II
I will yet go forward.
Kit turned to a reconsideration of his enterprise.
The top was far yet, but the cliff was no longer sheer; a precipitous slope rather, patched with grass.
On hands and knees he set out. The grass trickled down like a dark torrent from above, cutting as it were a channel between two bastions, sheer on either side of him, and naked as the moon.
Up that dark trickle he climbed, and the sun climbed with him.
The grass gave him hand-hold. The chalk was rough and shale-like. He dug knees and toes into it. There was a constant dribble of stuff away from beneath his feet, and once a little land-slide, slithering seaward.
Beneath was nothing but a shining waste, waiting for him. He rather felt than saw it: for he dared not look down. He must think of what lay above. Therein was his hope. He clung to it, as he clung to the cliff-face, desperately.
The sun blazed on his back. The sweat trickled down his face. He kept his mind to his work, and his nose to the cliff. A bee with an orange tail sucked at a purple thistle. Butterflies chased, loved, and sipped all round him. O for Gwen, and her killing-bottle!
Up and up; the sun fierce upon his back; the earth bulging beneath his nose, the splash and ripple of the sea growing fainter and more faint below.
Blue above him, blue beneath, blue in his brain, blue everywhere, save for this dull leprous white beneath his nose—blue emptiness, calling him, clutching him, waiting for him. Would it never end?
Once he looked up.
He was climbing into heaven.
The cliff bluffed up into the sky. He could see the bearded crest dark against the light. Up there a pair of kestrels floated—two living cross-bows bent above him. They were almost transparent and very still: a tremble of the wings, a turn of the broad steering tail, a motion of the blunt head, a swoop and a sway and a glint of russet back.
They had wings too! Everything in the world had wings but himself, the only one who really needed them.
Once he slipped, and hung sprawling over Eternity. The grass, tough as wire, and wound about his hands, stood his friend. He recovered foothold.
On again with battering heart. The top was not far now.
Hope began to flutter in his breast. It seemed to heave him upwards. The way grew steeper and more steep. The stream of grass, faithful so far, ended abruptly five feet below the top. Those feet were sheer, the chalk darkening to the blackness of soil, and the crest of grass making a rusty chevaux-de-frise at the summit.
Cautiously he crept on, his hands feeling the blank wall. Now his fingers touched the top.
He drew himself up.
His struggling toes found some sort of foot-hold. The wind blew on his wet forehead. His eyes were on a level with the summit.
He could see over.
A man was sitting by the edge.
Kit could have stroked his back.