, and not till my feet were sprayed by the water did I get a grip of firm rock and check my descent. All this frightened me horribly, with the kind of despairing, angry fear I had suffered at Bruderstoon when I dreamed that the treasure was lost. I could not bear the notion of death when I had won so far. After that I advanced not by steps but by inches. I felt more poised and pinnacled in the void than when I had stood on the spike” of rock, for I had a substantial hold neither for foot nor hand. It seemed weeks before I made any progress away from the lip of the water-hole. I dared not look down, but kept my eyes on the slope before me, search- ing for any patch of ground that promised stability. Once I found a scrog of juniper with firm roots, and this gave me a great lift. A little farther, however, I lit on a bank of screes which slipped with me to the right and I lost most of the ground the bush had gained me. My whole being, I remem- ber, was filled with a devouring passion to be quit of this gully and all that was in it. Then, not suddenly as in romances, but after hard striving and hope long deferred, Lfound myself ona firm outcrop of weathered stone. In three strides I was on the edge of . the plateau. Then I began to run and at the same time to lose the power of running. I cast one look behind me and saw a deep cleft of darkness out of which I had climbed. Go NOOKS ANC (©