Page:Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan, volume 2.pdf/86

66 struggled on, it would not be so easy for him to reach the upper world. At last he became exhausted with climbing, and found no more strength to ascend any higher, so he decided to rest for a little while. Hanging firmly to where he had climbed, which was about half way up the web, he looked back far down into Hell. And lo! thanks to the headway he had made, he was aware that the Bloody Pond, in which he had been struggling only a few minutes before, was already hidden, far below in deepest darkness. He noticed also that the terrible Hill of Needles, which had before shone palely, was now far beneath him. If he continued climbing in this way, it might not be so very difficult for him to escape from Hell altogether.

Kandatta found himself laughing, and after all the fearful years he had passed in Hell he found a new voice born in his throat, and he cried, “I have succeeded!”

At that moment, however, he became aware that numberless sinners had started climbing up the lower part of the web, and they appeared to him like a procession of ants following his way of escape. With surprise and terror he knew not what to do, and for a while he hung there, gazing below him, with his mouth wide open and blinking his stupefied eyes.

Was it possible that such a fine cobweb, which had threatened to break even with his own weight, would bear the stupendous weight of such a great number of people? If it should snap in the middle, his poor body would again be hurled headlong into the abyss of