II
On tiptoe he crept off the betraying shingle, and began to climb, the scent-bottle in his mouth.
A recent fall of cliff helped him, making a ramp. Up it he went, a tiny trickle of dislodged shale dribbling away beneath his feet.
At the top of the fall a mat of weeds had grown. On this he stayed.
The cliff arched out blue-white over him like the inside of a shell.
There was no hope there.
He looked about him. On his right a narrow ledge, grass-grown, trickled darkly across the face of the cliff, inclining upwards and out of sight. It would give him foothold, and no more.
He took it tremblingly, sidling along, his face pressed close to the cliff, his hands finding finger-hold on the ridges and irregularities above his head.
The track led up and up. He dared not look down: all there was sheer now, he knew, and the sea lapping among the dead bones of the cliff. He could not look up: to have done so, he must have craned backwards; and little thing as that might seem, it would have been enough to upset his balance on that skimpy track.
Up and up he sidled to the noise of trickling chalk, his eyes glued to the white and callous cliff. His hands were damp and chill; his back set against nothingness; his long eyelashes swept the chalk-surface. He had a sense that the cliff was swelling itself to thrust him off. It was alive; it was hostile. The leer he detected in the great blank face pressed against his own roused his anger. He clung the more tenaciously because of it, snarling back. G-r-r!—it shouldn't beat him—beast!
All the same his fingers were getting tired and sore. He was whimpering as he went. The great horror was overwhelming him. He shut his mind against it: still it crept in. Head swirled: brain lost grip of body: all was dissipation.
O—o—oh!