Of a sudden I knocked against the cliff with such a thump as almost
bereft me of my sense; and, as reason twinkled back, I was amazed
to find that I was in a state of rest, that the face of the
precipice here inclined outwards at an angle which relieved me
almost wholly of the burthen of my own weight, and that one of my
feet was safely planted on a ledge. I drew one of the sweetest
breaths in my experience, hugged myself against the rope, and
closed my eyes in a kind of ecstasy of relief. It occurred to me
next to see how far I was advanced on my unlucky journey, a point
on which I had not a shadow of a guess. I looked up: there was
nothing above me but the blackness of the night and the fog. I
craned timidly forward and looked down. There, upon a floor of
darkness, I beheld a certain pattern of hazy lights, some of them
aligned as in thoroughfares, others standing apart as in solitary
houses; and before I could well realise it, or had in the least
estimated my distance, a wave of nausea and vertigo warned me to
lie back and close my eyes. In this situation I had really but the
one wish, and that was: something else to think of! Strange to
say, I got it: a veil was torn from my mind, and I saw what a fool
I was--what fools we had all been--and that I had no business to be
thus dangling between earth and heaven by my arms. The only thing
to have done was to have attached me to a rope and lowered me, and
I had never the wit to see it till that moment!

I filled my lungs, got a good hold on my rope, and once more
launched myself on the descent. As it chanced, the worst of the
danger was at an end, and I was so fortunate as to be never again
exposed to any violent concussion. Soon after I must have passed
within a little distance of a bush of wallflower, for the scent of
it came over me with that impression of reality which characterises