Thus occasional branches and even bosses and boles formed a
series of footholds that almost amounted to a rude natural ladder.
They must, I supposed, have been some sport of growth, Siamese
twins of vegetation.
Why we did it I cannot think; perhaps, as I have said, the mystery
of the waste and dark had brought out and made primary something
wholly mystical in Basil's supremacy. But we only felt that there
was a giant's staircase going somewhere, perhaps to the stars; and
the victorious voice above called to us out of heaven. We hoisted
ourselves up after him.
Half-way up some cold tongue of the night air struck and sobered me
suddenly. The hypnotism of the madman above fell from me, and I saw
the whole map of our silly actions as clearly as if it were
printed. I saw three modern men in black coats who had begun with a
perfectly sensible suspicion of a doubtful adventurer and who had
ended, God knows how, half-way up a naked tree on a naked moorland,
far from that adventurer and all his works, that adventurer who was
at that moment, in all probability, laughing at us in some dirty
Soho restaurant. He had plenty to laugh at us about, and no doubt
he was laughing his loudest; but when I thought what his laughter
would be if he knew where we were at that moment, I nearly let go
of the tree and fell.
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