180 BOOK OF A HUNDRED BEARS 



times by * two fingers of each hand, my toes 

 inserted into some tiny crack, panting for 

 breath, benumbed, speechless, sweating at every 

 pore. Sometimes it seemed hours before I could 

 move. Dudgeon meanwhile gathering from my 

 attitude that, whether I ever attained the top, I 

 would never fall — that with the grip I had on the 

 rock I might cling there and turn to a lichen, some 

 new and curious form of vegetation that scientists 

 in after years would investigate with profound 

 interest, but that I would never let go my hold — 

 danced around and above me and sat safe and 

 secure and smiled at me. To do him justice, 

 there never was a place on that rock face where he 

 could have helpfed me without a rope. If I had 

 fallen, nothing could have stopped me but the 

 bottom. If he had been below me we should have 

 gone together, and Dudgeon did not intend to be 

 on the under side of that fall. I was safe enough 

 as long as I stood still. My body in my anguish 

 put out spores and tentacles that grasped the rock. 

 I was for a time a limpet, one of those intermedi- 

 ate forms of life that cling and cling and never 



