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It was but three yards or so in length; then it suddenly turned upward at a tremendous angle of about one in four. Square foot-holds were cut in the lower face. The smell of incense was almost unbearable. Dr. Cairn bent to Sime's ear. "Not a word, now," he said. "No light pistol ready!" He began to mount. Sime, following, counted the steps.
At one spot, indeed, he found a short slope, and, madly seizing his axe, he cut foot-holds down it, descending, quite regardless of danger, until the slope became too perpendicular to admit of farther progress. Struck then with alarm for himself, he returned cautiously to the top, while beads of cold perspiration stood on his pale brow.
"Making more hand- and foot-holds," came the trembling answer. "You just wait. I'll have you up here in a jiffy. Don't mind the way I talk. I'm just excited. But I'm all right. You wait and see." "You're holding me by main strength," Smoke argued. "Soon or late, with the ice melting, you'll slip down after me. The thing for you to do is to cut loose. Hear me! There's no use both of us going.
"People fight any way they can when their soil is invaded." "What are holes cut in the pine trees for, foot-holds for climbing?" "Holes? them's turpentine boxes!" said the man, in some surprise at Frank's ignorance. "Didn't you ever see turpentine boxes before?" "Never till last evening. Is that the way you get turpentine?" "That's the way we get turpentine.
"I wish it were something better!" she said simply; and then stood watching him, while he began to clamber. Rowland was not shaped for an acrobat, and his enterprise was difficult; but he kept his wits about him, made the most of narrow foot-holds and coigns of vantage, and at last secured his prize. He managed to stick it into his buttonhole and then he contrived to descend.
For the first, last, and only time on The Road, I got all I wanted. I abandoned the bumpers and managed to get out on a side-ladder; it was ticklish work, for I had never encountered car-ends that were so parsimonious of hand-holds and foot-holds as those car-ends were. I heard the engine whistling, and I felt the speed easing down.
There were hand-holds scooped out here and there in the rock; foot-holds chiselled rudely; and all bore the mark of no little age. Grass grew scantily in the cracks; a young cedar, hardy, with crooked roots like the claws of a monster, stood in one of the deeper scooped hollows; the debris fallen into the man-made steps had accumulated through the generations.
At all hazards the axe must be recovered. He therefore lay down with his face to the slope, and began to kick foot-holds with the toe of his boots.
Newlands wide vale we can reach, or cheerful Borrowdale, or lonely Ennerdale, or yes, to-night we will sup at Wastdale, at the jolly old inn that Auld Will Ritson used to keep, that inn sacred to the cragsman, where on New Year's Eve the gay company of climbers foregather from their brave deeds on the mountains and talk of hand-holds and foot-holds and sing the song of "The rope, the rope," and join in the chorus as the landlord trolls out: I'm not a climber, not a climber, Not a climber now, My weight is going fourteen stone I'm not a climber now.
But when I turned to the accomplishment of the task I found it easier than I had imagined it would be, since I immediately discovered that shallow hand and foot-holds had been scooped in the cliff's rocky face, forming a crude ladder from the base to the summit. At last I reached the top, and very glad I was, too. Cautiously I raised my head until my eyes were above the cliff-crest.
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