Sabine Baring-Gould

“ To step downward, groping the way, with a depth and a wild-throbbing sea beneath, demanded courage, and courage of no mean order; but it was other to mount, to be able to feel with the foot the ascent in the track, and to grope upward with the hand from one point of clutch to another, to know that every step upward was lessening the peril, and bringing nearer to the sward and to safety.
Without great anxiety, therefore, Judith turned to climb. ”

“ There was, however, a little above her shoulder, a something that felt like a ledge, and which might be the track. If she had incautiously crept forward at a level without ascending rapidly enough, she was probably below the track. Could she climb to this point—climb up the bare rock, with sheer precipice below her? And, supposing that the shelf she felt with her hand were not the track, could she descend again to the place where she had been? ”

“ To ascend is easier than to go down. Judith was no longer alarmed. There was danger still, that was inevitable; but the danger was as nothing now to what it had been. It is one thing to descend in total darkness into an abyss where one knows that below are sharp rocks, and a drop of two hundred feet to a thundering, raging sea, racing up the sand, pouring over the shelves of rock, foaming where divided waves clash. When Judith had been on the beach in the afternoon the tide was out ”