"A new direction was now given to my feelings. I felt a
presentiment that my adventure, if prosecuted, would
terminate in some extraordinary and characteristic manner;
and obeying, as I ever did, the first impulse of my heart,
I prepared to grapple once more with the difficulties
that yet remained to be surmounted. In order to do this,
it was necessary that my feet and hands should be utterly
without incumbrance; for it was only by dint of climbing
that I could expect to reach that part of the projecting
rock to which my attention had been directed. Securing
my gun between some twisted roots that grew out of and
adhered to the main body of the rock, I commenced the
difficult ascent; and, after considerable effort, found
myself at length immediately under the aperture. My
progress along the lower superficies of this projection
was like that of a crawling reptile. My back hung suspended
over the chasm, into which one false movement of hand or
foot, one yielding of the roots entwined in the rock,
must inevitably have precipitated me; and, while my toes
wormed themselves into the tortuous fibres of the latter,
I passed hand over hand beyond my head, until I had
arrived within a foot or two of the point I desired to
reach.
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