happen. Rowe, the African sportsman, told me that he had seen
cowardice often enough in the presence of lions, but he had never
seen any one actually charged by a lion who did not behave well. I
have heard the same thing of many sorts of dangers.

"I began to suspect this first in the case of falling or jumping
down. Giddiness may be an almost intolerable torture, and falling
nothing of the sort. I once saw the face of an old man who had
flung himself out of a high window in Rome, and who had been killed
instantly on the pavement; it was not simply a serene face, it was
glad, exalted. I suspect that when we have broken the shell of
fear, falling may be delightful. Jumping down is, after all, only a
steeper tobogganing, and tobogganing a milder jumping down. Always
I used to funk at the top of the Cresta run. I suffered sometimes
almost intolerably; I found it almost impossible to get away. The
first ten yards was like being slashed open with a sharp sword. But
afterwards there was nothing but joyful thrills. All instinct, too,
fought against me when I tried high diving. I managed it, and began
to like it. I had to give it up because of my ears, but not until I
had established the habit of stepping through that moment of
disinclination.

"I was Challoner's passenger when he was killed at Sheerness. That
was a queer unexpected experience, you may have supposed it an agony
of terror, but indeed there was no fear in it at all. At any rate,
I do not remember a moment of fear; it has gone clean out of my
memory if ever it was there. We were swimming high and fast, three
thousand feet or so, in a clear, sweet air over the town of
Sheerness. The river, with a string of battleships, was far away to
the west of us, and the endless grey-blue flats of the Thames to the