e of slabs and screes. It looked an ugly place, but there I
must go, for the rock-wall I was on was getting unclimbable.

I turned the corner a foot or two above the water, and stood on a slope
of about fifty degrees, running from the parapet of stone to a line
beyond which blue sky appeared. The first step I took the place began
to move. A boulder crashed into the fall, and tore down into the abyss
with a shattering thunder. I lay flat and clutched desperately at
every hold, but I had loosened an avalanche of earth, and not till my
feet were sprayed by the water did I get a grip of firm rock and check
my descent. All this frightened me horribly, with the kind of
despairing angry fear which I had suffered at Bruderstroom, when I
dreamed that the treasure was lost. I could not bear the notion of
death when I had won so far.

After that I advanced, not by steps, but by inches. I felt more poised
and pinnacled in the void than when I had stood on the spike of rock,
for I had a substantial hold neither for foot nor hand. It seemed
weeks before I made any progress away from the lip of the waterhole. I
dared not look down, but kept my eyes on the slope before me, searching
for any patch of ground which promised stability. Once I found a scrog
of juniper with firm roots, and this gave me a great lift. A little
further, however, I lit on a bank of screes which slipped with me to
the right, and I lost most of the ground the bush had gained me. My
whole being, I remember, was filled with a devouring passion to be quit
of this gully and all that was in it.

Then, not suddenly as in romances, but after hard striving and hope
long deferred, I found myself on a firm outcrop of weathered stone. In
three strides I was on the edge of the plateau. Then I began to run,
and at the same time to lose the power of running. I cast one look
behind me, and saw a deep cleft of darkness out of which I had climbed.
Down in the cave it had seemed light enough, but in the clear sunshine
of the top the gorge looked a very pit of shade. For the first and
last time in my life I had vertigo. Fear of falling back, and a mad
craze to do it, made me acutely sick. I managed to stumble a few steps
forward on the mountain turf, and then flung myself on my face.

When I raised my head I was amazed to find it still early morning. The
dew was yet on the grass, and the sun was not far up the sky. I had
thought that my entry into the cave, my