THE CLIMB
I
Crouched behind the boulder, Kit listened.
Surely they must hear his heart! It was thumping so that he took his
hand off the boulder before him lest it should betray him by its
shaking.
Black Diamond!--Fat George!--the Gentleman!
There could be no question as to the identity of these kites. They
were the Gap Gang, and in desperate plight. Their lugger was gone, and
their leader dead. At sixes and sevens among themselves, they had
quarrelled with the only man who might somehow have saved them. Behind
them lay the gallows; before them the sea--and nothing to cross it in
but the lugger's long-boat, and that water-logged.
Their condition was desperate; but what about his own?
He could not round the Head. They stood between him and his goal.
Could he go back along the bay? He glanced back at the line of
headlands, shimmering in the sun. The tide in places already lapped
the foot of the cliff. And even as he pondered, a chill something
startled his feet. He looked down. It was the water, stealing in upon
him, quiet as a cat. He could not stay where he was. To do so was to
drown.
There was but one thing for it--to climb.
He glanced up. Things were not so hopeless as he had feared. The mists
were drifting seaward. He could see the dark crest of grass rimming
the cliff-edge above him.
Thank heaven!--this was no longer the blank and aweful wall, hundreds
of feet high and sheer as a curtain, which he had found above him last
night. The cliff must have fallen away towards the point. That dark
crest of grass, shivering in the wind, was not so far away; and the
cliff itself was by no means sheer.
The tide was already lapping the point. The smugglers had drifted away
before it. He could hear their voices on the other side. Now was his
chance.
II
On tiptoe he crept off the betraying shingle, and began to climb, the
scent-bottle in his mouth.
A recent fall of cliff helped him, making a ramp. Up it he went, a
tiny trickle of dislodged shale dribbling away beneath his feet.
At the top of the fall a mat of weeds had grown. On this he stayed.
The cliff arched out blue-white over him like the inside of a shell.
There was no hope there.
He looked about him. On his right a narrow ledge, grass-grown,
trickled darkly across the face of the cliff, inclining upwards and
out of sight. It would give him foothold, and no more.
He took it tremblingly, sidling along, his face pressed close to the
cliff, his hands finding finger-hold on the ridges and irregularities
above his head.
The track led up and up. He dared not look down: all there was sheer
now, he knew, and the sea lapping among the dead bones of the cliff.
He could not look up: to have done so, he must have craned backwards;
and little thing as that might seem, it would have been enough to
upset his balance on that skimpy track.
Up and up he sidled to the noise of trickling chalk, his eyes glued to
the white and callous cliff. His hands were damp and chill; his back
set against nothingness; his long eyelashes swept the chalk-surface.
He had a sense that the cliff was swelling itself to thrust him off.
It was alive; it was hostile. The leer he detected in the great blank
face pressed against his own roused his anger. He clung the more
tenaciously because of it, snarling back. G-r-r!--it shouldn't beat
him--beast!
All the same his fingers were getting tired and sore. He was
whimpering as he went. The great horror was overwhelming him. He shut
his mind against it: still it crept in. Head swirled: brain lost grip
of body: all was dissipation.
O--o--oh!
The voice of one of the Gang rose to his ears. It steadied him;
recalling all that hung on him ... old Ding-dong's trust ... Nelson
... Duty....
The track led round a corner--and ran away into nothing.
Retreat along that path or headlong death--these seemed his
alternatives. Of the two the latter appeared just then least horrible,
as swifter, and more certain: he had no need to look down to make sure
of that.
Biting his nails, he listened to his own breathing. A tiny shell had
become incrusted in the great blind face, so close to his own. Putting
out his tongue, he licked it, and hardly knew he had.
Suddenly he saw his mother. She was sitting in her particular little
low chair beside the fire in the Library, reading aloud a favourite
passage from her favourite Sunday book, Gwen sprawling at her feet.
_To go back is nothing but Death_, came the familiar voice, pure
and tranquil; _to go forward is fear of Death, and life everlasting
beyond it. I will yet go forward_.
The book snapped softly; his mother's eyes lifted to his as she
repeated,
_I will yet go forward_.
III
Yes, if there's a way!
On his right, some ten feet distant, a little table-land of grass
projected from the face of the cliff--the green top of a flying
buttress, as it were.
Once there he could at least lie down and recover himself. And, unless
he was mistaken, the cliff above there was no longer sheer.
But how to get there?--a ten-foot jump to be attempted off one leg at
a stand and sideways.
Half-way between him and the plateau a bush with feathery green plumes
grew out of a crevice overhead. Those green plumes stirred deliciously
in the breeze; the little stem, thick as his wrist, and reddish of
hue, thrust out sturdily over the sea. It was three feet out of reach,
and above him.
He scanned the distance. Without wings he certainly could not do it.
A butterfly settled on a purple sea-thistle close to his head. It
poised there with fanning wings, so languid, so unconcerned. _It_
didn't mind.
A bitter anger surged up in the boy's heart. It was sitting there
flopping its wings out of swagger--to show it had them. He'd teach it
to swagger!
He put up his thumb to crush it.
Then he remembered himself. He must be just in this that might be his
last moment on earth. After all the butterfly couldn't help itself. It
was made that way; and perhaps it didn't mean it. To kill it was
spiteful--worthy of a girl, worthy of Gwen, as he would have told her
had she been present. That would get Gwen into one of her states. His
eyes twinkled, and grew haggard again.
He observed the butterfly with extraordinary intensity. Its body and
wings were the colour of the sea; the undersides of the wings a
silvery-brown. The face was white, with large black eyes, and long
antennae. Lovely furry down clothed body, thighs, and lower wings. On
the nose two tiny horns stuck up....
He would have given all he possessed to be that butterfly just then.
Yet after all--could the butterfly venture for his country?--and would
he if he could?
Suddenly the boy's soul broke through the darkness shrouding it, and
bubbled up, a sea of twinkling, tumbling light. Standing there,
clawing the cliff, death at his feet, Eternity within touch of him, he
laughed.
At the crisis his humour, heaven's best gift, had saved him.
_I will yet go forward._
A knob of chalk, swelling out of the side of the cliff, caught his
eye. He saw it, and too wise to pause for thought, sprang. His foot
touched the knob. He thrust back. As he thrust, it gave beneath him,
and fell with a resounding splash into the sea.
But it had done its work; and he was swinging with one hand on the
stem of the green-plumed bush....
Curiously familiar this swinging in space with fluttering heart....
Was it only in dreams?...
The splash of the falling boulder set the gulls screaming.
"_There!_" shrilled a voice, faint and far beneath. "_What did
I tell you?_"
"_Take the boat, Red Beard, and have a look._"
Kit, swinging, heard the dip of oars. Another second and the boat
would be round the Head, and he, hanging there, black against the
white cliff, as easy to kill as a fly on a window-pane.
He reached up his left arm, swung once and again, and loosed his hold.
He flung through the air, the sea glancing sickeningly miles below,
and landed on hands and knees on the green carpet.
_Hallowed be Thy Name._