Jarvo, leading the way,
sprang immediately upon the first foothold, where none seemed to
be, and without pause to the next. So perfectly were the men trained
that it was as if but one set of muscles were inspiring the
movements made to the beat of that monotonous measure. In their
strong hands the flexible pole seemed to give as their bodies gave,
and so lightly did they leap upward that the jar of their alighting
was hardly perceptible, as if, as had occurred to St. George as they
ascended the lip of the island, gravity were here another matter.
So, without pause, save in the rhythm of that strange march music,
the remarkable progress was begun.
St. George threw one swift glance upward and looked down,
shudderingly. Beetling above them in the great starlight hung the
gigantic pile, wall upon wall of rock hewn with such secret foothold
that it was a miracle how any living thing could catch and cling to
its forbidding surface. Only lifelong practice of the men, who from
childhood had been required to make the ascent and whose fathers and
fathers' fathers before them had done the same, could have accounted
for that catlike ability to cling to the trail where was no trail.
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