Looking down to guide my feet, I saw the waves twinkling beneath my heels. My palms press’d the rock. At every three inches I was fain to rest my forehead against it and gasp. Minute after minute went by—endless, intolerable, and still the rope seem’d as far away as ever. A cold sweat ran off me: a nausea possessed me. Once, where the ledge was widest, I sank on one knee, and hung for a while incapable of movement. But a black horror drove me on: and after the first dizzy stupor my wits were mercifully wide awake. Sure, ’twas God’s miracle preserv’d them to me, who looking at the sea and cliff and pitiless sun, had almost denied Him and his miracles together.
All the way I kept shouting: and so, for half an hour, inch by inch, shuffled forward, until I stood under the rope. Then I had to turn again.
The rock, tho’ still overarching, here press’d out less than before: so that, working round on the ball of my foot, I managed pretty easily. But how to get the rope? As I said, it hung a good yard beyond the ledge, the noose dangling some two feet below it. With my finger tips against the cliff, I lean’d out and clutch’d at it. I miss’d it by a foot. “Shall I jump?” thought I, “or bide here till help comes?”
’Twas a giddy, awful leap. But the black horror was at my heels now. In a minute more ’twould have me; and then my fall was certain. I call’d up Delia’s face as she had taunted me. I bent my knees, and, leaving my hold of the rock, sprang forward—out, over the sea.
I saw it twinkle, fathoms below. My right hand touch’d—grasp’d the rope: then my left, as I swung far out upon it. I slipp’d an inch—three inches—then held, swaying wildly. My foot was in the noose. I heard a shout above: and, as I dropp’d to a sitting posture, the rope began to rise.
“Quick! Oh, Billy, pull quick!”
He could not hear; yet tugg’d like a Trojan.
“Now, here’s a time to keep a man sittin’!” he shouted, as he caught my hand, and pull’d me full length on the turf. “Why, lad—hast seen a ghost?”
There was no answer. The black horror had overtaken me at last.