Bernard Capes

“ I measured them against the length of the rope. There was a desperate coil yet unwound. Moreover, as I grew the more weary, there grew the need of my greater, activity; for there were already signs that the great groaning windlass was casting its rust of ages, and was beginning to turn quicker in its sockets. If it had only stuck—paused one minute in its eternal round, I might have swung, gradually and cautiously, till I could seize with one hand, then another, upon the brick rim that was otherwise beyond my effective reach. ”

“ But, to go down into that black gaping pit, and then to find oneself bereft of the strength to rise from it! to cling on, deep, deep in a blind and noisome night, and to feel stealing slowly over one that paralysis whose inevitable culmination must be the sobbing fall into what choking and unspeakable gulf! ”

“ The hand never left off writing upon the rocks, or the dust of its scoring to fall and whisper. That came away in flakes; or slid down in tiny avalanches—here, there, in so many places at once that the whole face of the cliffs seemed to crawl like a maggoty cheese. ”

“ So soon as the strain of my hanging told direct upon that scorched strand, that strand must part.
“Then, I think, I knew fear—fear as hideous -and demoralising as it may be, short of the will-paralysis. And, indeed, I am not convinced but that that last reserve of self-masterfulness does not aggravate fear's complaint. Consciousness in extremis never seems to me the desirable thing that some hold it. ”

“ The well itself was sunk in the very middle of the floor, and the projecting wall of it rose scarce higher than my knees. The windlass, pivoted in a massive yoke, strode the twilight at a height a little above my own; and I could easily understand, by the apparent diameters of its barrel and of the brick rim beneath, that the well was of a considerable depth. ”

“ I think, perhaps, I might write a romance if I tried. But at least the aspect of things was as exhilarating as one might look for in a colony of factory hands. Uncoupled for an hour or two from the mechanic half of himself, a man is inclined to withdraw deep into the other half for his recreation; and so, in such places, the social tone is wont to be unclubbable.
“Now, however, I was aware of the green shoot; and the stock from which it proceeded was the school building. ”