John Buchan

“ To get to my feet and stand on the spike while all the fury of water was plucking at me was the hardest physical effort I have ever made. It had to be done very circumspectly, for a slip would send me into the abyss. If I moved an arm or leg an inch too near the terrible dropping wall I knew I should be plucked from my hold. I got my knees on the outer face of the spike, so that all my body was removed as far as possible from the impact of the water. ”

“ It looked an ugly place, but there I must go, for the rock-wall I was on was getting unclimbable.
I turned the corner a foot or two above the water, and stood on a slope of about fifty degrees, running from the parapet of stone to a line beyond which blue sky appeared. The first step I took the place began to move. A boulder crashed into the fall, and tore down into the abyss with a shattering thunder. I lay flat and clutched desperately at every hold, but I had loosened an avalanche of earth, and not till my feet were sprayed by the water did I get a grip of firm rock and check my descent. ”

“ Chapter XXI I Climb the Crags a Second Time I remember that I looked over the brink into the yeasty abyss with a mind hovering between perplexity and tears. I wanted to sit down and cry - why, I did not know, except that some great thing had happened. ”

“ Laputa was in truth a Titan, who in the article of death could break down a bridge which would have taken any three men an hour to shift. The gorge was about seven yards wide, too far to risk a jump, and the cliff fell sheer and smooth to the imprisoned waters two hundred feet below. There was no chance of circuiting it, for the wall was as smooth as if it had been chiselled. The hand of man had been at work to make the sanctuary inviolable. ”

“ But on the right side the force of water was obviously weaker, and a little short of the level of the cave roof there was a spike of rock which slightly broke the fall. The spike was covered, but the covering was shallow, for the current flowed from it in a rose-shaped spray. If a man could get to that spike and could get a foot on it without being swept down, it might be possible—just possible—to do something with the wall of the chasm above the cave. ”

“ It was a rope, an old one, but still in fair condition and forty or fifty feet long. I dragged it out into the light and straightened its kinks. With this something could be done, assuming I could cut my way to the level of the roof.
I began the climb in my bare feet, and at the beginning it was very bad. Except on the very edge of the abyss there was scarcely a handhold. Possibly in floods the waters may have swept the wall in a curve, smoothing down the inner part and leaving the outer to its natural roughness. ”