I shuddered at the spectacle—perhaps was unnerved by it. This instant brought home to me as nothing else had done the nature of the quest I had embarked upon and the price which it might be necessary to pay for success. What was life or death to this criminal company my imagination had placed upon the high seas and on such shores as this! They would kill me, if my death could contribute to their safety, as readily as a man crushes a fly that settles by his hand. All my best reasoned schemes might not avail against such a sudden outbreak of anger and reproach as discovery might bring upon me. This I had been a fool not to remember, and it came to me in all its black nakedness as I stood at the foot of the precipice and perceived that Okyada would have me mount. The venture was as desperate as any a man could embark upon. I know not to this day why I obeyed my servant. Let me make the situation clear. The path through the wood had carried us to a precipice of the mountain, black and stern and forbidding. Against this a frail iron ladder had been raised and hooked to the rock by the ordinary clamps which steeplejacks employ. How far this ladder had been reared, I could not clearly see. Its thread-like shell disappeared and was quickly lost in the shadows of the heights; while far above, beyond a space of blackness, a glow of warm light radiated from time to time from some orifice of the rock, and spoke both of human presence and human activities. That the ladder had been closely watched, Okyada had already told me. Did I need a further witness, the dead body at the cliff’s foot must have answered for my servant’s veracity. Somewhere in that tremendous haze of light and shadow the two men had met upon a foothold terrible to contemplate; their arms had been locked together; they had uttered no cries, but silently, grimly fighting, they had decided the issue, and one had fallen horribly to the rocks below. This man’s absence must presently be discovered. How if discovery came while we were still upon the ladder from which he had been hurled? Such a thought, I reflected, was the refuge of a coward. I would consider it no more, and bidding Okyada lead, I hastened to follow him to the unknown.