It was laborious, painful work; twice
he lost handholds and hung precariously until his straining fingers
again found some indentation. Sweat covered him; the wind from the Flat
whipped around the wall and touched the moisture on his back coldly. But
his face was set in a frozen grimness and though his breath came in
gasps he made no other sound.
When he had neared the top he suddenly seemed to reach a dead-end; the
stones were smooth above him. His arms ached, his shoulders seemed
deadened; he clung numbly to the wall and searched for another path.
When he found it, he had to descend ten feet and move to the right
before he could re-ascend; as he retraced his route down the wall he
noticed blood where his torn fingers had left their mark. But he could
not feel the pain in his fingers.
At last, when the wall had come to seem a separate world of existence
which was all that he would ever know, a vertical plane to which he
clung with dim determination, hardly knowing why any longer ... at last,
he reached the top.
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