The tremendous abyss on either hand I
studiously ignored. To me the edge of that blue sliver was then all the
world. But the most trying part of the adventure, after working my way
across inch by inch and chipping another small platform, was to rise
from the safe position astride and to cut a step-ladder in the nearly
vertical face of the wall,--chipping, climbing, holding on with feet and
fingers in mere notches. At such times one's whole body is eye, and
common skill and fortitude are replaced by power beyond our call or
knowledge. Never before had I been so long under deadly strain. How I
got up that cliff I never could tell. The thing seemed to have been
done by somebody else. I never have held death in contempt, though in
the course of my explorations I have oftentimes felt that to meet one's
fate on a noble mountain, or in the heart of a glacier, would be blessed
as compared with death from disease, or from some shabby lowland
accident. But the best death, quick and crystal-pure, set so glaringly
open before us, is hard enough to face, even though we feel gratefully
sure that we have already had happiness enough for a dozen lives.
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