He turned his eyes to the dizzy depths beneath them, and surveyed the position of affairs.
Two glances told him a tale with ghastly distinctness. It was that, unless they performed their feat of getting up the slope with the precision of machines, they were over the edge and whirling in mid-air.
For this purpose it was necessary that he should recover the breath and strength which his previous efforts had cost him. So he still waited, and looked in the face of the enemy.
The crest of this terrible natural facade passed among the neighbouring inhabitants as being seven hundred feet above the water it overhung. It had been proved by actual measurement to be not a foot less than six hundred and fifty.
That is to say, it is nearly three times the height of Flamborough, half as high again as the South Foreland, a hundred feet higher than Beachy Head—the loftiest promontory on the east or south side of this island—twice the height of St. Aldhelm’s, thrice as high as the Lizard, and just double the height of St. Bee’s. One sea-bord point on the western coast is known to surpass it in altitude, but only by a few feet. This is Great Orme’s Head, in Caernarvonshire.
And it must be remembered that the cliff exhibits an intensifying feature which some of those are without—sheer perpendicularity from the half-tide level.
Yet this remarkable rampart forms no headland: it rather walls in an inlet—the promontory on each side being much lower. Thus, far from being salient, its horizontal section is concave. The sea, rolling direct from the shores of North America, has in fact eaten a chasm into the middle of a hill, and the giant, embayed and unobtrusive, stands in the rear of pigmy supporters. Not least singularly, neither hill, chasm, nor precipice has a name. On this account I will call the precipice the Cliff without a Name.*
* See Preface
What gave an added terror to its height was its blackness. And upon this dark face the beating of ten thousand west winds had formed a kind of bloom, which had a visual effect not unlike that of a Hambro’ grape. Moreover it seemed to float off into the atmosphere, and inspire terror through the lungs.
“This piece of quartz, supporting my feet, is on the very nose of the cliff,” said Knight, breaking the silence after his rigid stoical meditation. “Now what you are to do is this. Clamber up my body till your feet are on my shoulders: when you are there you will, I think, be able to climb on to level ground.”