a joint turns before the
fire. Below yawned the black gulf, and at the bottom of it, far, far
beneath, appeared a faint, white sheet of snow. That is what I saw.

Think of it! Think of it! I crucified upon the ice, my heels resting
upon a little ledge; my fingers grasping excrescences on which a bird
could scarcely have found a foothold; round and below me dizzy space.
To climb back whence I came was impossible, to stir even was impossible,
since one slip and I must be gone.

And below me, hung like a spider to its cord, Leo turning slowly round
and round!

I could see that rope of green hide stretch beneath his weight and the
double knots in it slip and tighten, and I remember wondering which
would give first, the hide or the knots, or whether it would hold till
he dropped from the noose limb by limb.

Oh! I have been in many a perilous place, I who sprang from the Swaying
Stone to the point of the Trembling Spur, and missed my aim, but never,
never in such a one as this. Agony took hold of me; a cold sweat burst
from every pore. I could feel it running down my face like tears; my
hair bristled upon my head. And below, in utter silence, Leo turned
round and round, and each time he turned his up-cast eyes met mine with
a look that was horrible to see.

The silence was the worst of it, the silence and the helplessness. If
he had cried out, if he had struggled, it would have been better. But
to know that he was alive there, with every nerve and perception at its
utmost stretch. Oh! my God! Oh! my God!

My limbs began to ache, and yet I dared not stir a muscle. They
ached horribly, or so I thought, and beneath this torture, mental and
physical, my mind gave.

I remembered things: remembered how, as a child, I had climbed a tree
and reached a place whence I could move neither up nor down, and what I
suffered then. Remembered how once in Egypt a foolhardy friend of mine
had ascended the Second Pyramid alone, and become thus crucified upon
its shining cap, where he remained for a whole half hour with four
hundred feet of space beneath him. I could see him now stretching his
stockinged foot downwards in a vain attempt to reach the next crack, and
drawing it back again; could see his tortured face, a white blot upon
the red granite.

Then that face vanished and blackness gathered round me, and in
the blackness visions: of the living, resistless avalanche, of the
snow-grave into which I had sunk--oh! years and years ag