It turned to the one side, paused for a moment,
and then spun me like a toasting-jack to the other; slipped like an
eel from the clasp of my feet; kept me all the time in the most
outrageous fury of exertion; and dashed me at intervals against the
face of the rock. I had no eyes to see with; and I doubt if there
was anything to see but darkness. I must occasionally have caught
a gasp of breath, but it was quite unconscious. And the whole
forces of my mind were so consumed with losing hold and getting it
again, that I could scarce have told whether I was going up or
coming down.
Of a sudden I knocked against the cliff with such a thump as almost
bereft me of my sense; and, as reason twinkled back, I was amazed
to find that I was in a state of rest, that the face of the
precipice here inclined outwards at an angle which relieved me
almost wholly of the burthen of my own weight, and that one of my
feet was safely planted on a ledge. I drew one of the sweetest
breaths in my experience, hugged myself against the rope, and
closed my eyes in a kind of ecstasy of relief. It occurred to me
next to see how far I was advanced on my unlucky journey, a point
on which I had not a shadow of a guess. I looked up: there was
nothing above me but the blackness of the night and the fog. I
craned timidly forward and looked down.
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