The track led up and up. He dared not look down: all there was sheer now, he knew, and the sea lapping among the dead bones of the cliff. He could not look up: to have done so, he must have craned backwards; and little thing as that might seem, it would have been enough to upset his balance on that skimpy track. Up and up he sidled to the noise of trickling chalk, his eyes glued to the white and callous cliff. His hands were damp and chill; his back set against nothingness; his long eyelashes swept the chalk-surface. He had a sense that the cliff was swelling itself to thrust him off. It was alive; it was hostile. The leer he detected in the great blank face pressed against his own roused his anger. He clung the more tenaciously because of it, snarling back. G-r-r!--it shouldn't beat him--beast! All the same his fingers were getting tired and sore. He was whimpering as he went. The great horror was overwhelming him. He shut his mind against it: still it crept in. Head swirled: brain lost grip of body: all was dissipation. O--o--oh! The voice of one of the Gang rose to his ears. It steadied him; recalling all that hung on him ... old Ding-dong's trust ... Nelson ... Duty.... The track led round a corner--and ran away into nothing. Retreat along that path or headlong death--these seemed his alternatives. Of the two the latter appeared just then least horrible, as swifter, and more certain: he had no need to look down to make sure of that. Biting his nails, he listened to his own breathing. A tiny shell had become incrusted in the great blind face, so close to his own. Putting out his tongue, he licked it, and hardly knew he had. Suddenly he saw his mother. She was sitting in her particular little low chair beside the fire in the Library, reading aloud a favourite passage from her favourite Sunday book, Gwen sprawling at her feet. _To go back is nothing but Death_, came the familiar voice, pure and tranquil; _to go forward is fear of Death, and life everlasting beyond it. I will yet go forward_. The book snapped softly; his mother's eyes lifted to his as she repeated, _I will yet go forward_. III Yes, if there's a way! On his right, some ten feet distant, a little table-land of grass projected from the face of the cliff--the green top of a flying buttress, as it were. Once there he could at least lie down and recover himself. And, unless he was mistaken, the cliff above there was no longer sheer. But how to get there?--a ten-foot jump to be attempted off one leg at a stand and sideways. Half-way between him and the plateau a bush with feathery green plumes grew out of a crevice overhead. Those green plumes stirred deliciously in the breeze; the little stem, thick as his wrist, and reddish of hue, thrust out sturdily over the sea. It was three feet out of reach, and above him. He scanned the distance. Without wings he certainly could not do it.