For
the only parapet there was a light line or pipe, quite slender and low
down, running from one spare iron upright to another. These rather
emphasized than encouraged my mood. And still as I resolutely put one
foot in front of the other, and resolutely kept my eyes off the abyss
and fixed on the opposing hill, and as the long curve before me was
diminished by successive sharp advances, still my heart was caught
half-way in every breath, and whatever it is that moves a man went
uncertainly within me, mechanical and half-paralysed. The great height
with that narrow unprotected ribbon across it was more than I could
bear.
I dared not turn round and I dared not stop. Words and phrases began
repeating themselves in my head as they will under a strain: so I know
at sea a man perilously hanging on to the tiller makes a kind of
litany of his instructions. The central part was passed, the
three-quarters; the tension of that enduring effort had grown
intolerable, and I doubted my ability to complete the task. Why? What
could prevent me? I cannot say; it was all a bundle of imaginaries.
Perhaps at bottom what I feared was sudden giddiness and the fall -
At any rate at this last supreme part I vowed one candle to Our Lady
of Perpetual Succour if she would see that all went well, and this
candle I later paid in Rome; finding Our Lady of Succour not hung up
in a public place and known to all, as I thought She would be, but
peculiar to a little church belonging to a Scotchman and standing
above his high altar.
