^t 
LAINL» efc WATER 
The Rocking Stone 
By Helen Ashton 
June 21, 19 1 7 
HE liad come to the inn at tlie head of the valley the 
night before, and. looking up at the peaks that 
blotted out the sky. had felt a sense of honie-coin- 
ing that surprised him. Now he stood by the gate 
tliat led out to tlic heather. The path up the stack w-as before 
him. He had been told thai the climb was easy, and he liad 
taken it for his first. He had a week, and he meant to use 
every day of it. He was very eager, for he had never climbed 
before ; and lie was glad to be alone, for he had not the trick 
of sharing his experiences. 
The dew was on the grass about him as he set forth. Wis feet 
were soon wet with it. He smelt the crushed bracken as if 
it were sometliing burning. He crossed one rough" field, and 
another that had httle grass among the heather. The walls that 
he climbed were of rock, and slipped under him in the gaps. 
The sheep were grey in colour like the rock- ; very small and 
short and ridiculous, like toy sheep in a nursery. They lay 
. quiet among the heather, so that often he thought them .stones 
until they moved. When they called to one another it was 
as if the stones cried out. ^- - 
111' followed a stream upwards. It came out f!f n deep 
crack in the hill side, arched over with mountain rowans and 
beeches. He climbed down to the foot of the place, for the 
sheer joy of drinking from that pool, ten feet deep, into which 
the waterfall drove down its torrents of white. Standing 
beside it, he looked up. and saw the leaves against the sky, 
thirty feet above him. The place was almost dark, and as cold 
as a cellar. He had not before realised how great was the heat 
outride. 
He followed the stream up to the tarn' that fed it. The water 
there seemed black from the reflection of the great precipice 
that the country people called Noah's Stack. The swamp 
around the lake-side was black with peat-water and stretches 
of peat. The climber made his way from one stone to another, 
and heard the marsh sucking and bubbling around him. After 
skirting the j^ccipice he toiled foi more than three hours in the 
bed of the stream up a great and barren valley. The slopes of 
the hills were yellow with faded grass and quite empty. The 
rocks among which he wrenched his feet were black and grey ; 
only under water they seemed to be of all colours, red and 
blue and green. He drank the water once or twice. It was 
bitter and very cold. 
At the head of the valley he was forced to climb seriously 
for a few moments. Once his foot turned on a shpjKuv place. 
He swung in the air by his hands, and saw them grippiiig their . 
hold with instinctive desperation. A patch of lichen on the 
rock-face uiider his ^-es became extraordinarily important, 
as did the sight of blood oozing from a cut in his left wrist . 
Then his mind worked consciously again, and he drew himself 
up to secure a footing. He looked down curiously at what lav 
below him. For the first time it struck him that he was very 
high up. The ground fell away sharply beneath his feet. A 
very little way above him rose" the twin peaks, Noah's Stack 
and the Haystack. They were giant clusters of the pillar for- 
mation common in basalt, the sky was blue and white 
behind and seemed to rest upon them. The climber felt his 
breath come quicklv at the sight of what ajipeared to threaten 
him. h'or a moment he hesitated. Then he Hftcd his shoulder 
and headand went forward. 
The path let^him eastward under Noah's Stack. Me passed 
it by and came (jut on to the plateau where the stream rose. 
The sun was blindingly hot, and the bog shiunnered. There 
were a great many little pools all strung together in a network 
across two miles of open ground. By some trick ol light they 
were exactly the same colour as the sky ; they seemed an under- 
world breaking through. The climber had' the idea that this 
plateau swung giddily above the void, that if he went to tlje 
edge of one of those pools he would shp through into nothing- 
ness. His brain reeled under the sun, and he went forward un- 
steadily. The httle Haystack peak was across the bog. 
The going vras bad here. He laboured among mos.ses anil 
great tufts of grass. He felt the peat sucking at him as he 
went, and the ground quivering, and he could not find any 
track. Once he came to a bog-hole, very black and sullen, 
with its banks yawning round it like toothless gums drawn back 
from an open mouth. Idly, he pushed his shck down into the 
IK-at-water, and— found y\o Iwttom. The cotton-grass shook 
daintily in the wind on the further side. 
He came to the foot of thq. Haystack, that, with its outer 
bastion, the Distaff, commands the far \alley. It is a small 
conical peak, steep enough from the side where he appreached 
it, and perfectly sheer into vacancy on the other three. It 
rises above the bog for perhaps three'hundred feet, and the face 
of it is broken rock. A climber would think nothing of it. 
For this man, who could not climb at all, it perhaps had its 
dangers. Of this he did not think. He set himself, withoiit 
hesitation, to scale it. 
For more than two-thirds of the way he did well. The foot- 
holds were easy, and he avoided looking around. Then the 
temptation overcame him. He looked at his own hand, 
clasping a rock, at the empty air beyond, and at the leaves of a 
little tree shaking in the wind. Imagination presented to hipi 
almost at once the depths below him. He moved a foot. The 
shale beneath it rattled away. He clung to the rock-face, 
sweating, and shut his eyes. 
His fear endured until the moment when he felt his lingers 
giving away. He looked up despairingly, and beheld the sum- 
mit not ten yards above him. The sight nerved his body to 
action, even whilst his brain refused it. He struggled, 
scrambled, clung, and succeeded. Over the edge he draggecl 
himself, and lay all his length there, his arms extended along 
the ground as if to hold it to him. It seemed to his fancy that 
the mountain heaved beneath him, indignant, striving to cast 
him off. He had not strength to do more than lie trembling. 
After a time, however, he sat up and felt the wind blowing 
over him. The short turf of the summit was under his hands , 
that were torn and smeared with blood. He looked across the 
conquered hill to wh( ri: the Distaff juttect into the valley, with 
the Kocking Stone upon it ' and'- " That is where I must go," 
came to him as a command from without. He got to his feet 
and went. 
The Distaft was one of those rock ])illais which arc some- 
times found detached from the main jieak, yet joined to it by 
a neck of stone. On all sides it went down j)erfectly sheer into 
the valley. The Rocking Stone was perched upon its summit. 
Beyond it were the mountains, and the chasms of the air. 
" That is the place," said the young man to himself. 
He gut down the rocks, and stood upright. One step took 
him on to the neck, another into the middle of it. He had foot- 
hold, nothing more. He looked down two hundred feet, and 
saw the ridge upon which, if he fell, his back would be broken. 
A raven swept out from just above it, and sailed into the valley, 
croaking. 
The climber went a step further, and la*d his hands upon the 
Rocking Stone. It was about ten feet long, and narrow, and 
lay across his path. It swayed gently as he touched it. He 
made his spring, and sat it like a horse. It lurched sickeningly 
beneath him. He shut his eyes, and twisted his knees, about the 
thing, crouching upon it. His face, in the sunlight, was per- 
fectly white. "The stone oscillated, and came to rest. The 
chmbcr sat U). right. 
" I've done it," he said to himself. " I've done it." 
He waited a little time, and the blood ran warm through his 
veins. He looked down into the valley. Some of the rocks 
there moved and fell, .\fter a few seconds he heard the roar 
of them, and following it the rattle of the loose shale, that had 
already, when he heard it, ceased to move. The fields in the 
bottom of the valley were like stained glass, cut up into odd 
shapes by the lead-lines of the boundary wall. The moun- 
tains beyond lay clean in the sunhght. They were hkc 
animals asleep. They were all his fo conquer and ride, as he 
rode the stone beneath him. He would mount their flanks and 
scarred, rebelhous shoulders, and make them lift him up to the 
stars. They were his, and he feared them no longer. Indeed 
they seemed to him hke his own house. 
He got to his feet, and walked back across the narrow way 
It was all over now. He was hungry and his hmbs shook under 
him with fatigue. He went down to the south side of the 
Haystack, and found a sheltered place where he could eat the 
provisions he had brought with him ... 
GOGGLES 
WWO- SCREENS 
AWINCX3W5 
'^ THE ONUY^ 
SAFETY GLASS 
