Page:The Great Secret.djvu/121

Rh Anatole, the reckless and condemned Anarchist, was about half-way up the cliffs, as he stood on the ledge and prepared to go his perilous way, and only just on the first rung of the everlasting ladder, weighed down with the rope he was carrying round his waist, and the burden of crime, which as yet he felt not, on his spirit shoulders. His mistake at present was the only palpable load he felt, and that he carried in his heart.

He was stiff and cold when he began his climb, with muscles all bruised and sore, yet, sailor-like, he took off his boots and stockings, and rolled up his trousers, in spite of the intense cold that fastened on his exposed skin with Arctic keenness. The rocks also, fringed with snow and dripping with icicles, were torture to clutch hold of, and for a time burned and numbed him. Yet, after that first acute agony, he began to glow with his exertion, and feel a pride in his daring and, so far, success. The doctor was paying out the rope from the loose coil, and watching him keenly as he rose step by step, now clinging to a narrow snow-covered edge or crack, now making a desperate leap slantways, yet never losing ground.

He had only about two hundred feet to reach the top, but the rope was a heavy one which he carried, and seemed to drag him backward, and his foot and hand holds were of the narrowest and most uncertain. His heart was now strained with the effort, and at every step the rope became heavier, while his finger-nails were worn to the quick. It was all bare rocks he had to encounter, without a trace of earth or a shrub. This was as well, if the snow and ice had been absent, but with these to clear away and press down before he could take the next clutch and draw his fasting and stiff body up made the duty like the punishment of the rack.