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In front of our narrow footholds the Turks, amounting to 200,000 men, held positions rising to over 700 feet at Achi Baba and Pasha Dagh, and defended by masses of artillery and machine and elaborate systems of trenches upon which the big guns from our ships appeared to have little effect.
Refreshed by his sleep, Maskull immediately attacked the face of the cliff, and took the first twenty feet at a single rush. Then it grew precipitous, and the ascent demanded greater circumspection and intelligence. There were few hand- or footholds: he had to reflect before every step. On the other hand, it was sound rock, and he was no novice at the sport.
A great rock, I have said; but by rights it was two rocks leaning together at the top, both some twenty feet high, and at the first sight inaccessible. Once there, he let down his leathern girdle; and with the aid of that and a pair of shallow footholds in the rock, I scrambled up beside him.
He opened his eyes for one brief, daring glance upward. Not more than five or six steps to go. Gritting his teeth he went on. Now only four more ledges to grip, four more footholds to find. A second stone whizzed past his head and struck with a crash beyond him. He heard it whistle, he felt the rush of air. "God! If that had got my head! What an inhuman devil he is! The dirty beast!"
They envied her her footholds; they tried to get ahead of her in the way. Then she knew that she could never find the Great Treasure, for she was lonely, and a lonely heart is never satisfied and happy. "Which shall I choose?" said the fourth girl, looking all about her. "I think I shall try this" but just then a voice said: "I am tired and ill. Will you help me a bit in my way?"
A very good man with the saber. A gambler, it is true but whose affair is that? A ready eye for rustling curtains and footholds near open windows, but that is his affair again until the woman's husband intervenes. And they say he can look after himself in such cases. At least, he lives. Behold him, sahib.
They call it hanging, but it is not that; it is really slow strangulation, which lasts for many minutes, because at the last moment the victims become afraid and try to regain their footholds." The man paused a minute and licked his dry lips. To me there was something hideous in this story being told on that sacked street.
Along the sea-coast footholds had been obtained at Plymouth, Washington, and New Bern, in North Carolina; Beaufort, Folly and Morris Islands, Hilton Head, Fort Pulaski, and Port Royal, in South Carolina; Fernandina and St. Augustine, in Florida. Key West and Pensacola were also in our possession, while all the important ports were blockaded by the navy.
In the East the opposing forces stood in substantially the same relations towards each other as three years before, or when the war began; they were both between the Federal and Confederate capitals. It is true, footholds had been secured by us on the sea-coast, in Virginia and North Carolina, but, beyond that, no substantial advantage had been gained by either side.
The development of those footholds into great self-governing communities, the unique and real achievement of the British Empire, was the work of the nineteenth century; and its accomplishment depended upon the effects of the changes known to us as the Industrial Revolution.
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