s horses.
Still more shadowy were the sinister crocodilian outlines--alligators
and other uncouth shapes, culminating in the colossal lizard, the
iguanodon. Folded behind were dragon forms and clouds of flying
reptiles: still underneath were fishy beings of lower development; and
so on, till the lifetime scenes of the fossil confronting him were
a present and modern condition of things. These images passed before
Knight's inner eye in less than half a minute, and he was again
considering the actual present. Was he to die? The mental picture of
Elfride in the world, without himself to cherish her, smote his heart
like a whip. He had hoped for deliverance, but what could a girl do? He
dared not move an inch. Was Death really stretching out his hand? The
previous sensation, that it was improbable he would die, was fainter
now.

However, Knight still clung to the cliff.

To those musing weather-beaten West-country folk who pass the greater
part of their days and nights out of doors, Nature seems to have moods
in other than a poetical sense: predilections for certain deeds at
certain times, without any apparent law to govern or season to account
for them. She is read as a person with a curious temper; as one who does
not scatter kindnesses and cruelties alternately, impartially, and in
order, but heartless severities or overwhelming generosities in lawless
caprice. Man's case is always that of the prodigal's favourite or the
miser's pensioner. In her unfriendly moments there seems a feline fun
in her tricks, begotten by a foretaste of her pleasure in swallowing the
victim.

Such a way of thinking had been absurd to Knight, but he began to adopt
it now. He was first spitted on to a rock. New tortures followed. The
rain increased, and persecuted him with an exceptional persistency which
he was moved to believe owed its cause to the fact that he was in such
a wretched state already. An entirely new order of things could be
observed in this introduction of rain upon the scene. It rained upwards
instead of down. The strong ascending air carried the rain-drops with
it in its race up the escarpment, coming to him with such velocity that
they stuck into his flesh like cold needles. Each drop was virtually a
shaft, and it pierced him to his skin. The water-shafts seemed to lift
him on their points: no downward rain ever had such a torturing effect.
In a brief space he was drenched, except in two places. These were on
the top of h